Introduction

This book explores the conceptual and practical connections that exist between phenomenology, Buddhism, and psychotherapy. These three disciplines clearly have completely different origins, histories, conceptualizations and academic environments and, at first blush, there seems to be no real bond between them. However, this book shows that there are connections between these diverse approaches, but they have the peculiar character of being latent and hidden.

Shared Goals and Approaches

Thus, phenomenology and the practice of mindfulness share a similar, though perhaps not explicit, goal: to exclude the ego. Notwithstanding this connection, they approach this task from quite separate roads, each of which conceals this implicit goal, giving the impression that both disciplines are irreducible and disconnected, as if they were completely distinct and closed systems.