Introduction

I am rather ignorant when it comes to Buddha’s philosophy and practice and I am no expert either on the works of the great Puritan John Owen. Nonetheless, I thought it would be a worthwhile effort to put two products of these men side by side. The two both promote meditation as a means and promise peace as a result. However, the two practices that they describe, despite the seeming resemblance in names, are vastly different. Owen has written a work with the title The grace and duty of being spiritually minded (Owen, 1681/1813). I would like to compare his practice of being spiritually minded with another practice, namely that of mindfulness, which is otherwise known as the heart of Buddhist meditation (Kabat-Zinn, p. 4). The book I have chosen is titled Wherever you go, there you are (Kabat-Zinn, 1994). It is authored by Jon Kabat-Zinn, who is active in teaching and promoting mindfulness and discussing how it might be effectively integrated into mainstream psychotherapy. It might seem that I a am comparing apples and oranges, but I have a sense that from this comparison we can learn something crucial for our practice of Christian psychology.