Bringing moral sensitivity to secular mindfulness courses

The Life Itself project aims to create a module for secular mindfulness courses that allows participants to deeply appreciate interbeing and the equal sacredness of humans through contemplations grounded in science. This work addresses concerns that contemporary approaches to mindfulness do not impart the moral sensitivity that traditional mindfulness training does.

The Life Itself project will heighten the moral sense not by teaching the rules or philosophies of any tradition, but by helping participants to inquire into interbeing, equality and sacredness for themselves. This effort is helped by science’s demonstrations of our interconnection through quantum entanglement, human intersubjectivity (e.g. the mirror system), and superorganisms.

Wisdom traditions teach us that contemplation can help us go from having such conceptual knowledge, to deep appreciation of the significance of this knowledge in our lives. For example, contemplating the conceptual knowledge that ‘we may die at any time’ can help us to actually live each day with direct appreciation that it could be our last. Likewise appreciation of what interbeing really means can help us stop acting as if our happiness or sanity can be separated from that of others, and see the equal sacredness of lives.

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