Effortless Mindfulness: Genuine Mental Health Through Awakened Presence

Western psychology has focused primarily on mindfulness as a technique for emotional healing. In this scholarly manual for clinicians, Lisa Dale Miller offers a more complete view of Buddhist psychology and mental health. Effortless Mindfulness reveals the understanding behind the technique of mindfulness and points to many more possibilities for further utilization and integration of Buddhist psychology in western clinical work. Any clinician interested in exploring Buddhist psychology in depth will be interested in this book.

-Phillip Moffitt, author of Emotional Chaos to Clarity and Dancing with Life

Lisa Dale Miller has offered mental-health practitioners-and all those seeking to integrate basic wellbeing and happiness with the ancient and time-tested wisdom teachings in Buddha dharma-a clear, scholarly, and thoughtful approach to understanding the important and growing connection between the two. She addresses the important questions of what genuine mental health is and what practices best support it at many levels, drawing expertly from neuroscience, clinical practice methods, Buddhist philosophy and modern psychological theory. As a clinician, researcher and long-time meditator, she has a unique perspective in the quest to connect the dots between dharma and modern psychology.

-Tsoknyi Rinpoche, Tibetan Buddhist dharma teacher and author

Effortless Mindfulness is the real deal! It skillfully provides the most comprehensive and authentic approach to integrating Buddhist teachings with contemporary therapeutic principles and the most relevant psychosocial and cognitive neurobiological research. From across schools of Buddhism and secular adaptations of mindfulness, Lisa Dale Miller is able to weave together the common threads that provide relevant theory on the nature of suffering and the methods of mental training that can lead to a sustainable healthy mind in the most practical way. Clinicians, scholars, and practitioners alike will find this book to be a valuable resource for his or her own personal journey and for the field of contemplative science.

-David R. Vago, PhD, instructor at Harvard Medical School

In the pages that follow, Lisa Dale Miller takes us on an integrative adventure, exploring the intersection of ancient Buddhist teachings with modern neurobiology and clinical research and practice. While the work of many pioneers have facilitated the integration of mindfulness practices into health care and society by intentionally extracting them from their Buddhist roots, this book offers a different service: it looks unflinchingly at Buddhist understandings of the origins of human suffering and how various meditative techniques were designed to alleviate this suffering by fostering a radical psychological liberation.

-from the foreword by Ronald D. Siegel

You will find that the scholarship and many years of meditation practice of the author are reflected on every page. It is intellectually satisfying and also serves as a rich contemplative guide for mindfulness meditation and Buddhism in general. No matter what your background might be, as scholar, meditator or seeker, you will find many valuable insights in this work. It is such a joy to see Lisa's gift in presenting many essential Buddhist thoughts in contemporary language and making them come alive.

-from the foreword by Anam Thubten Rinpoche