Mindfulness in Schools Learning lessons from the adults - secular and Buddhist October 2009 Richard Burnett,
[email protected] 0 Acknowledgements I would like to express my sincere thanks to the following for generously giving their time to be interviewed: Michael Chaskalson, Chris Cullen, Christina Feldman, Richard Gilpin, Prof. Felicia Huppert, Ruchiraketu, John Teasdale and Prof. Mark Williams. My thanks also to Jon Kabat-Zinn for taking the time to reply to an unsolicited letter from an unknown Englishman. I would like to thank all those at Tonbridge School who have supported and continue to support the mindfulness teaching there, including the Headmaster, Tim Haynes, Peter Carpenter, Will Biddle, Rev. Martin Beaumont, Bob Chisholm and in particular the Head of Divinity, Julian Dobson who has liberally allowed me to use year 10 lessons over the past few years to explore different approaches to mindfulness. My thanks to Prof. Felicia Huppert for her wise counsel and for bringing mindfulness to life as a bona-fide research project. Finally I would like to thank Prof. Peter Harvey, not only for his expertise over the last few years but for patiently and carefully reading through and commenting on essays that have regularly exceeded word limits. 1 This ancient Way of Mindfulness is as practicable today as it was 2,500 years ago. It is as applicable in the lands of the West as in the East; in the midst of life’s turmoil as well as in the peace of the monk’s cell. Nyanaponika Thera, 1962: 7 2 Contents Abstract and Methodology 1.