Spreading Mindfulness

Philip Snyder, executive director of Contemplative Mind in Society, and an anthropologist is fond of saying that a thousand years ago our civilization was profoundly altered by the spreading of literacy to the general public from the monasteries where it had been exclusively practiced. Could it now be the case, he wonders, that the practice of mindfulness developed for millennia in monasteries and temples will similarly be released and spread throughout the world, with just as large an impact?

Norman Fischer
from When You Greet Me I Bow