Mindfulness is not a marginal practice among Buddhists. Mindfulness is the seventh element of the noble eightfold path, the doctrine the Buddha declared to constitute the very heart of his teaching. Together with appropriate vision, intention, speech, action, livelihood, effort, and concentration, it is a core value to be developed on the way to awakening. The Buddha even declared mindfulness to be the "sole path" to nirvana itself.* So when someone uses mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) to counter relapse into depression, for example, she is employing a practice that potentially leads to the still, nonreactive freedom of nirvana.
~Stephen Batchelor, in Secular Buddhism
*Majjhima Nikaya
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