65 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 R. Aristegui et al. (eds.), Relational Mindfulness, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57733-9_4 Chapter 4 Recovering the Phenomenological and Intersubjective Nature of Mindfulness Through the Enactive Approach David Martínez-Pernía, Ignacio Cea, and Andrés Kaltwasser 4.1 Introduction The origins of mindfulness can be traced to the Satipatthana Sutta, an ancient text that shows how to calm negative thoughts and reach nirvana (Shulman 2010). The very concept of mindfulness is itself Sati; while loosely interpretable through terms like “awareness” or “consciousness” (Shulman 2010), it can be understood more deeply as a way to achieve an exact perception of a phenomenon – leaving aside observant self-interest and judgment – in order to observe the phenomenon as if for the frst time (Thera 1962). Sati is to be fully aware, to have a complete understand- ing of a situation, a comprehension of a phenomenon as a wholeness; in other words, there is an acceptance that all aspects are a part of the same unicity (Williams 2015). Mindfulness practice is the means by which we can reach spiritual enlighten- ment, and encourages a phenomenological way of living in which people are fully aware of immediate experience (Sangharakshita 2003). Notably, all these perspectives emphasize the element of subjective practice in mindfulness (or at least highlight the importance of the subjective personal view in understanding and improving the qualities that it provides). As Grossman asserts, mindfulness “is the result of a 2,500-year development of a phenomenological approach oriented toward a gradual understanding of direct experience” (Grossman 2011, p. 1035). Despite the manifestly phenomenological approach of Buddhist mindfulness, its perspective has been adapted by Western psychology toward scien- tifc endeavors that analyze and assess its effects (Van Dam et al. 2018). As a result, D. Martínez-Pernía (*) · I. Cea Center for Social and Cognitive Neuroscience (CSCN), School of Psychology, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Santiago, Chile e-mail: david.martinez@uai.cl; ignacio.cea@edu.uai.cl A. Kaltwasser School of Psychology, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Santiago, Chile