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This chapter invites leaders to tread the Noble Eightfold Path as a constructive and rewarding practice. It discusses two major instructional steps, each including a series of personal reflections and suggested exercises.

Step 1 explains the Four Noble Truths, which confronts us with the many ways we suffer through our challenges. Leader developers are encouraged to clarify the first Three Noble Truths through a process of contemplating, reflecting, meditating and sharing. Step 2 explains the fourth Noble Truth, also known as the Noble Eightfold Path, which offers a pathway to end our suffering. The Eightfold Path consists of eight contemplations we should practise at all times: (1) right view, (2) right intention, (3) right speech, (4) right action, (5) right livelihood, (6) right effort, (7) right mindfulness and (8) right concentration. Participants may obtain best insight into step 2 by focussing on the issues they identified in step 1.

Using the Noble Eightfold Path in the development of leaders illustrates the importance of engaging in leadership practices that elevate wellbeing of the self and others, by practising a set of interrelated behaviours, which could be described as a process of connecting the heart with the mind. The strategy discussed in this chapter may appeal to leaders who aspire choosing the high road and aim to keep their conscience as clean as possible, while paving a constructive and sustainable global path towards acceptance, understanding, respect and collective wellbeing.

For the interested teacher, teacher educator and educational researcher seeking an entry point into how mindfulness relates to teachers’ work, the burgeoning and divergent appeals for the relevance of mindfulness to teachers can be bewildering. The purpose of this paper is to offer teachers, teacher educators and educational researchers a conceptual framework for understanding the different orientations and sources of mindfulness as it has been recommended to teachers.

Using Foucault’s (1972) concept of “discursive formations” as a heuristic device, this paper argues that mindfulness as pitched to teachers can be helpfully understood as arising from three distinct orientations.

Statements about mindfulness and its relevance to teachers emerge from three distinct discursive formations – traditional, psychological and engaged – that each constitute the “problem” faced by teachers respectively as suffering, stress or alienation. Specific conceptions of mindfulness are then advanced as a solution to these problems by certain authoritative subjects and institutions in ways that are taken as legitimate within each discursive formation.

Apart from offering a historical and discursive mapping of the different discursive formations from which mindfulness is pitched to teachers, this paper also highlights how each of these orientations impies a normative view of what a teacher should be. Suggestions for further historical research are also offered along the lines of genealogy, epistemology and ontology.

In this chapter, the authors explore the “hidden curriculum” that is enacted when the teaching-self transmits to the learning-self, the being aspects of the teacher. It is proposed that these aspects are communicated through discursive and nondiscursive materials. The latter includes energetic, emotional, and gestural “languages.” An argument is made that the current, modernist conceptions and practices of education that predominantly focus on covering and downloading curriculum materials do not create openings for exploring the being aspects of teachers and learners. Moreover, acknowledging Avraham Cohen's thesis, “We teach who we are, and that's the problem,” the authors explore the hurtful and damaging influence of the teachers' “Shadow materials.” An argument is made for the moral imperative of teachers' (or anyone who is in a position of influencing others) self-study to minimize or prevent hurtful and damaging influences that could have a long-lasting impact on the students' or learners' self-formation. The authors propose the method of inner work, integrated with contemplative inquiry and practices, as a way for educators to work with the materials of consciousness. Inner work largely involves working through psychological projections, introjections, and entanglements that permeate one's inner world. Some details of inner work are offered, including how to facilitate a dialogue between the parts or subselves in one's inner world that are in tension and conflict. It has been further proposed that this kind of inner work would lay the necessary foundation for becoming kinder, caring, and more compassionate human beings.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the idea of transparency of understanding from a communications perspective, and mindful listening as a mode of communication to achieve it.

Provides a discussion and Analysis.

Practical methods to achieve mindful listening are described. Transparency of understanding is publicly and interactively achieved through carefully orchestrated visible and audible behaviors. Drawing on spiritual traditions and language and social interaction research, the author suggests that our active and verbal input, our receptivity and embodied presence, including body orientation, facial expression, and eye behavior are significant factors in creating and displaying transparency of understanding.

The author suggests that if we could actually be present to listen to each other in the workplace with close attention we might minimize much misunderstanding and confusion, and maybe reduce the amount of time and energy we spend in repairing what we might have missed or misunderstood because we were not really paying attention?

This article considers the ethical and political significance of mindfulness by treating it as a pedagogy – that is, as a way of cultivating particular human capacities in response to a specific situation. It puts forward an approach for evaluating its implications not by recourse to a predetermined moral meter, but by locating it within specific historical and geographical contexts as mediated biographically by individual teachers.

Drawing on Edward Said's concept of “traveling theory”, this article proposes an approach called “travelling pedagogy” that sensitises the researcher to how the interplay of temporal, spatial, and biographical factors shape reiterations of any pedagogy. It then uses this conceptual framework to explore how mindfulness has been taught by three of its prominent proponents: Thich Nhat Hanh, Jon Kabat-Zinn, and bell hooks.

The exploration of how mindfulness has been taught by the three prominent teachers featured in this article demonstrates how its ethico-political implications transform under varied conditions of urgency faced by these teachers, respectively: war and militarisation; scientific legitimacy; racialised and gendered capitalism. This points to how a historical approach might add nuance to the discussions and debates on mindfulness beyond overgeneralised hype on the one hand, and sweeping “McMindfulness” critiques on the other.

This article proposes a new conceptual framework for evaluating the ethical and political significance of mindfulness – and indeed any form of pedagogy – by tracking it at the nexus of history, geography, and biography. By conceiving of mindfulness as a travelling pedagogy, it also counsels a more worldly consideration of its implications beyond beatific celebration and patrician contempt.

In this critical decade and century of climate chaos, ecocide and interconnected crises, a public policy approach is needed based on the primacy of compassionate action and ecological regeneration. Ecological regeneration focuses on the health of the Earth's planetary systems of water, soil, air, minerals, microbes, plants, insects and animals. Compassionate action is concerned with relieving the suffering and enhancing the happiness of the entire human population, present and future. An integral process is needed that brings these two priority concerns into the creation of new individual mindsets and behaviours and collective cultures and policies. The innovative leadership methods needed to realize these changes include mindfulness taught by Thich Nhat Hanh, group facilitation as formulated by the Institute of Cultural Affairs in its Technology of Participation (ToP), social artistry as developed by Jean Houston and four-quadrant thinking, planning and acting as expounded by Ken Wilber in his Integral Quadrants.

In this chapter, we will first identify some of the dimensions of humanity's systemic suffering. Next, we will review how the principles and practices of engaged Buddhism and compassionate action might help relieve that suffering. Then, we will explore some of the visions, obstacles, strategies and actions of compassionate policies that can help relieve systemic suffering.

The purpose of this study is to theorize that computer-assisted language learning (CALL) can be integrated in English language learning with a focus on cultural learning of both home and target language.

The present study used a systematic methodology to conceive the language and home-culture integrated online learning (LHIOL) curriculum design based on relevant conceptual frameworks and gather qualitative data from focused group interviews of 30 teachers and 3,000 students’ open-ended questionnaires, along with learning artifacts to identify major themes.

CALL, used as cultural and linguistic material, helps students embrace their cultural identities, especially ethnic minorities, capitalize on their distinctive values, and appreciate and empathize with other languages and cultures. The instructors advocate for localizing intercultural communicative competence (ICC) educational content into Vietnamese culture, using real multimedia resources. However, the LHIOL curriculum faced systemic constraints regarding competitions between linguistic and cultural instruction, teachers’ refusal to recognize ICC’s importance and recognition of an explicit link between virtual cultural learning and their lives.

LHIOL is a preliminary practical effort to suggest how a cultural education from one’s native tongue can be integrated into a culture-focused English/Western language environment. By incorporating fundamental concepts that underpin the integration of language and culture as well as CALL, improving ICC offers a framework that can be applied to elucidate cultural learning.

This paper aims to contribute or rekindle internal and external dialogues about the interactions, decisions and behaviour in the work environments; while also consider some critical overarching values that can help workforce members cope with the stress and pressure, which augment as the speed of life increases.

The methodology used in this project is an integrative literature review, supported by, findings and reflections from two doctoral dissertations: one in workplace spirituality and one in Buddhist psychology; and the researcher’s analysis and joint application of these two streams over the past decade.

Workplace spirituality and Buddhist psychology share overlapping, multi-interpretable traits, with as the main discrepancies that workplace spirituality is a relatively new concept, while Buddhist psychology has been around for more than 2,500 years; and workplace spirituality focusses only on the workplace, while Buddhist psychology focusses on every area of the life. Yet, the overarching notion of doing right while respecting and accepting others and aiming for an overarching better quality of life remains a strong driver in both realms.

This paper will hopefully entice future researchers to engage in additional studies on spiritual intersections to expand on such databases and enhance awareness, acceptance and implementation amongst scholars and practitioners in business settings.

Exploring intersections of behavioural disciplines such as workplace spirituality and Buddhist psychology addresses an important need within workforce members and therewith also those within their social circles, as they evoke deeper and consistent contemplation on the aspects that connect us together and can enhance overall well-being and happiness at a greater magnitude than, this study experiences it today.

The study aims to deliver a contribution to the database of awareness-enhancing literature, in an effort to help spawn dialogue and critical thinking about the attitudes and behaviours towards ourselves, others and the future.

This paper presents an overview of themes in two psychological streams, both focussing on living and acting with greater consciousness, to make more mindful decisions, improve the overall experience of cooperating towards a common good and understand the responsibility towards creating a future that will be sustainable rather than destroyed.

Today, as we hurtle towards imminent planetary destruction in the age of the Anthropocene, we believe it may be instructive to try and understand if the ancient science of spirituality can prove useful in humankind's ability to change course, even at this late hour. We argue that such a paradigm shift is critically essential for human survival and that without the inner transformation proposed by this science, it may prove impossible to build a society based on the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity. This chapter draws from foundational texts and authoritative sources across multiple religious traditions, based upon which it outlines a brief sketch of the ancient science of spirituality. We begin with an account of the differentia specifica of this science, where we delve into what kind of science this is. Since it is centrally concerned with inner transformation, we briefly outline the theory of change embedded in this science and the kind of rejuvenation it enables, which makes it possible for us to clearly perceive the key elements and the structure of reality. We then spell out the impact this has on the nature of human action, continually teasing out implications for policy and practice in our time. We provide a few concrete illustrations of the same. Inter alia, we also show how many of these insights can be found even within modern scientific and philosophical traditions, thereby indicating possibilities of convergence and synthesis between ancient and modern science, following thereby the guidance of genuine spirituality.