Mindfulness and Other Virtues in the Development of Intercultural and Interreligious Competence

Abstract

This paper offers a commentary on Oman’s article, “Mindfulness for Global Public Health: Critical Analysis and Agenda.” We focus on engaging and extending some of Oman’s questions and ideas about connections between mindfulness and intercultural and interreligious competence, and we make applications to the personal and professional formation of helping professionals (e.g., mental health professionals, clergy). Mindfulness is considered in relation to a dialectical emphasis on both intercultural (or diversity) competence and humility with connections to the cultural humility literature. This leads us to question whether mindfulness could be framed as a virtue, a capacity and practice that facilitates virtues (e.g., humility), or both. A brief summary of related research on virtues, spiritual practices, and intercultural competence is offered to frame some key future research questions. Like some other commentary articles in this series, we engage aspects of religious diversity in relation to mindfulness-based practices. But our unique contribution includes the application of a specific developmental model of interreligious competence to the use of mindfulness by helping professionals. We illustrate differing interreligious orientations toward mindfulness and the potential impact of each orientation on professional practice. The final section offers some contextualization of these interreligious orientations within religious minority communities using Jewish communities as an example by further probing of one of Oman’s sources on Jewish mindfulness.