Becoming “intimate” with the present moment: Mindfulness and the question of temporality

Abstract

Being in the present moment is a key element in most widespread definitions of modern mindfulness. A claim about temporality can thus be said to lie at the core of mindfulness, in which some ways of relating to time are considered subordinate to others; being in the present moment is ascribed higher value than being elsewhere in time. However, although the significance of the present moment is clear, its content and meaning are ambiguous; what temporal states are promoted through mindfulness? This article seeks to theorize this ambiguity by focusing on the specific context of school-based mindfulness as a case in which temporality and education intertwine. Whereas educational research on issues related to time and temporality typically construes time as a condition or resource for educational practices, I argue that school-based mindfulness represents a particular method of making temporality—specifically, the relation between the student self and the present moment—into an object of education. I identify three dimensions of what it means to be in the present moment through empirical examples drawn from a broader study on the educational purposes of school-based mindfulness. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of the complexity of the notion of the present moment in school-based mindfulness for future research in this field.