BUDDHIST PSYCHOLOGY: ESSENTIAL CONCEPTS FOR UNDERSTANDING MIND, EMOTION, AND WELL-BEING
Teacher: Jack Kornfield PhD
Course Overview
Buddhist psychology is often described as a science of mind. It’s practical and experiential, and it offers a framework for understanding the mind, emotion, and behavior in the midst of changing life circumstances. This program provides an educational overview of key concepts from Buddhist psychology and examines how these concepts relate to contemporary discussions of mental health, well-being, and mindfulness-based approaches.
When we forget, we move through life lost in a small perspective, limited by our conditioning: individuals may experience heightened stress, emotional reactivity, or habitual patterns of thought that affect well-being. At times, this can lead to a diminished sense of ease or balance. There are possibilities of being open, gracious, wise, more loving, and more compassionate. There are possibilities for cultivating a more flexible and present-centered way of relating to experience, where we are less caught in the fears, history, and troubles of the past.
Buddhist psychology offers new ways of understanding experience and introduces practices traditionally used to cultivate awareness, compassion, and intention. These perspectives can inform how one relates to experience in both personal and professional contexts. If you are new to Buddhist teachings and meditation has seemed foreign to you, you will learn that meditation is quite natural. Simply directing your attention in a careful, considered way is the beginning. If you are someone more experienced in Buddhist practice, this course may challenge you with entirely new ways of envisioning and practicing the path of greater flexibility in relating to our conditioned way of being.
Course Syllabus
Finding the Beauty and Goodness All Around Us
- Recognizing the Possibility of Dignity and Goodness
- Beginning to Notice: Seeing Beauty and Goodness Everywhere
- The Unresolved Emotional Patterns of the Heart
- A Quick Exercise: Becoming Spacious and Gracious
Unlocking the Full Potential of Mindfulness with Compassion
- How Compassion Aids Our Healing
- Is Mindfulness Impossible Without Compassion?
- Learning to Hold the World in Compassion
- List ItemCompassion For a Year: Try It and See
The Three Pillars of Mindfulness and Why Each is Key for Emotional Regulation
- Mindfulness of the Body: The Body as a Dynamic System
- Cultivating a Wise Relationship to Our Embodied Lives
- Fishing in the Ever-Changing River of Feelings
- The Briefness of Feelings: Noticing Small Changes
- The Variety of Thoughts: Judgments, Plans, and Reruns
- A Little Experiment: Counting Our Many Thoughts
- The Quality of Acceptance: How to Admit Vulnerability
- Meeting the Hardest Experiences with Discernment and a Wise Heart
Conceptual Perspectives on Mental Health from Buddhist Psychology and Mindfulness Practices
- Building the Foundations for Mental Health
- Developing Internal Resources for Emotional Regulation with Mindfulness
- 10,000 Joys and Sorrows: Mindfully Holding Everyday Life
- Moving Through the World with Equanimity and a Peaceful Heart
- Visualizing Presence and Care: A Guided Exercise
- Questioning Ourselves: Who Arrived When You Called?
Forgiveness: The Key to Releasing Attachment to Past Resentment
- Forgiveness: The Key to Letting Go
- Three Stories of Forgiveness
- Undertaking the Practice of Forgiveness
- Turning Forgiveness into a Way of Life
Becoming Your Own Unique Self for the Good of the World
- Becoming Free from the Small Sense of Self
- Learning to Examine the Concept of Self and Identity
- A Short Practice in Joy: Seeing the Beautiful Possibilities
- Finding the Highest Intention: How To Make Mindfulness Fruitful
- How the Rightness of Intention Creates Agents of Peace
- Holding Someone’s Highest Intention in Your Hands
Learn these essential practices for living wisely:
- Mindfulness Meditation
- Finding the beauty and goodness all around
- How to cultivate compassion
- Mindfulness of the body
- Mindfulness of feelings
- How to work with all strong emotions, from anxiety to joy
- How to acknowledge thoughts & feelings without getting caught in them
- The importance of forgiveness
- Discovering your highest intention
Who Is It For?
This introductory-level program is designed for health care professionals seeking a conceptual understanding of mindfulness-based and contemplative perspectives relevant to professional well-being and clinical practice.
This five-hour, self-paced program includes 32 lessons bundled into six sessions. The program introduces conceptual and experiential examples commonly used in Buddhist psychology to illustrate principles related to awareness, intention, and emotional regulation. These teachings reflect long-standing contemplative perspectives on cultivating compassion and well-being.
This course is a valuable resource that can be used again and again to sustain or refresh your regular, ongoing practice.
Join Today
On-demand Course
- 5 hours of course video
- Lifetime access to the content
- Access to online learning community
- Certificate of completion
11 payments of $29
On-demand course + CE
- 5 hours of course video
- Lifetime access to the content
- Access to online learning community
- Certificate of completion
- 5 Homestudy CE Credit / Contact hours
11 payments of $30
FAQs
Do you offer a money back guarantee?
Yes, if for any reason you are not satisfied with the program please contact us within the first 30 days for a full refund.
I have more questions, can you help me?
Yes! Please email us at info@jackkornfield.com with any questions that you might have.
Continuing Education (CE) Information
This program offers 5 homestudy CE credits/contact hours, applicable for psychologists, and California-licensed MFTs, LCSWs, LEPs, LPCCs, nurses, and chiropractors, and may be applicable for other licenses. Please review our Continuing Education information page for provider details.
This program is applicable to care providers by supporting reflective awareness, emotional regulation, and ethical intention in the context of clinical and caregiving roles, which are central to sustaining professional presence and reducing reactivity in high-demand settings. The concepts presented may also inform how care providers understand their own stress responses, relational dynamics, and values-based decision-making, with relevance to patient care, interdisciplinary communication, and professional well-being.
Learning Objectives for participating health care professionals-
At the end of the program you will be better able to:
- Describe key principles of Buddhist psychology related to attention, intention, and mental habits.
- Explain the Four Foundations of Mindfulness (body, feelings, mind, and mental phenomena) as a framework for observing experience.
- Describe how Buddhist psychology conceptualizes compassion and forgiveness as capacities of mind and heart, including their relevance to working with difficult emotional experience.
- Explain the role of intention in Buddhist psychology and how it relates to identity, values, and ethical orientation.
Continuing Education content level: Introductory
*Please note:
- For full Provider information, and additional CE information, including attendance requirements, cancellation, and grievance policies, please visit our Continuing Education information page.
- For those with a license from a different board or association than listed on our CE info page, please contact your licensing board or association directly to request pre-approval/acceptance of these CE credits/contact hours. JackKornfield.com does not confirm the applicability of credit for those with licenses other than those listed.
- Continuing Education is sponsored by Mindful CECs.
- Mindful CECs is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. Mindful CECs maintains responsibility for this program and its content.
- Mindful CECs is a provider approved by the California Board of Registered Nursing, Provider Number CEP17985 for 5 contact hours.
- Attendance Requirements: Self-paced programs require the completion of a comprehension assessment with a 75% accuracy. Participants are permitted to retake the test if 75% accuracy is not achieved.
- Potential Conflict of Interest Statement: This instructor may have authored publications relevant to the subjects covered in this course. The instructor might reference these publications during the course, and they may receive financial compensation if these publications are purchased.
Additional Benefits
Satisfaction Guaranteed
If you are not completely satisfied, we will promptly issue you a refund within 30 days from the start of the course
Group Program
Save 15% when you sign up with a buddy or a group – Fill out our contact form to get started
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