This paper is an attempt to provide a foundation of mindfulness by“perennial philosophy.”The perennial philosophy includes essential ideas on the world and the human beings across the world wisdom traditions. The central concept of perennial philosophy is“awareness.”In this regard, perennial philosophy becomes a theoretical foundation of mindfulness, or awareness practice in general. Relying on Aldous Huxley, Huston Smith, Ram Dass, and Ken Wilber, this paper firstly states that the perennial philosophy is a multidimensional theory and suggests that the essence of the soul is awareness or witness and spirit is boundless pure awareness, including an important discussion of nondual awareness. In the next section, it explores an ontology of awareness by referring to the Upanishad, Shankara, Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta Maharaj, and others. Then, referring to J. Krishnamurti, Erich Fromm, and Wilber, it discusses how awareness relates to the body-mind aspect. Finally, it explores a multidimensional way of awareness practice in education, based on Huxley's pioneering ideas on the education of awareness that provides a wider perspective for the current mindfulness practices.

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As perinatal medical staff support births, they also often experience the death of children. The overlap of these two extreme experiences greatly impacts the midwives who are providing care at the time, according to an investigation conducted about midwives’sorrow(Okanaga, 2005). In particular, it has been reported that there is a tendency for midwives to feel a sense of guilt when there is an embryonic death while the midwife has been caring for the mother during her pregnancy(Tsuda, 2015). This paper focuses on the nursing practice of Midwife C. Through her narrative she contemplates the meaning of “continuing pregnancy” after a child whom she was caring for passed away from anencephaly. By using phenomenological nursing research, the purpose of this study is to clarify what kind of support is required by nurses who are going through such experiences. The factors include the experiences of the care for “the unusual coldness” of a child who passed away during a homebirth. This shows that nurses create their own value system while contemplating their culpability in terms of their sense of ethics.

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Previous studies have found that fostering spirituality in the modern society of materialism can help resolve contemporary social pathology such as suicide and depression. Other studies showed that people who experience rich natural environment may have a high spiritual tendency. Therefore, this research tried to verify the hypothesis about nature experiences affecting human spirituality. The results supported the hypothesis by showing that experiences in a rich natural environment have the potential to foster human spirituality. For the future, we consider a qualitative approach on the influence of the nature on human's sensitivity and values.

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