Mindfulness meditation widely applied in contemporary society has its roots in eastern Buddhism but becomes decontextualized and business-oriented nowadays. Buddhist scholars argued about the differences between western and eastern mindfulness and suggested to consider how Buddhist roots of mindfulness practice can be better understood and integrated into the contemporary practice of mindfulness. These efforts should be grounded on the measurement of Buddhist meditation. The present study based on Master Yinshun’s annotation of “nine-stages of mindfulness” from “Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra” and developed the “Buddhist Mindfulness Progress Inventory, BMPI”. Seventy-nine participants who were experienced with Buddhist meditation were recruited to complete the BMPI as well as inventories of self-esteem, subjective well-being, and Big-five personality. Three indices were derived from BMPI as “Nine-stages of Buddhist Mindfulness” (NBM) total scores, NBM stages, and NBM levels. The results showed that the indices of BMPI were correlated with most of the criterion variables. The NBM total scores positively and significantly correlated to self-esteem, subjective well-being, openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, and agreeableness; while negatively and significantly correlated to neuroticism, showing a good validity. The groups of different NBM levels exhibited distinct psychological characteristics, indicating the differences from western mindfulness. In addition, the test-retest reliability was also good. To sum up, the BMPI established good psychometric properties and inspired future studies on Buddhist research and education.
