Mindfulness, or niàn in Chinese, is a concept and set of related practices which have both ancient Eastern roots and current popularity (especially in the West). It yields a captivating example of intercultural knowledge-work implicating a complex range of conceptual migrations through time and space, across languages and cultures, and within domains and disciplines. This paper first revises the vitality of the concept as used in Western disciplines (mainly intercultural communication and psychotherapy), noting how the Eastern origins are recorded but not fully debated. It then reviews the ancient origins in Eastern religious and philosophical thinking concluding with a report on the evolution of the term in the East until recent times. When these differing arenas of use and development interact, understandings become contested and issues of privilege vis-á-vis knowledge sources can be seen. These complexities raise questions about authenticity versus translation with regard to the differing uses made of the concept in the different arenas. Learning from the reviews of the differing comprehensions of this concept and the sometimes fraught interactions between them, this paper suggests that scholars and practitioners working in our greatly interconnected era, adopt an intercultural ethic to settle and guide such knowledge-work.