Short ramble again here:

I was thinking about how on some level Buddhism (at least the zen-influenced kind of western mindfulness oriented buddhism), the modern stoic movement, and phenomenology are all grasping at a similar thing but for entirely different reasons.

Namely, they're all dealing with the idea that we need to investigate our impressions of things beyond the very first blush. Mindfulness-oriented Buddhism asks you to note your thoughts as you experience them without judgment. Stoicism asks you to notice the arising of passions, the impressions they make on you, and recognize that you have choices over how you respond to those feelings. Phenomenology asks you to, when performing a phenomenologic reduction, to set aside your assumptions and meanings for phenomena you experience in order to examine the things as they appear to you.

These all have somewhat different goals but a similar basic idea: your mind attaches meaning and gut reactions to events you experience, and it behooves you to examine how those things occur.