Contra Mindfulness – A Quick Comment on the Rash of Anti-Mindfulness Articles

Over the last few years there has been a growing number of voices decrying the mainstream adoption of Mindfulness. Insofar as I’ve seen, these are generally people politically affiliated with the Left, concerned that the stripped-back, purportedly ethics-free version of Mindfulness is being deployed by the State and by Industry more largely in ways that are disingenuous at best and actively malicious in more extreme cases. There are also voices decrying the way in which Mindfulness, transmogrified for Western palates, is being perverted by removing it from the ethical and soteriological grounding in Vedanta and Buddhism, resulting in a mere technique where once was an holistic world-view.

Unlike, say, Hegel, Buddha doesn’t do so well when turned on his head.

Examples of the ways in which Mindfulness could or has gone wrong run the gamut – from broad-stroke worries about the ways in which focus on the self disconnects us from larger social concerns, exemplified in military training or, you know, that monster Sam Harris, to the hand-washing benefits it grants existing power structures, such as the shockingly cruel example of a local council selling off affordable housing, and then providing the former occupants life-coaching workshops to treat their stress, thus presenting themselves as a solution, rather than the source of the problem in the first place. To get a feel for how established Mindfulness’ cachet is, look no further than the way other cultural institutions are trying to benefit by association, such as Museums, critiqued here (following a quick search, it looks like critiquing Mindfulness has become something of a cottage industry over at The Baffler).

For my part, I find myself open to both these criticisms, that of misuse and of inappropriate or insufficient presentation, but am probably more inclined to the former. Stephen Batchelor has long argued that a modern, secular Buddhism can be crafted to find fertile ground in Western soil, without losing its core nature or mission, that in fact this has always been part of Buddhism’s multi-millennial character, fitting itself into its host society to most effectively communicate itself in the local parlance. So, with that in mind, I think that that hurdle can be addressed – though obviously what we’re currently seeing is falling far short of the mark.

As I think I’d mentioned before, I’m gearing up to start training in psychotherapy, so the larger issue is something of a concern for me – am I going to be investing time and money, only to unwittingly perpetuate the ills I’m hoping to cure? What I’m finding frustrating about a lot of these articles is that they are merely pointing out the possibility for abuse, or indeed documenting the abuses already being committed, without pointing a way forward. I’ve had conversations both online and in person regarding this, and maintain that Mindfulness training is a useful tool, and not one we should give up on merely because it is currently being misused on an industrial scale, unfortunate as that is. The fact remains that it demonstrably improves people’s lives in a measurable way, as I’ve seen in my own life and in data.

Of late, a number of the articles have been pointing to the recently published work McMindfulness, written by Ronald Purser, which “argu[es that] its proponents have reduced mindfulness to a self-help technique that fits snugly into a consumerist culture complicit with Western materialistic values.” Purser is a Professor of Management at San Fran State University which I, uh, am left a little dubious by, but he seems to talk the talk alright, with a publishing record in the appropriately Leftist/rad-lib journals and sites, and is purportedly a long-practising Buddhist, so at least should know what he is talking about on that score. I’ll try to grab a copy at some point, but I’m hoping for something more substantial than simply a book-length version of the same formulaic article we’ve been seeing for years now.