- A deep and scoring polemic about the Mindfulness movement.
- Sitting about thinking of the present moment? Maybe it’s helpful for coping, but it’s not the revolution you’re looking for.
The TL;DR of this book is that there is a man called Jon Kabat-Zinn who waxes lyrical about mindful meditation as being a necessary component to solving all the world’s problems today. He thinks he knows his onions about Buddhism because he’s created his own school. Except, when the curtains are drawn, and actual Buddhists aren’t in the room, it’s not Buddhism. You may have heard of his school/movement by its stage name – Mindfulness (big M).
Purser, an academic and Korean Zen priest, argues Kabat-Zinn – and the Mindfulness movement, in general – has completely neutered the teachings of the Buddha to the point that he offers nothing that could be considered ‘revolutionary,’ as claimed. Mindfulness wants to have it both ways. In claiming to be the ‘essence of Buddhism,’ it wants to appear as a legitimate form of Buddhist practice, whilst also appearing as a secular practice that can fit into ‘everyday life’ for privileged, middle-class health bros who geek out about biohacking and the scientific benefits of meditation on the human brain.
Kabat-Zinnism thus becomes anaesthesia for the rich and powerful. In being the cause of actions that create unfathomable epistemic violence, the most immediate solution is to… uhh… think about the present moment? Mindfulness doesn’t just give you the power to avoid action’s calamities. It also empowers you to deftly riposte activists, who can deconstruct every single reason why you and your political goals are killing millions, with breathwork and a smile of loving kindness that says, “You’re right, but I don’t have to listen, because I am calm and also right.”
If it whiffs of ether (and sweat), it’s because it tangos with wellness culture:
https://brologue.net/2023/12/10/that-old-back-catalogue-part-ii-anti-diet-and-the-wellness-trap/
Bartleby would prefer not to. Mindfulness is not the refusal you’re looking for:
https://brologue.net/2023/12/17/that-old-back-catalogue-part-iii-how-to-do-nothing/
Mindfulness in the western world has swelled into a multi-billion dollar industry, writes Purser. You need only look up ‘mindfulness’ on Amazon to be inundated with a whole library worth of books with ‘mindfulness’ in their title. Mindfulness apps, such as Headspace, rake it in year after year. If that’s not enough for you, why not try mindful bread:
https://www.schoolofartisanfood.org/courses/short-courses/baking/therapeutic-baking
Or this ghastly recipe for ‘mindful’ vegan chicken pot pie, from *checks notes* bloody Nestlé:
https://www.nestleprofessional.us/recipe/mindful-chikn-pot-pie-sweet-earth
There’s something deeply twisted about a foodstuff derived from a soy-based byproduct being touted as ‘mindful’ by Nestlé. As in, the same company whose CEO admitted that water is a human right, and yet has some value, in the same breath. How much? Well, if we’re talking money, it pays nothing to hoover up water from aquifers (I digress):
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-09-21/nestl-makes-billions-bottling-water-it-pays-nearly-nothing-for
I was in an M&S not too long ago. Sometimes, at checkouts, my eyes wander to the magazine rack, because I remember magazines exist, and that they can sometimes be fun to read through.
There was Mindful Menopause.
Mindful Menopause. I just couldn’t help but think that, not very long ago, women used to be diagnosed with hysteria for just explaining bodily sensations. I may be judging a magazine by its title, but the idea it represented at a glance – that symptoms of the menopause are in your head, and you can overcome them with the right attitude – didn’t sit right with me. Maybe it’s not like that. But a title like Mindful Menopause will always be haunted by these ghosts of psychiatric history.
Mindfulness is not Buddhism. But it wants to be. Mindfulness wears the Buddha’s skin; it’s a neoliberal, fun-house mirror version of Buddhism, relaying the anti-psychiatry and mental illness canards from people like Thomas Szasz. Mindfulness claims the source of all our problems are found in our heads. Burnt out from work? It’s your thoughts again. Have you tried your work’s workplace wellness program?
A libertarian, Szasz made his name by saying all mental abnormalities are made up; his work lionised the right-wing arm of the anti-psychiatry movement, arguing we had to close the asylums in the 1960s and 70s because they cost too much money; patients ought to be moved back into society, into care homes, or simply incarcerated1.
I swear, it’s the Law of Attraction, again, but seemingly without the magical thinking, ‘cos this time it’s in bed with science!!!
Mindfulness is not so bold as to claim, like Szasz, that all mental deviations from ‘the norm’ are made up by cheats who want to game the system for a free lunch. But, treated as a function, the expected output of Mindfulness is a mind that is more equipped to deal with the ever-increasing demands of the modern working world, and believes all negative aspects of one’s life are individual problems that can be solved by… thinking about the present moment harder.
Ask not what Mindfulness does, but who Mindfulness does it for, and who Mindfulness does it to. Does it come free? In the UK, it certainly can – the NHS offers advice on mindfulness-based interventions, and some evidence suggests that these are useful in helping folks cope with back pain, depression, and reactivity. That concedes so little, however, when Purser notes that some gurus in the States will charge business-class customers up to an eye-watering $12,0002 (or nearly £9500) for mindfulness training. For one day.
It’s not really about whether it’s free or not – it’s about the fact that those who can afford to pay for such programs up-front do so not because it’s affordable for them, but because they can flex status. Materialistically, it’s no different to going to a high-end ice cream parlour and ordering a triple-digit sundae with bits of gold leaf in it. Morally, it’s buying Apple’s products on their promise to repay the debt of its carbon emissions by offsetting them:
https://www.greenpeace.org/international/story/50689/carbon-offsets-net-zero-greenwashing-scam/
Apple, of course, is a company with an active vendetta against right to repair laws and thus other people salvaging and reusing parts for new devices and repairs. If it’ll lobby for a loophole to make a Double Lock-in With a Section 1201 after it says it’ll support third-party right to repair, any statement it makes on moving towards becoming “green” or “sustainable” should be seen as a cocktail of sarcasm and bullshit. You don’t need to check that one with Bully – Apple is one of the largest producers of e-waste in the world:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/yp73jw/apple-recycling-iphones-macbooks
Mindful meditation practice is only one step on the path to enlightenment. While Buddhist schools debate on what texts to follow, they are all connected by their belief in the original Buddha and his teachings. They all recognise concepts like the Noble Eightfold Path, twelve chains of interdependent origination, the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, the Five Skhandas, and so on. None of these, so far as I’m aware, are present in western Mindfulness.
Mindfulness is proffered as a cure for our stresses. The Buddha never so much as promised a cure. He did, however, draw attention to the impermeable nature of all things. If the Mindfulness movement is to be used as a tool for real, revolutionary change, it must embrace its Buddhist roots more, stop trying to have its cake and eat it too, and get us to inquire more critically about the consequences of our actions. If you’re willing to cough up a lung to receive mindfulness training, if you’re really committed to the bit, you should be prepared to accept that the best thing you could do to save the world might be to resign from your post, pay off all your workers, and dissolve your business.
The best place to buy McMindfulness from is from Repeater Books:
It’s also available via all of the big players in the US and UK (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones, Penguin Random House, etc.).
- Keep the name Thomas Szasz firmly in your mind – we’ll be coming back to him in a future post. ↩︎
- The book being published in 2019, if we account for inflation this pricing balloons to nearly $14,500, or about £11,450 (3rd December 2023). ↩︎
That Old Back Catalogue (Part V) – McMindfulness is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.