Mindfulness — the Soma of Our Brave New World?

Our cat, Eleven, used to meow at us incessantly during the hour leading up to her morning and evening feedings. As a mindfulness and meditation practitioner, this rarely bothered me. When it did, I’d try to notice it and observe it for what it was, without categorizing, just letting the sound appear and disappear. This usually worked. My partner, however, was often bothered by her interminable meowing and sought to enroll me in doing something about it. I never felt particularly motivated to. I figured, why bother when it so rarely bothers me? Instead, I suggested he try and meditate.

And then one day, our cat stopped meowing. As I walked over to her feeder in the kitchen, I looked on in awe as an automatic feeder had been set up to feed her at two regular intervals throughout the day. My partner had figured out an ingenious way to dissociate us from her feedings, and as cats only meow to humans, she didn’t meow at the feeder. Problem solved.

But this got me thinking, “mindfulness” in this regard had let me to a form of passivity, acceptance and inaction, while my partner, who had less peace of mind, had been inspired to take action, to take charge and change his environment. I wondered in what other areas of my life mindfulness might have bred within me a kind of docility and complaisance. After some research, I came upon the concept of “McMindfulness,” a term coined by a handful of critics to describe the reductionist, secularized technique popularized in the West in recent years.

The more I read about “McMindfulness,” the more I thought of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. I couldn’t help but notice the parallels between “McMindfulness” and soma, the recreational drug used in Huxley’s novel to make people feel good. John, one of the protagonists of the story, comes to see soma as a tool of social control, something that makes the citizens of the World State complaisant. Could my own practice of mindfulness be doing the same? Could this potentially extend beyond myself, to others who practice mindfulness? Is “McMindfulness” breeding an acquiescent populace? And if so, what can we do to change it?

In Huxley’s Brave New World, a small dose of soma leaves citizens feeling good, and a bigger dose leads to hallucinations and feelings of timelessness. The same could be said for the range of effects people report following a short meditation session and a longer one, whether it’s an infrequent, new practitioner or a regular, experienced one. Most of us who have dabbled in some form of mindfulness would agree that we come out the other side calmer, more relaxed and perhaps more compassionate. So what could possibly go wrong?

Disclaimer: I am not attacking or critiquing mindfulness just to be a curmudgeon about it. As a practitioner myself, I am attempting to take a holistic view of the practice as it is marketed and performed by individuals in the West. With the proliferation of positive associations published in the media with regards to mindfulness, I thought it’d be useful to examine the potential downsides and pitfalls of a mindfulness practice, and address how we might avoid those traps. Furthermore, I’d like to add that my views and opinions are focused around those who may have a more inconsistent and superficial approach to the practice of mindfulness, which I think most of us were (or are) guilty of at some point or another. The goal is to take a critical look at the practice of modern mindfulness in the West rather than blindly accepting what the media reports and what our capitalist, consumerist society feeds us. To ask the questions few others are asking and to have a dialogue around how to amplify and maintain the positive aspects of mindfulness while simultaneously confronting its potentially negative features. This essay is not to say mindfulness is good or bad — few things in life, if any, are so black and white — but rather, it might be good and bad. Since there are no shortage of studies and anecdotes boasting the benefits of mindfulness, this piece chooses to focus more on the issues.

A BRIEF HISTORY ON THE ORIGINS OF MINDFULNESS

Most strains of mindfulness as most of us understand it and use it today stems from the mindfulness-based stress reduction program (MBSR) developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn in 1979, which itself “is a modern, science-based [secular] perspective of traditional Buddhist principles of mindfulness and meditation with a more flexible approach to reducing stress” (1).

MBSR is an eight-week training workshop led by certified trainers, which has since been adopted and adapted by various health practitioners, ultimately joining the ranks of various other therapeutic treatment modalities — such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT), etc — used by therapists, psychologists and psychiatrists alike. MBSR bridged the gap between therapy and meditation and early studies indicated a positive correlation between mindfulness-based interventions, stress reduction and major depressive disorders.

As more health practitioners adopted MBSR for therapeutic purposes, an offshoot of MBSR was adapted in the 90s, known as mindfulness-based cognitive therapy. MBCT shares a similar format and structure to MBSR but differs in that the latter was developed by therapists — Zindel Segal, John Teasdale & Mark Williams — for therapists, to treat clients with depression (and thus focuses more heavily on specific patterns of negative thinking).

The evolution of mindfulness has been a fascinating one. In the past decade, MBSR and MBCT found its way into mainstream Western consciousness and have been further modified, diluted, repurposed, and packaged by corporations, startups, government institutions, coaches and the like. In 2017, there were over 1,300 apps dedicated to mindfulness and meditation, with Calm and Headspace in the lead bringing in $50+ million in revenue per year.

In 1979, MBSR was developed as a means to alleviate the mental strain of patients dealing with chronic illnesses such as cancer. In 1991, MBCT was developed as a means to alleviate negative thoughts and suffering from people with major depressive order. Today, mindfulness is often marketed as a panacea for the country’s mental health issues (including stress and anxiety) or a transformative self-improvement tool, and has grown into a multi-billion dollar industry.

Yet, the origins of mindfulness can be traced to long before Jon Kabat-Zinn brought it into Western consciousness in the 70s. It was and is an integral part of Eastern traditions such as Buddhism and Hinduism. While other religions (such as Judaism, Christianity, Islam) also incorporate mindfulness in practice, mindfulness as it is promoted and practiced today in the West grew out of the Buddhist (and Vedic) traditions. Furthermore, an examination into the evolution of mindfulness would be incomplete without giving apt attention to the role of colonialism in bringing mindfulness and meditation to the West.

Buddhism was founded around 400–500 BCE by Siddhartha Gautama, better known as the Buddha. He was believed to have been born and raised in the region around modern-day India and Nepal, and likely influenced by Hinduism, as this was also the geographical area associated with the Vedic traditions. Buddhism is often thought of as a philosophy, particularly in the West, but it incorporates a set of behavioral guidelines (or “right” conduct) characteristic of the world’s great religions. While Buddhism and Hinduism both orient themselves around the concept of dharma — this notion of living in a way that is aligned with the natural order of the universe — Buddhism differs from Hinduism in that it isn’t based on the sacred writings of the Vedas. Instead, Buddhism aims to guide its followers towards enlightenment, of which mindfulness is the first step of many.

In non-secular Buddhism, mindfulness is a small piece of the whole puzzle. It is an individual yet relational practice with ties to a bigger sociological picture, bolstered by a set of precepts to help those on the path towards enlightenment to not only dive deeper into their meditative practice, but to also live in harmony with his or her surroundings.

Since the days of the Buddha, Buddhism has branched off into many sub-sects, including Tibetan Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, Theraveda, Mahayana, to name a few. The thread of mindfulness remains in all of them. Yet most Buddhists, including Theraveda Buddhists, the progenitors of the insight meditation (or vipassana) movement, prioritized cultivating moral behavior, preserving the Buddhist teachings of dharma and acquiring good karma through generous living (2).

Mindfulness, particularly in the form of meditation, became a focal and essential point of Buddhism only in the early 20th century, as a result of the pressures of social change brought on by Britain’s colonial influence in Burma. Ultimately, colonialism played a large hand in the evolution, spread and awareness of Buddhism (in the West) and meditation as its core tenet (3).

As the world became more and more connected in the 20th and 21st centuries, the teachings of many Eastern Buddhist teachers found its way to the West where the practice of mindfulness (from meditation to yoga) found a new home. While few religions and traditions have remained unchanged by time, it’s important and necessary to acknowledge and understand the history and context in which these changes occurred.

The mass-marketed mindfulness many of us practice today has a long, colorful and at times, bloody history, but in recent years, the practice has been altered and distilled down into a bare bones, “evidence-based” therapeutic exercise detached from any social, political, religious or historical underpinnings. For those who feel strongly about cultural or secular appropriation, how is this different? At the very least, we can be aware of this and pay homage to the parts of the tradition that have been omitted in our own daily rituals.

Photo by Hans Reniers on Unsplash

Photo by Hans Reniers on Unsplash

A DIFFERENCE IN CULTURES

There’s a great TED talk by Devdutt Patanaik called “East vs. West — The Myths That Mystify,” in which he identifies why starting a business or doing business as a foreigner in India is so drastically different than most other countries in the world. The behavioral differences between East and West stem from foundational, intergenerational, subjective truths laid into us by our loved ones, society, culture and country. These narratives influence the way we think, the way we approach and solve problems, and how we relate to ourselves and others.

Let’s indulge for a moment in a thought experiment: Imagine nothing lasts forever, not even death, that you have infinite lives and live in an ever-flowing cycle of life, death and rebirth — this current life is not your only life but one of many. The heroes you grew up hearing about and idolizing are not different people, but the same person existing through multiple lifetimes.

How might you live differently?

Now imagine you have only this one life — you’re born, you live and then you die, that’s it. Time is limited and you have one chance to get it right, to do good, to achieve and leave behind a legacy, big or small. The heroes you grew up idolizing are different individuals throughout history who have won great victories or accomplished a great deal.

How might you live differently now?

This is the premise of Patanaik’s TED talk. These two myths, along with many others, give rise to differences in thought and perspective across cultures, which informs behavior.

In The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerns Think Differently… and Why, Richard Nisbett, the author, argues how intellectual inheritance from ancient China and ancient Greece has shaped much of the differing perspectives which continue to exist between East and West today. The Greeks, more than any other ancient peoples, Nisbett claims, had a strong sense of agency and individual identity. They believed they were in charge of their own lives and were free to act as they chose.

The Chinese equivalent of Greek agency was harmony. Individuals saw themselves as a collective first, a small part of a whole — a clan, village or family — and sought to minimize friction in favor of harmony. Freedom, individuality, curiosity and debate defined ancient Greece, whereas unity, interconnection, practicality and simplicity marked ancient Chinese life.

These different value systems paved the way for two modes of thinking about and looking at the world, what Nisbett calls cyclical thinking — in which everything repeats, is interconnected and interdependent — and linear thinking — the logic-oriented, causality-based orientation we’re more familiar with in the West. Cyclical thinking breeds “harmonious social relations.” Linear thinking breeds “individual distinctiveness.” In one culture, collectivism is valued and practiced. In the other, individualism. While these might be generalizations (to a degree), I think anyone who has spent time in both Eastern and Western (in particular, Anglosaxon) countries can find anecdotal evidence of this.

Now you might be wondering, what does any of this have to do with mindfulness? While I take no issue with mindfulness as a practice in general, I think the rise of “McMindfulness” has a lot to do with our achievement-and-consumer-driven, individualist, (crony) capitalist culture, and has the potential to hurt rather than help.

THE DANGERS OF “MCMINDFULNESS” IN AN INDIVIDUALIST, CAPITALIST & CONSUMERIST CULTURE

The other week, I shadowed a Psychodynamics class for graduate school. The teacher, whom I’ll refer to as JB, gave a brief introduction to Carl Jung and his contributions to integral psychology, which bridges matter, body, mind, soul and spirit. JB provided an interesting perspective about how Carl Jung studied Eastern traditions and religions in search of evidence and experiences that might validate his own theories (which might have been seen as out-there or eccentric in the West). Jung later spent three months in India furthering his studies.

To go from a wealthy, influential, developed country into an impoverished, struggling and underdeveloped country and taking from it what he wants — whether that’s traditions, rituals, intellectual property or the like — and refashioning, repurposing and integrating it for the “white man’s” own motives and purposes, changes the ultimate form and shape of whatever he “borrows.” Being from a more powerful and dominant culture, whose advancements, discoveries and perspectives are then shared with and influence the rest of the world, this affects and changes the original belief system, rituals and traditions. Is this not a form of imperialism? JB asked the class.

Can native cultures withstand the power and influence of a dominant and prevailing culture? Or will the original ideology be changed, reshaped and reformed to resemble something a little closer to the dominant culture, moving further away from the original belief system? While a little extreme, I think JB touched on an interesting point, one that is increasingly relevant today: do we have a tendency towards obscuring differences in favor of sameness? And if so, what can we do about it?

I bring this up because in many ways, mindfulness seems to have fallen into this very same conundrum. How do we keep mindfulness from becoming “McMindfulness” — the soma of our generation? How do we keep “McMindfulness” from becoming a dominant ideology?

When we take something from a different culture, developed by that culture for that culture, and adapt and adopt it into our own, we should think through what we’ll gain and what we’ll lose because the results will not be the same. The foundational myths from which our beliefs and behaviors stem can lead two people (and thus cultures) to approach the same thing with different intentions and thus, results.

In a world of circular thinking, collectivist values and Buddhist/Confucian traditions, the practice of mindfulness is guided by a code of conduct and ethical living based on right action, social harmony and compassion, for the purpose of achieving enlightenment. In a world of linear thinking, individualist values and secularity, mindfulness is adopted as a private, internal affair removed of social implications, for what purpose? To reduce stress, sharpen concentration and self-improve? It begs the question, whose purpose is this? Whose goals are these? These are questions we should be asking, and it shouldn’t surprise us to find that the most enthusiastic advocates of having an individual mindfulness practice are often those with power — organizations and institutions — and incentive to produce more “efficient,” “effective,” and “better” workers.

It’s equally important to recognize that mindfulness-based practices in the therapeutic field were developed for individuals struggling with severe stress, anxiety and depressive disorders. It was designed as a treatment modality to remove the barriers keeping those individuals from becoming functioning, contributing and content members of society. Removed from a clinical environment with professional supervisors and adapted to a mass audience, mindfulness practices can bring about sensations and feelings people aren’t equipped to confront and manage on their own.

Furthermore, many Western mindfulness practices center around breath work and concentration, but stops there. Going further means to practice non-duality, removal of self and separation, a knowing of interconnectedness between all things, and behaving in a way that reflects those beliefs. When mainstream mindfulness fails to incorporate this, instead emphasizing concentration or an internal examination of our own emotions and anxieties, we are removed from the systemic and structural issues that give rise to our lack of focus, our stress, anxiety, and overall dissatisfactions.

Ron Purser, the author of a book titled McMindfulness and professor of management at San Francisco State University writes in a Huffington Post article titled “Beyond McMindfulness:”

“When mindfulness practice is compartmentalized in this way, the interconnectedness of personal motives is lost. There is a dissociation between one’s own personal transformation and the kind of social and organizational transformation that takes into account the causes and conditions of suffering in the broader environment. Such a colonization of mindfulness also has an instrumentalizing effect, reorienting the practice to the needs of the market, rather than to a critical reflection on the causes of our collective suffering, or social dukkha.”

The privatization of stress, anxiety and other emotions (positive or negative) through a practice of mindfulness teaches us how to recognize and navigate these feelings. This isn’t a bad thing. It is an important skill to have and develop. But we are social creatures and relational beings. Without a behavioral component that guides us to live and be in harmony with others and nature, “McMindfulness” puts the onus on the individual to find “inner” peace and order, with the potential to anesthesize us from confrontation and change.

Anxiety isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It can be a useful signaling system to tell us something is wrong. Rather than using mindfulness to subdue these sentiments as if it were a bandaid to fix the symptom, “right” mindfulness has the potential to be a magnifying glass for the root causes of our individual, societal and cultural sentiments. Mindfulness ought to be origin of action, the birthplace from which right action stems.

Purser, the spokesman for “McMindfulness,” goes on to quote Bhikkhu Bodhi, an outspoken western Buddhist monk, who cautioned:

“Absent a sharp social critique, Buddhist practices could easily be used to justify and stabilize the status quo, becoming a reinforcement of consumer capitalism.”

It’s easy for mindfulness to evolve into “McMindfulness” in our achievement-driven, competition-driven, individualist society. Our societal and cultural narratives tell us to do better, sleep better, eat better, work better, be better. As a largely do-it-yourself kind of practice (guided by books, apps, podcasts, self-proclaimed gurus, retreats and seminars), mindfulness “fills the vacuum of a lonely culture obsessed with self-optimization, mind hacks and shortcuts to self-care.” How many of us practice mindfulness because we believe it optimizes performance and the “self”? How many of us have felt (however momentarily) accomplished after a good meditation session or frustrated after a bad one?

In another article on the subject of “McMindfulness,” the author Zachary Siegel writes:

“Stripped of all ethical and religious tenets, mindfulness meditation has morphed into a market-friendly practice, adaptable into any context.”

This critique sounds eerily similar to Huxley’s Brave New World, but rather than a hallucinatory drug such as soma, mindfulness is marketed as the ultimate good, the cure to “calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering” (Huxley). With stress and anxiety privatized at the individual level, institutions and businesses have swooped in at the opportunity to profit from this. By marketing mindfulness as a cure-all for life’s problems, we’ve given birth to a culture of “McMindfulness” where dried sage bundles, palo santo sticks, incense, Buddha statues, singing bowls and crystals are sold at exorbitant prices. Seminars, workshops, and retreats promise transformative, authentic experiences with inauthentic price tags.

These symbolic items have been removed from their native world and disassociated from their original function, meanings and significance. They’ve been reassigned to a shallower existence, often one of aesthetics, and a superficial understanding of the energy and vibrations they carry.

Mindfulness, as it was, was not meant to be an industry but a modest way of living, of moving towards enlightenment. Today, our understanding of this way of living has transformed it into a multi-billion dollar industry, the ultimate self-improvement tool, with a promise of ending suffering and finding eternal peace and happiness.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Rather than seeing this as good or bad, right or wrong, we can instead ask whether this is what we intended? If we don’t know what our intentions originally were, what are they now? How do we take responsibility for the evolution of mindfulness (past, present and future) in our dominant Western culture, as it inevitably spreads across the world and back to its native land? Are these subcultures and their traditions worth preserving? Seeing some of the consequences and trickledown effects of our adaptations and adoptions of mindfulness in the West, is this what we want? If not, where do we want to go from here? What were our blindspots and how can we account for them going forward? How do we keep mindfulness from becoming a “reinforcement of consumer capitalism” and from anesthesizing us from action and change?

These are the questions we should be asking, and while I have more questions than answers, this essay is an attempt to bring more people into the discussion.

It’s not that mindfulness isn’t useful, it is, but like most things, there are upsides and downsides. This piece is meant to bring awareness to the potential downsides of a reductionist approach to mindfulness (or rather, “McMindfulness”) so we can be aware of it and get ahead of it.

I, too, am a consumerist of this multi-billion dollar industry. I, too, am guilty of not having delve into the historical, culture and societal contexts for how and why certain objects, symbols and traditions exist and are marketed to us. It is precisely these type of “unconscious” behaviors I’m hoping to explore and shine a light on. We have all the resources in the world to dive deeper, to read beyond catchy headlines and clickbait, to do our research, think critically and ask questions. Next time someone asks us why we meditate, burn dried sage or collect crystals, let’s have a more substantiated answer than “it helps me be more mindful,” “I like the smell,” or “it’s an energy thing.”

Mindfulness teaches us to take a beat, to observe our emotions and our feelings, to notice how transient they are. It teaches us to respond rather than react, and with time and practice, to be able to confront difficult situations in a non-violent, equanimous manner. I have no doubt that many serious mindfulness practitioners are able to connect the dots between their own private practice and the world-at-large, and to respond when needed with considered action. But I also believe that our individualist, capitalist culture makes it difficult for the beginner, amateur practitioner to find the right path, to move beyond a sense of self-improvement or aggrandizement, to detach from the ego and a sense of competition (whether with others or the self).

Furthermore, a misinformed or misguided mindfulness practice robbed of cultural, social (or even therapeutic) guidance could drive some into episodic psychosis, and others into passivity.

Equanimity shouldn’t be confused with complaisance. Practicing mindfulness might make us calmer, more patient, more compassionate towards a cat’s meowing or someone cutting us off on the freeway, but it should also be the root of right action. If our country’s organizations and institutions continue to privatize and individualize mindfulness for their own purposes, let’s ask ourselves whether their incentives align with our own. Let’s find ways to incorporate civic or social mindfulness into our own mindfulness practices, and allow the awareness which right mindfulness so fruitfully breeds to guide us towards taking action.

“McMindfulness” might be the soma of our brave new world, but mindfulness done right is the antidote. It’s one thing to surrender to a cat’s meowing, it’s another to surrender to the state of our nation as it stands today.

CONSCIOUSNESS AND SPIRITUALITYRenee Chenthe sage, the explorer, the magician