McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality

by Ronald E. Purser

A lively and razor-sharp critique of mindfulness as it has been enthusiastically co-opted by corporations, public schools, and the US military.Mindfulness is now all the rage. From celebrity endorsements to monks, neuroscientists and meditation coaches rubbing shoulders with CEOs at the World Economic Forum in Davos, it is clear that mindfulness has gone mainstream. Some have even called it a revolution.But what if, instead of changing the world, mindfulness has become a banal form of capitalist spirituality that mindlessly avoids social and political transformation, reinforcing the neoliberal status quo? In McMindfulness, Ronald Purser debunks the so-called "mindfulness revolution," exposing how corporations, schools, governments and the military have co-opted it as technique for social control and self-pacification. A lively and razor-sharp critique, Purser busts the myths its salesmen rely on, challenging the narrative that stress is self-imposed and mindfulness is the cure-all. If we are to harness the truly revolutionary potential of mindfulness, we have to cast off its neoliberal shackles, liberating mindfulness for a collective awakening.

Genres: Nonfiction, Psychology, Buddhism, Politics, Philosophy, Religion, Sociology

301 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 9, 2019

Reviews

[BlackOxford · Rating 1 out of 5]

The Religious Right

This fellow Ronald Purser is like the committed Marxist who knows where Communism went wrong and insists we should give it another, more radical, try (Zizek and Eagleton come to mind). Or like those perennial Christians who fervently believe that some version of their religion originating at some arbitrary point in history is the authentic one to which their co-religionists should return (David Hart Bentley is one of the more recent but the appeal to the Ole Time Religion is rife in America). Purser reckons that the respectable spiritual tenets of Buddhism have been corrupted by bourgeois capitalism into an ideology of self-serving greed, a practical religion of the status quo. He wants this to stop.

Despite his petulant foot-stamping, Purser is of course right. A primary function of any institutionalised religion (and Mindfulness is very institutionalised) is to prevent civil disturbances, to calm the masses by suggesting an alternative universe in which all pain and injustice is eliminated. But this doesn’t justify saying it over and over again in 274 repetitive and ill-structured pages. Everything he wants to say is on the first page; the rest is tendentious padding. And to whom is such an unneeded excess directed? Not to the ‘mindful’ sellouts to capitalism who are by his own assessment unreachable. Probably not to other critics of purported Buddhist heresies, each with their own version of the correct path. And certainly not to the vast public who know nothing about such spiritual outrage and care even less.

What irks most is that Mr. Purser seems entirely unaware that his gripe against bastardised Buddhism is one that can be applied to all spiritual movements. All religious traditions, if they are to remain traditions, develop an economic imperative which demands commercialisation for survival. This inevitably means that they become dependent upon established institutions which are economically and politically dominant. In short, whatever the movement started as, it will end up as a religion serving the prevailing culture. Purser, the true believer, seems as unmindful 0f this as the targets of his righteous wrath.

Skip the book. Wallow in your smugness. Or not. But at all costs stay away from any idea that has cycled through California dreamland.

[Gabrielle (Reading Rampage) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review/rant.

“If I feel resentful, exploited and stressed-out at work, and I am instructed simply to focus on the present, how will that change the conditions that have helped to produce my agitation? It won’t.”

At the risk of being mistaken for Britta Perry, I have to say that I am pretty peeved with the trendiness (and consequently, necessary watering/dumbing down) of all things Buddhist. I remember when this College Humor video came out (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBMc9... I sent it to my father, who has been a yoga teacher for over thirty years. His very diplomatic reaction was simply to groan. That’s basically how I feel every time I see a spa or nail salon that has the word “Zen” in its name (I also hum Bush’s song “Everything Zen” under my breath, like a good 90s kid). Earlier this year, I read “Why Buddhism is True” (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), and while that was very interesting, the idea of using meditation as self-help, completely removed from Buddhist teachings and philosophy, makes me a bit uncomfortable. Similarly, the mainstreaming of what some people refer to as mindfulness practice also gives me pause.

When I read that “mindfulness” is now a billion-dollar wellness industry, I was pretty gobsmacked. I shouldn’t have been: the mainstreaming of things that were originally linked to a spiritual practice, such as yoga and meditation, inevitably leads to aggressive marketing of stuff you “need” to do it right – which in and of itself is enough to make me barf. Western materialism is really aggressive, and selling things that are spiritual (but not religious!) to people obviously works (see “Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism” (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...)). The problem is not yoga or meditation in and of themselves: it’s the way they are taken out of context, approached and used that the author explores here – and how that can be manipulated to the “customer’s” disadvantage.

When you remove something like mindfulness from its context, where it is taught along a philosophy, a system of ethics and guidelines for applying all that to daily life, what you have left is a tool you can use to shift people’s focus away from the things you’d rather have them not think about. Mindfulness is often sold as a coping mechanism that aims to keep people vaguely sedated by telling them to accept their current circumstances. Of course, passivity is not the point of mindfulness mediation at all, but by giving people a myopic and over-simplified view of the practice, it is easy to manipulate the goal of mindfulness. And over-exposure via social media exacerbates the problem. Aggressive marketing of things that are “spiritual but not religious” also creates very strange results. I came across this article from Town and Country, of all publications, and it made me want to smack my head against the wall: https://www.townandcountrymag.com/soc... . Enlightenment as a status symbol? Eeeeesh! How far off the mark can one get…

“Mindfulness doesn’t exist in a political vacuum: it’s shaped by neoliberal ideas, which influence us all unless we consciously resist.”

Of course, Purser is preaching to the choir with me: I am not a fan of capitalism, and performative spirituality causes me a lot of eye-roll-educed headaches. He’s tired of the hypocrisy, sick of his spiritual practice being used as a Band-Aid by marketers and CEOs, and he is highly critical of the neoliberal doctrine of individual responsibility (which gaslights individuals in thinking that they are personally responsible for fixing systemic issues caused by industries they have no control over). To be clear: he doesn’t think mindfulness practice is the problem, but rather the way it is packaged and sold, removed from ethical and political context, as means to damper critical thinking and shift the focus away from systemic problems by telling people that the problem is in fact their reaction to greater issues. “Mindfulness isn’t cruel in and of itself. It’s only cruel when fetishized and attached to inflated promises. […] The cruelty lies in supporting the status quo while using the language of transformation.” He deplores that the trendy mindfulness practices create a self-centred mind frame, divorced from the Buddhist ideas of compassion, support of one’s community and loving-kindness towards others. He also feels that the mindfulness movement is (consciously or not), complicit in making people “better-adjusted cogs in the capitalist machinery”.

There is truly a problem with mindfulness classes that teach people to simply “accept” the present moment without ever exploring the causes of the stress that drove them to seek mindfulness practice in the first place – and it’s definitely weird and sneaky when employers are the ones sponsoring the practice. While I get that this is not specifically their role, there should be room in the conversation for identifying stressors and doing something about them, even when that “something” might be getting another job. And personally, I find it repulsive to use watered-down Buddhism to promote Protestant/workaholic values. “Corporate mindfulness programs aim to train individual employees to manage and regulate difficult emotions, as well as improving concentration and attention. These are valuable economic resources, put in the service of organizational objectives.”

And yes, Purser discusses the idea often used to promote mindfulness training, that it’s a sort of “gateway” practice that will eventually lead people to initiate much large scale changes because of their own inner exploration and changes. He is obviously skeptical that one can teach the Dharma without ever calling it that with any kind of success, and the disingenuous approach bothers him – understandably so.

Corporate mindfulness is not leading to better (or at least more ethical) business practices or employee management, it hasn’t had a visible effect on corporate social and environmental responsibilities, strengthened social justice initiatives or compassionate ones (do not get me started on “corporate giving”) – it’s just giving big companies better PR by making them seem more caring, evolved and “wise”. I wish that Purser had suggestions to make on how to change this, or at least, approach the situation in an affective way. But there doesn’t seem to be much to do beyond pointing out the hypocrisies and how this passive “spiritual but not religious” trend doesn’t deliver on its poorly backed promises.

The chapter devoted to mindfulness practice is schools gave me pause: the idea behind it is clearly well-intentioned, but the experts who praise it have an unfortunate tendency to liken teaching mindfulness to kids to training puppies to be quiet… There’s also something painful about the idea of a (kind and well-meaning) lady telling kids with behavioral and academic problems that self-regulating their behavior and emotional reactions is the key to success, while ignoring the background problems these kids may have, such as poverty, racism, rough neighborhoods or bad parenting… The parallel to Christian missionary work made me shudder. “Those teaching mindfulness in schools are not usually afflicted by the socio-economic inequalities driving the problems they address.” Never mind that the approach also teaches kids, by implication, that strong emotions and reactions are pathological – which is obviously not the case.

One of the final chapters, on the military’s use of mindfulness “training” to “optimize warrior performance” is simply appalling, and is a prime example of what can happen when mindfulness is stripped of its ethical framework. Of course, this is nothing new: the samurais were using Zen mediation in order to be more effective killers – and the Japanese military used the same ideas as recently as WWII. It’s nonetheless horrifying to see a Buddhist practice being co-opted so shamelessly. It is also incredibly naïve to insist that meditation practice will automatically rewire people to be more progressive, and that it is therefore inevitable that mindfulness in politics will bring people to a greater level of social and political consciousness.

The weakness of the book is that it can be repetitive. There are only so many ways to express frustration at the egregious co-opting of so-called mindfulness practices. And I understand Purser’s anger, I really do, but more than 200 pages of the “corporations are evil and want to turn us all into obedient sheep!” rant is a bit much, even for me. I also wish there was more solutions than what is offered in the conclusion. It’s still an interesting, if infuriating read (both because of the Britta-ing and because of the subject matter) and if you’ve ever scratched your head at the words “corporate mindfulness”, this might be an illuminating look at a really underhanded and problematic trend. Meditation or any kind of spiritual practice that seeks to eliminate critical thinking functions is something to be highly suspicious of, as far as I am concerned, and this book does a good, if sometimes strident job of explaining how easily it can go wrong – even when everyone’s heart is in the right place.

[Alan Hughes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was introduced to the raisin in the last few years of my work. Eating a raisin is often used as an exercise to explain the mechanics and theory of mindfulness. I, along with a group of mental health service providers, were invited to look at the raisin, smell it, examine its contour and texture, hold it in our mouth and examine it with our tongue and taste buds and through this, and some other strategies, learn how to be "in the moment". We were being introduced to Mindfulness which we were assured was a new revolutionary change in psychotherapeutics; one that was scientifically based, efficacious, and applicable to almost all forms of distress and disorder. It seemed that it would not have been wrong to say we had in our hands a not a raisin but a veritable panacea; a remedy for all ills.

This was not the first time I'd been introduced to the next great revolutionary step forward in psychotherapy. When I started working the physical therapies had just started to lose their lustre and the Freudian classical analysts had fallen rather out of favour. The Kleinians introduced Object Relations Theory which was going to revolutionize analysis and we all studiously learnt this. Around the same time behaviour therapy jostled it as the 'true way' before, via a detour through Transactional Analysis, it was relaunched as Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT). CBT was then touted as scientifically based, efficacious and applicable to almost all forms of distress and disorder. Transcendental Meditation (TM) came and went, somewhere in between, but throughout my working life it seemed that twice a decade a new bright and shiny panacea would surface to replace the older shabby panacea which had become boring.

Mindfulness is this decade's new, shiny panacea. It is widely promoted and now is applied in many diverse situations, not simply as therapy for mental disorder but also in schools, workplaces, prisons, boardrooms and even for the existential angsts of growing old or facing death. It has spawned a $1.1 billion wellness industry. There are many books promoting mindfulness and inviting readers to follow them on a route to personal salvation through MBSR (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction). This book, however, is not one of them.

This book looks at the promotion of mindfulness in our capitalist society. It shows how 'mindfulness' has been severed and removed of its religious Buddhist origins to make it both saleable and useful in a market economy. The author clearly shows that there was a deliberate intention to "secularize" mindfulness to remove it of any taint of association with Buddhist practice and ethics to create something "spiritual but not religious" which would be much more acceptable to a western audience. This acceptability was further promoted by giving the endeavour a scientific sheen with a liberal application of neurobabble. There is a good review of the neuroscience behind mindfulness in the book which reveals how little actual empirical evidence there is - there is little more than there was for TM which was quietly dropped after large amounts of public money financed research into the mental health benefits which confirmed relatively minor and questionable benefits.

The book does not question whether the practices of mindfulness or meditation are effective. It agrees that these can have major effects but questions whether in their current form this is a wise way to approach them. Indeed, as an example it recounts how Anders Breivik, the right wing terrorist, used such strategies to assist his focus during his bomb and gun attack when he murdered 77 men, women and children.

Much of the success of mindfulness is touted as its ability to make us cope with our difficult lives. To help us deal with stress, to avoid the distress of disappointment, to feel calm in the stormy waters of uncertainty and threat. This is its major selling point to large organizations like Google, Facebook or the American Military. It can help create a calm unruffled workforce which will perform better. The military hope that mindfulness will improve efficiency with an M16 - 'on the trigger pull - breathe out!' This is a major aspect of the problem. It promotes the idea that the stress is all of our making, in our minds, a failure of our ability to cope. But there are many times when the stress is due to uncertainty, injustice or inequity and the emotions that these problems cause is the motive power for people to demand and create change. It is wrong, through mindfulness, to encourage people to tolerate or cope with these situations. Just as Marx warned that religion was an opiate for the masses to soothe their pain and subdue their needs for change, the author issues the warning that mindfulness is the new religion for capitalism with exactly the same problems.

As our society becomes increasingly secular there are still those who yearn for the benefits of religion. Mindfulness seems to promise this. However, shorn from all its Buddhist teachings it will never be able to fill this promise. Religions gave us ethical codes, personal responsibilities, moral duties and a call to action to create a better society. This strategy is to steal the clothes of Buddhism but to ignore its body and soul. You can put the clothes on but you will not suddenly become a Buddhist. Similarly, if one copied the communal singing, weekly meetings, and candle burning of the Christians you won't suddenly develop a sense of personal duty and awareness of right and wrong. The rituals are the least thing of a religion it is the teachings and ideas which are at its core. These require to be learnt and understood there is no shortcut to them; certainly not through sucking a raisin.

Excerpt

When the book has been considering Congressman Tim Ryan's conversion to mindfulness after his "mindful moment with a raisin" it continues

"Never mind how the raisin looks, feels, smells and tastes to a privileged congressman, what if Ryan had contemplated the farm where the raisin was grown by Hispanic migrants doing back-breaking work in the San Joaquin valley earning a cent for every two hundred grapes harvested, Reflection on the raisin could call to mind units from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement rounding up workers like cattle and deporting them. Might Ryan be cognizant of the smog where the raisin was grown? What about the water shortages, or the fossil fuels burnt to transport raisins from Central California to his Catskills retreat ? What about the grocery staff that unloaded, unpacked and stocked raisins on the shelf ? Would Ryan be mindful of the fact that the CEOs who run large agribusiness and grocery chains earn hundreds of times as much as grocery clerks ?

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was desperate for someone to write this book and give voice to the critique I knew needed to be made. “Mindfulness” as colonized and commodified Buddhist thought and made into DYI neoliberal subjectification. The remedy? Sounds an awful lot like class consciousness.

[Mehrsa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I give 5 stars to the first part of the book because it was a necessary and accurate takedown of the misuses and cooption of the "mindfulness" industry by corporate America. The rest of the book was not so great. It was just a snarky and and mostly personal takedown of Cabot-Zinn. I don't care about protecting Zinn from a takedown, but the author (Purser) goes too far and seems to be blaming Zinn and the entire mindful industry for everything wrong with modern culture. I think he's mostly right that when they stripped the teachings of Buddhism from mindfulness, you've lost too much, but I am not sure you can say that mindfulness is actually creating more heartless soldiers or automatons. I am a reader who would have gone with the author if he could have given me a bit more to chew on, but some of these assertions are just throwing spaghetti at a wall of logic and seeing which one sticks. And the effect is that you just end up discrediting everything.

[Randall Wallace · Rating 5 out of 5]

Neoliberalism has entered the mindfulness field to the point that Slavoj Zizek wrote that mindfulness is, “establishing itself as the hegemonic ideology of global capitalism.” As this book shows, the problem is that mindfulness is now devoid of the ethics which clearly accompanied it when it was a part of Buddhism. And so, mindfulness helps people “adjust to the very conditions that that caused their problems.” It reminds me of Derrick Jensen’s book “50 Simple Things You Can Do to Stay in Denial”, where one character is blissfully meditating on a clear-cut tree stump. That ever-optimistic stump sitter can never move past mindfulness to the point of pondering basic ethics or actually working for systemic change. The Pentagon is throwing money at mindfulness training - do you think there’s any chance the Pentagon would invest in mindfulness if trainees then refused to kill, or go to war? “Would it be possible for mindfulness to thrive in companies if the practice dented profits?”

The author rightfully points out the insanity of recasting the mindfulness position of non-critical thinking in submission, as a position of “freedom”. Mindfulness = ignoring civic responsibility. Don’t pay attention to your sources of stress. As one writer for the NYT wrote: “We live in a capitalism economy, and mindfulness can’t change that.” Wall Street traders enjoy mindfulness with it’s refreshing ability to ignore all basic moral qualms like, “but wouldn’t that put hundreds out of work, or pollute a river?” What if the suffering going in our minds didn’t originate in our minds, but was societal?

To ignore that stress often has societal causes seems madness, yet the Mindfulness industry has made ignoring that fact a booming and lucrative industry – now up to 4 billion dollars with over 100,000 mindfulness books on how to put up with bad stuff downstream, rather than actually think of stopping bad stuff happening upstream. Jon Kabat-Zinn says happiness is an “inside job” - got a problem? It’s in YOUR head. Imagine saying that to the families of the 2-4 million Vietnamese killed by US forces? Did your child die because you couldn’t afford medicine, even with two jobs? Or because he was “accidentally” shot by a police officer in your Barrio? Cheer up - just remember, happiness is an “inside job” and you’ll feel good as gold.

Just be mindful. Jeffrey Dahmer said how when eating he had to sometimes remember to pause and savor every bite – ah, mindfulness in action. If we didn’t live in fantasyland, mindfulness by yourself would be replaced by actual public debate with other humans and some semblance of democracy. Mindfulness can’t handle anger or negative thoughts – how should you feel if a drunk beats your sister up, or your country is determined to do regime-change Iran or Venezuela again? Just let it go. Focus on your breathing, and not the sound of them screaming. See how much better you feel?

Mindfulness loves the neoliberal fantasies of “self-control and unfettered agency” and so mindfulness is packaged as only for “personal gain and gratification.” To endure neoliberalism or relaxed EPA pollution rules, let’s just train ourselves to be happy. Doesn’t capitalist society just need therapy instead of radical change? Case in point: Keep America Beautiful was a greenwashing front shoving responsibility onto the public off the shoulders of the corporate polluters. Americans focus on recycling as best they can and endure wasteful packaging, rather than collectively demanding less packaging from business. Mindfulness helps the illusion that your individual action is more effective than you engaged in collective action.


I love this comment: Mindfulness hurts the most those who “suffer the most under the status quo”. Mindfulness does nothing to treat social ills. Wouldn’t YOU like to take “an entitled, self-centered, and myopic path to happiness?” Well, if you put it that way, maybe not. Should I stand and engage in politics and society? Or just breathe? Buddhists would go nuts to see mindfulness severed from ethical development. It’s all cool to “sacralized the present”, but what about when someone like John Wayne Gacy also decides to sacralize the present using a makeshift garrote to cut off some boy’s air supply? When you remove the morals from Buddhist mindfulness to make money and encourage submission, who are you? Zen masters warned of “dead sitting”, where mindfulness might make one less concerned about the suffering in the world. If you are really thinking, then you can’t be here in the here and now. Joel Kovel wrote how the mental health industry smooths over the huge effect of capitalism on people’s mental health in the interest of continued profit. Ronald says, most Amazon workers have cried at their desks – how will mindfulness help them?

Mindfulness is divorced from ethical framework and social purpose; it “makes subjectivity sacrosanct.”- “downgrading thought and teaching us to accept ‘what is’.” “From a neo-liberal perspective, society doesn’t exist - everything comes down to individual choices and responsibilities.” The goal is “achievement-oriented passivity” – The Republican and Democratic 2020 mission statement for Post-Corona America. Even Erich Fromm wrote how you couldn’t ignore social causes of suffering.

When you repress anger, you repress the desire to speak up against injustice. You dampen thirst for social and economic justice. Kabat-Zinn hopes mindfulness will make the military kinder. But being present, doesn’t mean you are being just. Navy SEAL Gallagher felt he was better able unprovoked to thrust his knife repeatedly into an unarmed man to kill him because he was fully present there in the here and now – Good mindfulness, no wonder Trump pardoned such a poster boy for staying in the present without judgement. Serial killers have a charming way of living in the here and now without judgement – and we are supposed to emulate this? Ronald mentions that there are lots of trained snipers who are mindful by training.

I am so excited, mindfulness is just perfect for keeping your conscience asleep everywhere through the neoliberal spectrum. No nagging thoughts or annoying conscience pangs. But, why do we need moral ambiguity to make us feel better? And how will watching my own breath, stop systemic racism? Henry Giroux sees mindfulness as “cultural infantilization.” Ronald asks what is the difference between a drug addict and a person on a couch addicted to blissing out while accepting all injustice? Tuning out is delusional. Mindfulness if it is to continue to exist, must raise collective awareness of structural problems that cause suffering. So far, mindfulness has done nothing for social justice, why expect that to change now? Erich Fromm saw that mental health was often the patient’s ability to adjust to society/capitalism. Are we trying to make our youth organization men? Or men that fight back to make it better?

I loved this courageous book and admired its simplicity. Often when I’d look at local classes at New Agey places like Esalen or Omega Institute, I’d look in vain for any courses about what to do BEYOND the self, if your venue wants long-term corporate advertisers, thinking of challenging the system is too negative, uncool, and not neutral. I know New Age teachers with a “speak only of the strengths of others” mindfulness philosophy, and my mind kept thinking OK – Hitler was a vegetarian, the Nazis did give us Hugo Boss – but, how can social change happen though only thinking and saying positive things about every bad person you meet? I actually learned in this book that, Heinrich Himmler loved yoga (true) and thought that yoga would “help death camp guards to process stress”. But focusing only on positive strengths of bad people would make me angry, not calm, and thus mindfulness avoids a potent energy source: our own rightful anger at injustice sits as free fuel to motivate us into putting in social and economic justice time. Anyway, great original book, packed with super-cool insights. Also, check out Ronald’s great interview with Chris Hedges on the TV show On Contact.

[Tom Quinn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mindfulness? Great tool!
Use it like the Buddha please,
not the Pentagon.

2 stars. I feel like Purser is so caught up in making Point A (we gotta dismantle neoliberal capitalist systems) that he doesn't take the time to line it up all that carefully with Point B (mindfulness is best paired with moral teachings that take us beyond level one stress management) and I often feel he's no longer arguing a thesis but just shouting, "See? SEE??"

[Gustav Osberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love a good rant, and Purser is pissed off about the latest neoliberal co-optation.

Can even mindfulness, supposedly rooted in Buddhist teachings, be utilised as a coercive tool of governmentality or ‘psychopolitics’ (Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power)? If we are to follow Marcuse’s diagnosis in One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society, most definitely. Mindfulness today, as Purser argues, is merely supporting or even strengthening the status quo through the language of transformation.

McMindfulness, in its current commodified and commercialised form, perpetuates neoliberalism in a multitude of ways:
- It individualises meditation, removing the Sangha (one of the core three pillars of Buddhism, with the others being the Buddha and the Dharma). With this, the continued shrinking of the public sphere continues.
- It is marketed as a performance enhancement and coping mechanism, thus tailored to neoliberal subjectivity.
- With these two considered, the discourse on wellbeing and stress also becomes individualised, removing consideration of the external and underlying structural drivers of stress (i.e. workism: The Burnout Society).
- What we are left with is a vehicle for self-surveillance (yes, Purses is seemingly a big fan of Foucault).

As Pursers points out, the relationship between McMindfulness and its alleged Buddhist roots are ambivalent, to say the least. For his mortal nemesis, Jon Kabat-Zinn, the champion of the McMindfulness ‘movement’, this ambivalence is capitalised on to tailor messages for different audiences. The military even uses it to train better killers, but seemingly the profiles capitalising on the movement somehow believe the practice has an innate capacity to transform mindsets without any ethical system attached. It does not create critical thinking; it suppresses emotions and symptoms, which should mobilise people to act against oppressive systems of exploitation.

‘To see things clearly’ should include unjust power relations, but in its current state, ‘mindfulness may represent an epistemological shift in perceiving, but not an ontological shift in being'.

[Ben · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is 90% false dilemma and 10% strawman. The argument basically boils down to 'since popular mindfulness hasn't solved global warming it's only good for creating neoliberal zombies'. I don't disagree with the author about the potential for spiritual bypass and desirability of more directly teaching about ethics and social engagement bu the model for this should be harm reduction. The fact that therapeutic uses of mindfulness may not directly address social problems does not negate the benefits of those techniques or make them inherently harmful or suggest that social engagement shouldn't be the next step. This is recognized in Tibetan buddhism where the hinayana (working with your own suffering) proceeds the mahayana (working with society). That is considered a natural evolution that doesn't need to be forced. If your clothing is on fire, global warming should be a lesser concern for the moment.

[Kaelan Ratcliffe ▪ كايِلان راتكِليف · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mindful Corporatism

As someone who takes an active interest I Buddhism, volunteers and practices at a Buddhist centre in london, has used with Headspace, engaged with Kabat-Zinn meditations and been recommended MSBR courses via therapists, I found that this was directly up my alley. Not the least because I also happen to take an interest in social critisicm and capitalist critique.

Purser has opened an extremely important dialogue that's been playing on my mind for quite some time. There's been a number of teachers who I've listened to via YouTube that have guided my understanding of suffering and the human condition. However, I've wondered why many never talk about societal ills and injustice. I've regularly found myself questioning how much we should place the burden of suffering on ourselves when the social and political system we live under plays a hugely active role in our suffering also. It's been tempting to retreat into accepting everything that's happening around me with a buddhist mindset at times, however I've found myself torn between said mindset and activism toward making the world a better place. Turns out these aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.

This should be read as an opener to a wider topic up for discussion which needs further analysis. Without understanding how capitalism can effectively co-opt anything that could challenge it, we will be floundering in the dark. Mindfulness is the latest iteration of this co-opting, and its been lucrative business for those who seem to have no desire to actively question whom they're serving when packaging and selling this comodofied alteration of meditation.

Do not ignore this book.

[Bogi Takács]

Somewhat repetitive, but also a quick read, and it helped me verbalize one of my bigger misgivings about Western-style mindfulness. Not planning on a longer review, but it's worth picking up the book if you are interested in the topic.

_______
Source of the book: Lawrence Public Library (who ordered it for me - thank you!)

[Tina Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was stunned. I've bought into the whole, "the only thing you can change is how you cope" practice of moving through the world. Instead, we all need to know that only changing things in the world will enable us to cope! The extremes of our current political/social culture (Trump, climate change, wealth inequity, etc,.) have occurred because it is critical that we see the difference and act.

[Natú · Rating 5 out of 5]

Indispensable analysis of the American mindfulness industry. Don't be dissuaded by some of the negative reviews, I can only imagine that they come from individuals who felt personally attacked by Purser's critiques. While his tone does dip into what could be called snarky, it is far from a "Kabat-Zinn hit piece;" rather, Purser critiques the American mindfulness industry from an exhaustive number of perspectives. He concludes mindfulness, as presented and sold in this context, is not the liberative tool for understanding the causes of human suffering — like the Buddhist practices that people like Kabat-Zinn claim as their lineage when convenient for them — but rather a palliative tool for mitigating the psychosomatic symptoms of individual alienation under neoliberal capitalism.

From a Buddhist perspective, Purser critiques the tendency of MBSR (mindfulness-based stress relief) to actually reify the self, not diminish the sense of a discreet sense of self like Buddhist practice. Therefore, while one of Buddhism's key tenets is the interconnectedness and interdependence of all things, with our metaphysical conception of them as separate, self-existing objects considered the inherent foundation of our suffering through our alienation from the rest of existence, MBSR encourages self-centeredness and hardens our pre-existing metaphysical worldview, thereby causing more alienation. This is particularly egregious considering that, half the time at least, MBSR proponents cash in on Buddhism's "Eastern Wisdom™" cultural cache, even claiming that MBSR is a distillation of the dharma, in order to lend legitimacy to their claims.

The other half of the time, MBSR's peddlers distance the practice from the spiritual origins of meditative practice and tout the scientific evidence that MBSR actually does decrease stress and anxiety. I am no stranger to these studies, since they are part and parcel of Western Buddhist discourse, and are called upon not only by MBSR salespeople but self-identifying Buddhists as well. These studies, however, as Purser shows, are bunk, plagued by low sample size, positive bias, and unethical relationships between participants/study runners and MBSR.

Perhaps the most important angle of Purser's critique, though, is his assertion that MBSR is an effective tool for shaping ideal neoliberal subjects, as mentioned above. It is a growing trend in Western Buddhist circles to understand dukkha collectively and to consider social causes of suffering as objects of critique not only from a scientific but also from a dharmic perspective, thereby necessitating practitioners' active participation in the remolding and overturning of unjust socio-economic systems and relationships. MBSR does not do this. Quite to the contrary, rather than letting worker discontent lead to worker organization, for example, MBSR is so effective because it diffuses individual alienation, employing the neoliberal logic of personal responsibility to psychosomatic responses to distressing social and economic relationships: its your problem if you hate your work and your boss, and it's on you to breathe deeply and observe your feelings non-judgementally to get over it. I was on board with this criticism before I read the book, but Purser sheds light on some seriously sinister applications of MBSR (e.g. in military settings) and the industry's total refusal to engage with the ethical ramifications of providing a practice that discourages analysis and critique of inherently unjust and violent systems.

While he occasionally mentions individuals in the Buddhist community who are plugged into the MBSR industry (both famous monastics and lay teachers), I would have liked to see more on how these same issues are present beyond the secular, crypto-Buddhist practices under the lens here. A discomfiting number of big names in global Buddhism are active participants in the popularization of MBSR and its underlying ideology, not to mention Western Buddhism's willingness to court the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois elements of society (yoga voters, as mindful politician Tim Ryan calls them) while playing lip service to the world's oppressed and downtrodden — people who suffer from the very same systems that benefit those distressed rich people! — and the need to create more compassionate political and economic systems.

This book hit just about every point that I have found distressing about not only Western pop mindfulness as it gains in popularity, but in huge swaths of the Western Buddhist community and who it chooses to surround itself with. It is no surprise that this book was preceded by a similar article co-authored by Purser and David Loy, who I feel is one of the few Buddhist thinkers in the US who is actually engaging in good faith with structural causes of suffering. If you are a Buddhist or mindfulness practitioner, and reading this makes you uncomfortable, that is all the more reason to critically engage with the issues at hand.

[Megsie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book started very strong and I still think the overall premise is good. I got tired and the stars in my review slowly fell away as I continued reading, as the author spends a ton of time railing against Jon Kabat-Zinn in particular, and enumerating allllll the mindfulness programs that seem like they might be suspect. I think the author has a podcast, and this book reads kind of like a podcast. Excellent idea, loved the intro and the beginning, got so tired by the end that I need to read some saucy mystery novels to reinvigorate my love of reading. Anyway two stars is harsh but I will never get those hours back! Maybe 2.5 stars.

[Cat · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is a perfect example of being correct but having an argument so poor that it nearly invalidates it.

I was really happy to see a book that was about the shortfalls of the contemporary movement of mindfulness, as adopted by capitalism; how it reinforced the failure of the individual and not the circumstances surrounding them; how it followed an American Neoliberal ideal; etc. I thought I would be reading a book that supplied examples and anecdotal evidence of how mindfulness was co-opted under capitalism, how it was presented, its origins, alternatives, etc. I got that. But it was obscured by unnecessary, inaccessible, and borderline alienating terminology and theory, jumping to under-explained conclusions that I wasn't able to follow given the supplied evidence and references, alternatively, just beating around the bush and repeating certain things over and over again without a conclusion or clear, solid demonstration of what was being said, further alternatively, not elaborating enough on certain topics when they could have been far more in-depth, what seems like a lack of familiarity or knowledge with mental illness and neurodivergence (and more generally the field of psychology), and endless, endless repetition.

The positive takeaway for me is that I have a short further reading list and was reassured by some of what was said in the book, but otherwise... I didn't really learn anything new. I don't have any more knowledge or motivation than I did before reading to "liberate mindfulness for a collective awakening."

Although in the acknowledgements, Purser gives his thanks to the small press for taking his book (and small presses are great), I think it could have majorly improved if it was adopted by a larger publishing house; for one, it may have been edited a bit more to be less repetitive and better structured, and overall, it may actually have been made for an average reader, not just some specific audience that already seems to know all of the references Purser makes (and also likely agrees with him).

Paperback from bookshop.org.
Although I don't recommend the book, and hiiiiiighly advise you borrow from a library, you can get your own copy (& support indie bookstores!) either as an audiobook or through paperback.

[Jt O'Neill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ronald Purser certainly made me think about the whole mindfulness thing. Damn! I can be such a sheep. I bought the notion of mindfulness hook, line, and sinker probably ten years ago and didn't bother to question or look back or anything. I took what was presented by "the experts" (Jon Kabat-Zinn et al) and went right along with it because they were the experts. Now that I've read McMindfulness, I know to be a more critical thinker. (In my case, chalk it up to a grim childhood steeped in Catholicism but that's another post).

I've always accepted the presented scientific studies as proof positive that mindfulness was beneficial and the healthy thing to do. Purser presents the opposite view: that "mindfulness works" is not supported by the scientific evidence. Bigger than this for me is the notion that teaching everyone to be mindful makes the individual responsible for their own happiness when really? Really, there is plenty wrong with the world as it is. Teaching people that if they could just transform themselves, the world would be better is just plain wrong. Instead, people can learn to not just go inward but can also become activists for social change. They can call out the corporations, the marketing gurus, the neoliberal cadre. Mindfulness isn't simply about an inner transformation. The marketing of mindfulness is yet another way that capitalism is pushing its agenda.

Ronald Purser isn't against mindfulness and he repeatedly makes that clear. There is a place for mindfulness training but his point is that mindfulness training is essentially training in concentration. It may have been culled from Buddhist teachings but mindfulness is stripped of the spiritual and ethical precepts. Instead, Purser asserts that "what remains is a tool of self discipline, disguised as self help. Instead of setting practitioners free, it helps them adjust to the very conditions that caused their problems....The neoliberal order has imposed itself by stealth in the past few decades, widening inequality in the pursuit of corporate wealth. People are expected to adapt to what this model demands of them. Stress has been pathologized and privatized, and the burden of managing it outsourced to individual. Hence the peddlers of mindfulness step in and save the day."

Again, it's not that Purser wants to outlaw mindfulness. In this book, however, he makes room for not simply encouraging the individual to meditate and learn to deal with life. He wants the reader to consider that being focused on individual happiness and wellbeing makes mindfulness easier "to sell than seriously questioning causes of injustice, inequity, and environmental devastation."

I don't think I've done a good job of explaining what I've discovered. If mindfulness is at all of interest to you, I suggest you pick up a copy of the book. It is accessible and engaging and it might make you question more than mindfulness.

[Patricia Makatsaria · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF - I wanted to give this book a shot because the idea is intriguing to me, and I do think the proliferation of mindfulness in American society is one to be examined. However, after about a quarter of the way thru I simply got tired of the author’s catastrophization (I think that’s a word) of the movement. And really it seemed more of a commentary on capitalism and neoliberalism. As my late grandmother would say, “Thanks, but not for me!”

[Mirek Jasinski · Rating 2 out of 5]

While a lot of criticism of the mindfulness movement and the commercialization of it is more than valid I found it difficult to cope with the author's emotional attitude.

[Cruz Zamora · Rating 3 out of 5]

well… we all know that capitalism is the source of many issues if not most. this just confirms that and more. it’s scary reading and realizing how subtle oppressive strategies have become. essentially, how mindfulness has become a scheme for the wealthy elite to keep getting wealthy and for the income disparity to become exponentially worse than the times of the french revolution, even with adjusting for inflation. nevertheless, mindfulness hides the face of the oppressor and is more of a tactic for coping with the neo-liberalist society we live in rather than being a revolutionary ideology to challenge the complacency and inequality. ok i sound too liberal arts, just read it and gain more knowledge to back up what you say at family gatherings.

[Moon Captain · Rating 3 out of 5]

DNF. It's a good book but I am not interested in the particulars of every single way the concept of meditation has been mangled and packaged and sold as a pacifier.

I just started reading it in a waiting room :p

[Özgür Takmaz · Rating 4 out of 5]

We can be liberated moment to moment by meaningful action.

[Frank Jude · Rating 4 out of 5]

Between the explosive popularity, commodification, and cooptation of mindfulness, and my deeper study and understanding that came from both my zen training under the Korean zen master, Samu Sunim and, especially, my Graduate Studies with Peter Harvey, I often tell students using my book for yoga teacher training that if I were writing it now, the chapter on mindfulness would be very different. Back then, my understanding of mindfulness meditation was still heavily influenced by the modernist version promulgated by teachers like Jon Kabat-Zinn and Thich Nhat Hanh.

This modernist understanding dates back to 19th century colonialism when some influential Buddhist leaders began to argue against the Christian colonialists by saying Buddhism was more “scientific” and rational than Christianity. As a nationalistic ploy to popularize Buddhism against the Christian encroachers, Buddhist monks started to teach a simple (perhaps even simplistic) understanding of mindfulness meditation, and downplaying the deeper analytical philosophical context and practices and then offering it, for the first time, to laity. Still, I find, most westerners equate meditation with Buddhism while for most of its history, most Buddhists did not meditate!

What is this more simplistic understanding of mindfulness? Note the following definitions:

Mindfulness meditation asks us to suspend judgment and unleash our natural curiosity about the workings of the mind, approaching our experience with warmth and kindness, to ourselves and others.
https://www.mindful.org/meditation/mi...

Mindfulness means maintaining a moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment, through a gentle, nurturing lens.

Mindfulness also involves acceptance, meaning that we pay attention to our thoughts and feelings without judging them—without believing, for instance, that there’s a “right” or “wrong” way to think or feel in a given moment. When we practice mindfulness, our thoughts tune into what we’re sensing in the present moment rather than rehashing the past or imagining the future.
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/topi...

Mindfulness is a state of active, open attention to the present. This state is described as observing one’s thoughts and feelings without judging them as good or bad.
https://www.headspace.com/mindfulness

Sara Weber defines mindfulness in her essay, “An Analyst’s Surrender” from Psychoanalysis and Buddhism as: “a cultivation of a moment-to-moment awareness of changing perceptions in a neutral, impartial way.” Carey Wong offers this succinct definition at the about.com website: “Mindfulness is a type of meditation that essentially involves focusing on your mind on the present. To be mindful is to be aware of your thoughts and actions in the present, without judging yourself.”

What these definitions have in common is that they emphasize an almost fetishistic and atomistic focus on the “present moment” as if the present is independent of the past and future; that it is a “moment-to-moment awareness” that is impartial, free of all judgements of right and wrong. But what this describes is more accurately “bare attention” which is an ethically neutral mental factor. That’s not the “right mindfulness” (you know, as opposed to the wrong mindfulness) apparently taught by the Buddha!

And the goal of this contemporary “mindfulness” practice, we are told, is to “bring about greater peace mentally and relationally. Mindfulness may also be used in mindfulness-based therapies to address stress, anxiety, or pain and simply to become more relaxed.”
https://www.helpguide.org/harvard/ben...

If you know anything of the soteriological purposes of all forms of yoga, you may already see how far from the truth this all is. Ancient yogis couldn’t care less about “becoming more relaxed” or free from anxiety. In fact, they spoke of the first fruits of meditative insight as “the terror” that, thankfully, led to liberation! And, what I don’t see in any of the contemporary definitions of mindfulness is the word “liberation.”

My mother died from Alzheimer’s. She was moment-to-moment aware of everything happening, but five minutes later would not have any recall of it. In fact, five minutes after meeting you, she would have no memory of every having met you. With such momentary awareness, there is no possibility of true relationship. And it is just this, the relational nature of existence, that the Buddha was directing us to remember! The word sati, translated as “mindfulness” comes from the word meaning “to remember.” When you see the fullest instructions for mindfulness meditation offered in the Pali Canon, the satipatthana-sutta, we see that the emphasis on practice is to – yes – observe the present moment without getting caught in our reactivity in order to understand the causes and conditions that led to the present moment! You can see how relational this practice is. Why do we wish to know how the present moment came to be? Because if the present moment is judged to be one of pain and suffering, we can then decide to end those causes. Not only that, we can then prospectively remember not to cultivate those causes and conditions in the future and even prevent future causes from arising.

Some critics of the contemporary Mindfulness Movement scathingly refer to it as McMindfulness, which brings me to the book under question. Subtitled “How Mindfulness Became The New Capitalist Spirituality”, Ronald Purser’s McMindfulness should be read by any yoga or meditation teacher who has come to mindfulness via the corporatized, new-age, decontextualized understanding of mindfulness. It should also be read by any practitioner who may have realized that there is something essential missing from such an approach.

In 13 chapters (along with his “Conclusion”) Purser pulls no punches and leaves no arena untouched. He begins by questioning the notion of the hyped “mindfulness revolution” and follows this up in Chapter Two with explaining how the contemporary understanding of mindfulness lends itself to being coopted by neoliberal ideology which it then slavishly serves. In Chapter Three he talks about stress. Interestingly, there has been some recent criticism of the tendency to see anxiety, grief and anger as “mental disorders” rather than the appropriate response to situations of loss and abuse. It has been argued that psychiatric diagnoses are not only scientifically invalid, they are harmful in their own right. The language of illness implies that the roots of such emotional distress lies completely in abnormalities of the brain, leading to an almost willful ignoring of the social, economic and political causes of distress. He refers to letters in The Lancet Psychiatry where the authors wrote:

Broadening routine data captured within UK National Health Service records could establish more inclusive, social, systemic, and psychologically comprehensive patterns of difficulties, which could target information regarding established social determinants of mental health problems, such as inequality, poverty, and trauma. Imagine if it were as serious to fail to document extreme poverty as it would be for a clinician to fail to identify severe depression.

And this is exactly Purser’s argument regarding the mindfulness movement’s lack of paying any mindful attention to social, political and cultural causal factors of suffering.

Other chapter titles include “Privatizing Mindfulness”, “Colonizing Mindfulness”, “Mindfulness as Social Amnesia” and “Mindfulness’ Truthiness Problem” in which he skewers the claims made by the contemporary mindfulness proselytizers for scientific validation of their claims for mindfulness. When the science is looked at impartially, we see that their claims far outstrip the science. For instance, in a meta-analysis of almost 19,000 studies cited in various databases that was run by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, they found only 47 that used randomized controlled trials! Mindfulness was found to be moderately effective in treating a variety of conditions, but no more so than other active treatments including exercise! In another study testing the claims that mindfulness as taught in contemporary programs strengthen pro-social behaviors found moderate increases in compassion only in studies that had the meditation teacher as a co-author! Red flag!

After these seven chapters, Purser takes aim at specific contexts where McMindfulness is being used. In “Mindful Employees” he shows how corporatized programs support the neo-liberal capitalist project just as the psychologist critic stated above: by situating the site of all anxiety and stress in the employee, the company makes the employee fully responsible with dealing with the stress and can avoid looking at any impact the corporate structure and culture play in creating the stress. In “Mindful Merchants” he exposes a mindfulness equivalent of “greenwashing”.

In “Mindful Elites” he takes us to Davos where the global elite latched on to the mindfulness fad. I grew livid – and you should too – when he describes one Davos acolyte as saying “The root cause of our current economic and civilizational crisis is not Wall Street, not infinite growth, and not Big Business of Big Government.” He goes on to locate it “between our ears”.

In “Mindful Schools”, Purser does show nuance. Any parent would agree that any aid in teaching children skills to aid them in dealing with challenging emotions is welcome, and still the emphasis on how they react and not the conditions to which they react is at best problematic.

But, the chapter that I underlined the most is “Mindful Warriors”. Considering that the Buddha explicitly stated that any dealing in arms was not right livelihood, the very notion that mindfulness is something to be brought into the military is oxymoronic delusion. I’m all for adding mindfulness to the treatment palette for soldiers returning from military engagement suffering from PTSD, but I’m completely against any use of mindfulness to make for better snipers. Elizabeth Stanley, a former Military Intelligence officer, is the creator of Mindfulness-Based Mind Fitness Training (MMFT) which is offered to soldiers about to be deployed for combat. Her description of her program makes it chillingly clear that the purpose of the training is to support the soldier’s core objective: to kill:

A true warrior must be able to still her body and mind to call forth strength; exhibit endurance during harsh environmental conditions; have awareness of herself, others, and the wider environment so she can make discerning choices; access compassion for herself, her compatriots, her adversary and the locals where she is deployed; and show self-control during provocation so that she doesn’t overreact. And yet, if the moment demands, she must also have the capacity to kill, cleanly, without hesitation and without remorse.

Finally, in Chapter 13, Purser tackles “Mindful Politics” and in particular Tim Ryan, a Congress Person from Ohio who says “All we have to do is search inside ourselves, and the world will be transformed.” In response to Ryan’s epiphany while “mindfully” eating a raisin, Purser asks, “Never mind how the raisin looks, feels, smells, and tastes to a privileged congressman, what if Ryan had contemplated the farm where the raisin was grown by immigrants doing back-breaking work in the San Joaquin valley, earning a cent for every two-hundred grapes harvested.”

This made me recollect a presentation I offered at the Specialty Coffee Association of America’s annual conference in Seattle many years ago. Called “Wake Up and Drink The Coffee”, as part of my dharma talk, I did indeed talk about contemplating how the coffee we were about to drink had come to us; the “72 labors that brought us” this coffee. Afterward, more than one coffee buyer came up to me and said that the experience made them realize they had to pay more attention to sourcing his coffee in relation to sustainability and fair recompense to the producers.

The reality is that as mindfulness is currently popularly taught, its potential radical, revolutionary potential has been eviscerated. Even if mindfulness as its taught makes us feel better, the world remains unchanged. Being told to refrain from “judgement” (which makes no sense since as that is a judgement that judgement is wrong and to be avoided!) we are being urged – not consciously perhaps, but still – to abandon ethical discernment while the whole Buddhsit practice of mindfulness is based upon sila training or ethical awareness. In fact, the precepts serving as the bedrock of Buddhist practice and understanding are seen as “mindfulness trainings!”

Those who are in the sights of Purser’s criticism make a straw-person argument, asking “what should we do, throw the baby out with the bathwater?” Or that he is “being negative”. This is something I have seen as well: so much of contemporary yoga and Buddhism sees any critical thinking as “negative” which ends up marginalizing dissenting views and leads to self-censorship by those who are told are not practicing “right speech” when they question or offer any critique. But, Purser himself in his powerful “Conclusion” writes “Mindfulness could still be revolutionary, but it has to be taught in different ways.”

When Angela Davis challenged Kabat-Zinn to confront the limitations of his approach she told him that “Teaching individual police officers to be mindful wouldn’t stop policing from being a racist institution” he agreed but then, showing a poverty of imagination responded, “… what do you see as an effective alternative?” Purser responds by suggesting that while mindfulness can be helpful in calming the mind, it should be as a preliminary to set one’s sights on the structures that perpetuate racist behavior. As the Buddha encourages 18 times in the satipatthana-sutta, we need to apply mindfulness internally, externally, and both internally and externally. Yes, no one would deny that there is internal greed, hatred and delusion (the three roots of suffering) that we need to bring mindfulness to. And there is also institutionalized external greed, hatred and delusion that we need to be mindful of as found in corporate capitalist structures epitomized in Wall Street; the military and the militarized police; and the profit-based media respectfully. And how these two interact is what is meant by internally and externally. Liberation can only happen when mindfulness and resistance to these forces go in tandem, internally and externally simultaneously. And this is so because a truly revolutionary mindfulness recognizes the non-dual nature of dependent origination: no ‘thing’ exists from its own side!

[Jonathan Karmel · Rating 3 out of 5]

According to the author of this book, Ronald Purser, mindfulness training in the Buddhist tradition is inseparable from ethical development. Right mindfulness is only one part of Buddha’s Eightfold Path. The author doesn’t discuss his own background, but according to the internet, the author is a California college professor and an ordained Zen Dharma Teacher in the Korean Zen Taego order of Buddhism. Presumably, the author approves of mindfulness in that context.

McMindfulness is mindfulness practice that the author does not approve of. The primary example of McMindfulness is mindfulness-based stress reduction, the program developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn, and similar spinoffs (MBSR). Like McDonald’s, 100s of MBSR schools have been franchised worldwide. And the author believes that, like McDonald’s MBSR satisfies an immediate hunger but does not provide long-term sustenance.

MBSR is derived from Buddhism, but MBSR lacks the Buddhist ethical teachings that accompany mindfulness in Buddhism. Purser believes that dharma is “a collective term for the Buddha’s teachings.” Jon Kabat-Zinn falsely claims that he is teaching dharma without Buddhism, that he has extracted the highest of the Buddha’s insights and discarded the junk that religion wrapped around them. Buddhism, however, has an aim of dissolving attachment to a false sense of self while enacting compassion for all other beings. MBSR does not include these important Buddhist concepts, so it should not be claiming to be teaching “dharma.”

The author says he took a MBSR course, and it accomplished exactly what it was intended to do: teaching people how to reduce their stress and anxiety, cope with pain, and live a more mindful life. The author states that MBSR also admirably serves its purpose as a treatment for chronic stress, for people with conditions such as childhood obesity, black-lung disease, and victims of industrial accidents. The author believes such meditative practices may be the best treatment for people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), including veterans who have experienced war.

But the author still disapproves of the teaching of mindfulness simply as a mental tool in and of itself without any context. He believes this just teaches people to accept the world as it is rather than pursuing the ethical goal of making the world a better place. In the American context, Buddhist ethics are replaced by the American self-help and self-care ethic, looking inside yourself to grow as an individual. MBSR is marketed as being “revolutionary,” but in fact it reinforces Western individualism and an entitled, self-centered, and myopic path to happiness. It’s a personal lifestyle choice rather than a call to directly engage with society and politics. It’s a tool of self-discipline, disguised as self-help. According to Purser, modern secular mindfulness precludes any purpose of practice beyond feeling better.

Mindfulness is sold and marketed as a vehicle for personal gain and gratification. Like Theosophy and Transcendental Meditation (TM) that came before it, MBSR commodifies a religious practice. Similar ideas are popularized by high profile figures such as Deepak Chopra, Eckhart Tolle, Ariana Huffington, Anderson Cooper, Goldie Hawn, and politician Tim Ryan. The annual Wisdom 2.0 conference in the Bay Area is like a gated community where smug elites spew feel-good soundbites to help rationalize the unethical conduct of huge corporations. Mindful participants treat protesters as a distraction and then go back to meditating.

There are now a bunch of apps that sell mindfulness, including Headspace, Happify Health, Grokker, Calm, Shine, and Thrive Global. It’s ironic that people use phone apps for meditation, when smartphones are one of the main reasons we are generally so distracted and unmindful in the first place.

MBSR claims to be scientific, not religious. But the claim that major ethical changes intrinsically follow from paying attention to the present moment without judgement is not supported by evidence. Awareness of the present moment is not the same thing as true mindfulness, which includes specific ethical teachings. Also, there is little evidence that mindfulness reduces stress for typical people with feelings of being stressed-out because of difficult life circumstances. Instead of scientifically studying the effect of paying attention to the present moment and comparing it to other methods people use to reduce or cope with stress, MBSR just romanticizes and fetishizes being in the present moment.

There is a theory based on evolutionary biology that we are often anxious because our “fight or flight” instinct gets triggered by frequently believing that we are threatened by things that in fact pose no threat to us. MBSR is marketed as a “cure” for such anxiety. In the past, psychology labeled people with neurasthenia, and now people are similarly labeled as suffering from stress. But in most cases for most people, it is the conditions of our world that make normal people stressed out. Stress shouldn’t be thought of as a condition that needs to be cured with therapy. It’s similar to what the cigarette companies used to do, advertise smoking as a “cure” for stress.

Like positive psychology and the broader happiness industry, MBSR has depoliticized and privatized stress. Mindfulness may help people cope with the toxic conditions that make them stressed out, but it does not address the causes of stress. MBSR teaches people to believe that their problems are all in their heads, not caused by material conditions. MBSR is wrong that we ought to just “be.” Rather, we should “do” something to make the world a better place. Valorizing “just being” effectively demonizes “doing” as a distraction from “pure awareness.” People who are angry about injustice are encouraged to just let it go, focus on their breath, and return to the present moment.

According to the author, MBSR teaches people to suppress “negative” emotions such as anger, sadness and fear, but there are good reasons for people to be angry, sad, and afraid, and those emotions should lead us to take action to fight the causes of our anger, sadness, and fear when those causes are the conditions created by injustice in the world. MBSR teaches people to have a Puritanical obsession with controlling emotions, especially anger. It is in the distinctly American tradition of using self-help techniques to pull yourself up by your bootstraps through the power of positive thinking, rather than fighting against the causes of your suffering.

The author is clear that he believes the true cause of most people’s stress is modern capitalism, which he refers to as “neo-liberalism.” He believes that without context, mindfulness will just make people better adjusted cogs in the capitalist machinery. Rather than just teaching people to be present without judgment, he believes mindfulness should be judgmental in the pursuit of social change and that it should be unapologetically anti-capitalist. He believes that the fundamental tenet of neoliberal mindfulness is that people’s problems are all in their head, so they will not spend their energy fighting against the evils of unbridled capitalism.

MBSR is used by corporations to increase their profits. Software engineer Chade-Meng Tan retired from Google at age 45 and became Silicon Valley’s mindfulness guru. He teaches people to “search inside yourself” (get it?) to become happier without changing anything in the world. So Google and its employees make millions, while the “precariat” class continues to live gig to gig. New York Times business reporter David Gelles is a cheerleader for corporate mindfulness. He preaches that stress is something people impose on themselves. But in reality, workplace stress is often caused by lack of health insurance, the threat of layoffs, lack of autonomy in decision-making, long hours, unrealistic demands, and unfair treatment. Ford teaches mindfulness in the service of profit-making and increasing shareholder value by reducing the stress that can decrease worker focus and productivity.

When Kabat-Zinn and Chade-Meng Tan appeared at Davos in 2015, that was peak mindfulness. It’s becoming a way for the super-elites to brainwash and pacify people. Tony Hsieh, former CEO of Zappos, said the pursuit of mindfulness and the pursuit of corporate profit were completely compatible. (After the publication of this book, Hsieh died in a house fire, and news sources have suggested that his drug use – Whippets – may have played a role in his death.)

According to Purser, the military uses mindfulness to train better killers. Kabat-Zinn’s collusion with military top brass raises ethical issues. It’s similar to how zen meditation was once used by the Japanese in support of imperialism. Mindfulness shouldn’t be decontextualized so it can be used as a tool for terrorist and killers.

In schools, mindfulness is used as a technique to make kids behave, but it does not address their underlying problems. It encourages passivity rather than engagement. An example is Goldie Hawn’s MindUp curriculum. The mindfulness school curriculum teaches students to adapt to circumstances, not to change them. Teaching mindfulness has been challenged as teaching a religious practice, a challenge that has some merit. This is similar to when teaching Transcendental Meditation was previously successfully challenged under the Establishment Clause.

Mindfulness should be a tool for ending suffering in the world, and McMindfulness does not accomplish that. Real mindfulness is in the context of an ethical set of principles.

I can see Purser’s point, but I think his argument is sloppy and lazy. I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with teaching people a technique that will reduce their stress, anxiety and depression. It seems like meditation would be a good alternative to legal (or illegal) drugs, which might have negative side effects.

Assuming for the sake of argument that Purser is correct that mindfulness should be taught in the context of a set of ethical principles, I don’t think we should assume that the military and schools would not be doing that. Why should we teach veterans meditation to treat their PTSD but not help soldiers on the front end to be more effective in carrying out their missions? We may not always agree with the ways the military are deployed, but most people would agree that the military is a necessary institution whose members are involved in public service. I don’t see how Kabat-Zinn’s work with the military raises ethical issues. Kabat-Zinn doesn’t influence whether the military is used for good or evil; he’s helping people who are doing public service work, often at great personal sacrifice.

The same is true for schools. If MBSR helps students with stress, anxiety and depression, I don’t see why it needs to be also pushing them to act in a certain way. It would presumably be used in support of whatever direction the school is trying to push the students sans MBSR.

Also, what’s the basis for the belief the mindfulness ought to be anti-capitalist? I don’t think Buddhism is anti-capitalist, so why should mindfulness have this particular political agenda? I never took an MBSR course, but my understanding is that when people practice mindfulness, they often focus on a particular idea such as becoming more compassionate. I think it would be odd to focus on a particular political point of view. That doesn’t seem like what mindfulness is about to me.

This book mentions the stoic concept of apatheia in passing, and I think mindfulness does teach people to have a similar attitude of maintaining equanimity in the face of stressors. Stoicism also assumes that the philosophy will be used to help people be more virtuous, even though it could be used to help bad people be evil. Many people are anxious and depressed because they constantly think about past events that they regret, future events that they’re afraid of, and other things that they’re worried about but which aren’t actually happening. For many people, life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans. People fail to experience and enjoy the actual experience of living as it is happening. Yes, meditation helps you train your mind to experience the present moment, because that is all life is in the end: a series of present moments. Mindfulness helps people realize this philosophical truth.

People whose daily lives are filled with stress, worry, anxiety, depression, and addiction benefit if they can have the serenity to accept the things they cannot change, the courage to change the things they can change, and the wisdom to know the difference. I believe meditation helps people do this. Purser is totally focused on the first part, but once you stop ruminating and perseverating about things that you cannot change and start grasping the reality of the life that you are actually experiencing, you do begin to see the things in your life that you actually can control and change, and I do believe you’re more likely to do things that are productive rather than obsessing about things outside of your control.

To show that goodness is innate, Mencius used the example of a child falling down a well. A person who witnesses this event immediately feels alarm and distress and a desire to save the child. The feeling is out of compassion, not to gain friendship with the child’s parents, nor to seek the praise of neighbors and friends, nor because it is unpleasant to hear a child crying, nor because failure to rescue a child would give a person a bad reputation. This compassion is the seed of virtue. The belief that people will become more ethical by meditating may be a bit Pollyannaish, but I don’t think Jon Kabat-Zinn et al. should be criticized for having faith in humanity.

Purser seems to believe that “dharma” can only mean one thing, but the meaning I’m most familiar with comes from Hinduism. It’s true that teaching people that they should just follow their dharma (duty), do yoga, and utter the sacred syllable “Om” can justify a caste system and can be used to keep the lower classes in their place. But similar to meditation, people seem to benefit in a really obvious way by doing yoga, focusing on their breath, and trying to be present without judgment while doing it.

I think Purser should do Purser, and he should let Kabat-Zinn do Kabat-Zinn.

[Marenka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Totally on point. I was always suspicious and resistant to the mindful practices taught in a corporate environment, but never had so many arguments that would prove that there's indeed, a lot to be suspicious about. Author describes how neo-liberal individualistic approach wants to numb people from taking actions to improve their situations and challenge status quo by simply adjusting and accepting current alignment and creating "cheerful social robots". Author is also on point when saying that mindfulness can be very useful if used in a correct way i.e. helping to have a clearer view on social construct, current situation, history and through this thrive to achieve improvement for the society as a whole. 5 stars as I think this book deserves to be between top rated for more people to notice it, especially those, who are already suspicious about corporate mindfulness practices, but need more reassurance that they're correct.

[Frank D'hanis junior · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't very much care for the religious criticism in the book: since Purser is himself a Buddhist he takes issue with mindfulness opportunistically presenting itself on different occasions as religious or non-religious. Frankly as an atheist I don't care about little internecine conflict between religious adepts. What did strike home very much was his double critique of mindfulness as a largely unproven practice and as an anesthetic to keep people functioning in these neoliberal times. Even worse: mindfulness itself has become big business with trainers asking really exorbitant fees for the most trivial of exercises (such as the famous raisin eating). Religion or not, since Marx had already poignantly perceived the numbing function of symbolic practices, this is not very surprising, and I hope that as mindfulness has grown to full mainstream we will see more opposition to it in the near future. Silly title, perhaps, but an important book nevertheless.

[Colleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oh, so many thoughts on this. He juxtaposes mindfulness (yoga, meditation) and capitalism. My first thought was why in the world would you pit those two things against each other? He takes mindfulness as a revolutionary practice...but was that really ever what it was? I mean, who thought meditation, a seemingly solipsistic act, would bring about world peace? (Note that it's the solipsism that he seems to be raging against.) He seems to want the original Buddhist practice, not the Americanized version of it, to be what's practiced here in America. But has he not noticed that we Americans adapt everything from other cultures to our own needs and wants? I wasn't convinced that it makes sense to think of mindfulness as something that's supposed to start a revolution.

On the other hand, I found a lot to agree with too: Emotional reactions are problematized, and subjected to mindful scrutiny. According to mindfulness science, certain emotions -- such as anger, disgust, sadness, contempt, frustration and aggression -- are "destructive", negative affects requiring emotional self-regulation. But what if one is angry, even enraged, about injustice? Just let it go....This has a disempowering impact on political thinking.

I think mindfulness is problematic in that it makes negative emotions things to be ignored, in a sense, but again, I don't think anyone (or anyone with a heart) is calling for BLM protestors to have mass meditations where they "just let it go". Again, mindfulness, or at least the Americanized version of it, was not intended to be political.

His overall point is that we are taking individual responsibility for bad feelings (injustice, frustration, rage at the machine) that are really caused by an unjust capitalist system. He highlights schools, companies, etc. bringing in mindfulness speakers and training their employees on meditation or yoga, but not covering enough health insurance, or paying people unlivable wages. It's a Band-Aid on a gaping wound.

At to some extent, yes, of course that's true. But in the end, I still wasn't convinced that this juxtaposition was a fair one or made sense. But, it's worth a read if you like thinking about these things.

[Polina Beloborodova · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although I disagree with some of Dr. Purser’s arguments, I throughly enjoyed reading this book. His writing is clear and convincing, with historical digressions, direct quotes from various characters who played a role in what mindfulness has become in the West, as well as accounts of his personal experience.

This book gave me a much needed antidote against mindfulness hype and justified the uneasiness that I feel about teaching it to the military and corporations. Today’s mindfulness has very little to do with its religious, philosophical and cultural roots. I agree with Dr. Purser’s argument that stripping the practice from its ethical foundations distorts its purpose of eliminating suffering, not only of individual beings, but of all, and can boost self-preoccupation instead of reducing it.

What I disagree with is how the author presents research evidence. Dr. Purser says that mindfulness scholars selectively showcase positive results while overshadowing negative ones. But then in chapter 7 he engages in the same practice by selectively presenting meta-analyses that yielded negative results (one of which has recently been retracted due to methodological issues) and ignoring meta-analyses that came to a different conclusion. It is true that mindfulness teachers and the media exaggerate research conclusions, but if we want to be objective, we need to consider all available evidence. An honest answer to the question “is there something special about mindfulness interventions?” is “we don’t know.”

My personal experience also goes contrary to the author’s argument that mindfulness practice in its current format makes people docile and accepting of things as they are. In fact, partly thanks to that practice, I left my corporate job because I couldn’t tolerate being in that system anymore. Maybe I was lucky to encounter the right teachers. But maybe there is really something about paying attention to the present moment experience that helps to see what is happening more clearly and take action.

[Cindi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received this book as an ARC in exchange for my review.

The term "mindfulness" has become a new catch phrase. You can't look at a self help, recovery or parenting section of a bookstore without finding a dozen or more books with 'mindful' in the title. You hear about it in school meetings, workshops, on the cover of magazines & in the news. I started to feel like this term was just the 'new thing' & wondered how watered down these approaches had become. After a few school meetings, i just about developed a tic when i heard the word. So when this book was offered, i was curious.

Its not a bad book. The author is clearly making a point & has his views. But it wasnt surprising or enlightening. I feel like I've read it all before, just not bound in a 300 page book.

In a few years, the term will be replaced with something new & probably as watered down.

Many thanks to the publidher, author and Hidden Gems for the free ecopy in exchange for my review.

[Mehwish · Rating 4 out of 5]

This critique of western mindfulness needed to be written. Some takeaways:
- Mindfulness is divorced from its Buddhist traditions and sold as a secular practice to appeal to the west
-It is depoliticised - your suffering is your problem and not contingent upon historical, social, capitalist context
- It has privatised and pathologised stress - it's all in your head and let's fix it with being present in the moment or whatever
It is revolutionised by Jon Kabat-Zinn (Who is heavily criticised in the book - to the point where sometimes the book seems to be like a personal dig at him)

Besides repetition, the book has a lot of value on the topic. Highly recommend it.

[Sophie Harrington · Rating 4 out of 5]

The thesis is infallible but there is significant repetition.

“Students are taught to meditate away their anger and accept their frustrations (non-judgemental, of course). This might help then focus on work, but unless the also learn about the causes of stress in social, economic and institutional structures, links between education and democracy are severed.”