The more I learn about mindfulness, the more I discover there is also push-back. If mindfulness is a ‘movement’, then there are those who are advocates and those who are not. The internet is full of the first camp, and you don’t have to look too hard to find someone who’s selling you something from that camp. But it’s this relationship to capitalism (and the growing distance from authentic spirituality) that makes the second camp increasingly nervous.
The book “Mindfulness and its discontents: education, self and social transformation” by David Forbes (2019), is designed to highlight the concerns growing up around the mindfulness movement.
In his acknowledgement page he notes that there are BOTH “perils and promises of mindfulness” (p.vii) – but it is its social implications that he is most interested in. Right from the first pages, Forbes notes that he wishes he had mindfulness in his life as a child, and that he recognizes it as a “radical tool for liberation” from unhelpful thoughts, but he also worries that it has become “unmoored” from its traditional roots, “not just secularized but profaned” (p.9). He fears that those who follow mindfulness, may be well-intended but if they don’t query its moral and ethical purpose, and potential social impact, then there is a risk of blind-following and self-aggrandizement. The most zealous believers, he frets, are convinced their meditational love can heal the world, and yet the majority of those meditators are privileged white middle-class people who have the time and money to engage in personal enlightenment. Pushed to its limits, mindfulness becomes a form of “elitism” (10).
In other words, “self-awareness” if removed too far from its mindful roots becomes “self-centered”, which, if pushed too far becomes “selfish”.
In Australia we have a phrase – “McMansions” – for the sorts of houses that are pumped out into the suburbs; cookie cutter designs which are treated as cutting edge, but are all needlessly large, unrelated to their context or the environment… all same-same and somehow less-less.
Forbes adopts a similar phrase – “McMindfulness” – designed to imply a self-serving, privatized, and commercialized version of mindfulness practice. The paradox he hints at, is that through their escapism, mindfulness practitioners reinforce a capitalist, individualistic, inequitable society – much the same as the one which created the stress in their lives to start with.
Going back to check his history, I note that Forbes is a mindfulness teacher and counsellor. He does not say that all secular mindfulness should be dropped. Nor is he advocating a return to a Buddhist version of mindfulness only. His hope appears to be that people will adopt a more mindful form of mindfulness, socially aware and more universally applicable. As I read it; letting go should make room for helping others.
Forbes seems to trace most of the ‘problem’ back to the doctor-teacher Jon Kabat-Zinn. It was Kabat-Zinn who was largely credited for the creation of the Mindfulness Stress Based Reduction (MSBR) technique (what ChatGPT decided I rely on to heal). And in his creation of MSBR, Kabat-Zinn replaced 2,5000 years of Eastern-religious meditational ways with a Western-scientific approach. He “threw most of it out” (15). As such, he seems to have colonized meditation – whitewashed it – (mis)appropriated it. By encouraging us to pay attention to the now, he also potentially inadvertently created a form of “calmness on demand”. Tradition, ethics, wisdom were left behind, and mindfulness stopped being “theirs” and became instead something that was “universal”… which potentially means “ours”.
In chapter 3 Forbes uses another neologism: “Minefulness” – as in mine, mine, mine. Here he refers to the commercialization of being de-stressed, the vast number of apps and courses and companies that have grown up around making you more mindful… at a cost. Peace and happiness start to become hedonistic, influenced by influencers, expensive…
There was one interesting aside that linked mindfulness and cell-phone-modernity with a zombie culture. Mindfulness ironically risks mindlessness. By trying to be mindful at the gym, doctor’s office and on the bus, you plant yourself always in this moment, in a particular way, to the point of eliminating spontaneity and pleasure (139). By paying attention to the here and now, always, ignores the wrongs of the past and avoids the risks of the future. We become strangely absolved of guilt, freed of consequential actions. We are alive and yet disconnected… not REALLY alive. Mindfulness [like zombie-everything] becomes just another fad – it may peak and fade and live out a half-life with a disco ball somewhere (140).
Overall, the chapters work through specific concerns that he has with mindfulness programs, issues with how mindfulness is taught in schools, and the limitations of mindfulness. He notes, for example, that becoming more empathetic and compassionate through meditation, does not necessarily mean that you will make wise and informed decisions concerning yourself or others (154).
Most of what he was saying resonated, provided a lot of food for thought, and potentially advocated my version of “mindful-lite“. If I had one concern, however, it is that he mentions the word “neoliberalism” – relentlessly…
Take care taking care, mindfully not minefully, Linda xox
The Mindful Migraine 
Leave a reply to Silk Cords Cancel reply