The Observer - 04.08.2019

The Observer

Books 04.08.19 49

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In a frequently quoted passage,

the American professor of medicine

Jon Kabat-Zinn defi nes mindfulness

as “a way of being in a wise and

purposeful relationship with

one’s experience... cultivated by

systematically exercising one’s

capacity for paying attention, on

purpose, in the present moment

and non-judgmentally”. It sounds

harmless enough. But San

Francisco-based academic Ronald

Purser thinks not. He has written

a strident polemic attacking the

secular mindfulness movement.

Forty years ago, Kabat-Zinn set

about distilling Buddhist wisdom

into a framework that could address

modern concerns. He originally

designed a short course for people

suffering from chronic physical

pain. These programmes have

since been extended to treat a wide

range of cases including depression,

addiction and workplace stress.

They have been adopted in schools,

businesses, criminal justice systems,

in the US military, the NHS and

UK parliament. Unless you’ve been

living under a rock, you are likely to

have encountered them.

Critics of secular mindfulness

often argue that it is infl uenced by

Buddhism either too much or not

enough. Purser, an ordained Korean

Zen teacher, holds the latter view.

He regrets that, as mindfulness has

grown in popularity, it has been

extracted from its Buddhist roots,

turned into a product and debased.

According to McMindfulness,

there are more than 100,000 books

on Amazon with “mindfulness” or

something similar in the title. The

movement has sprouted mindful

surfi ng, mindful bread and mindful

KFC chicken pot pies. Mindfulness

apps have become big business,

and Purser notes that there is a

“peculiar irony in turning to an app

to de-stress from problems that

are often made worse by staring

at phones”. As he points out, these

superfi cial, gamifi ed versions of

mindfulness are a pale imitation of

the real thing.

Purser’s critique cuts deeper. He

thinks that mindfulness has not

just been diluted and commodifi ed

by the market – it is also itself

deepening harmful free market

ideology. As he sees it, mindfulness

claims that “the source of people’s

problems is found in their heads”. It

thereby distracts from the worldly,

societal causes of stress and anxiety.

If you are burnt out from overwork,

stressed by precarious employment,

or anxious for future generations

as a result of climate change, the

mindfulness diagnosis is, as Purser

puts it, that your “thoughts are the

culprit, every time!”. The upshot for

him is that mindfulness disables any

impetus for collective organisation

and action – it implicitly conserves

the neoliberal status quo.

Purser’s aspiration to address

injustices in society is, of course,

laudable. But why does mindfulness

have to be purposed for these

revolutionary ends? A careful

reading of Purser’s book suggests

that he accepts that mindfulness-

based interventions can help

someone cope with chronic back

pain, reduce the chance of a person

Mindfulness may

have become a tool of

capitalism, but if it

works, does it matter?

Jonnie Wolf on two

confl icting accounts

McMindfulness: How

Mindfulness Became the New

Capitalist Spirituality

Ronald Purser

Repeater , £ 10.99 , pp304

Psychology

Penny for your thoughts...

Mindfulness: Ancient Wisdom

Meets Modern Psychology

Christina Feldman and

Willem Kuyken

Guilford Press , £ 22.99 , pp 284

with depression killing themselves,

or make a vulnerable teenager

less reactive. Is it not excessively

demanding to ask of a short course

in mindfulness that it also address

society’s systemic problems?

The ethicist Jeff McMahan notes

that “we do not condemn a doctor

who treats the victims of a war for

failing to devote his efforts instead

to eliminating the root causes of

war ”. In our big, rainbow-coloured

world, war doctors, anti-war

activists and activist doctors can

all contribute. Similarly, we should

not condemn mindfulness teachers

who treat the bewildered victims of

neoliberalism for not also fi ghting

neoliberalism itself. There seems

to be scope for both palliative

mindfulness and mindful activism

to add layers of value.

“Some may think I want to

drown the baby, never mind throw

it out with the bathwater – I do

not”, Purser reassures the reader

during his relentless salvo. There

is an awful lot of bathwater in the

world of mindfulness. Purser’s

amusingly crotchety account of

corporate mindfulness depicts a

particularly vapid subsector of the

wellness industry. One detail that

stands out is that, according to

Purser, the Californian guru Dawa

Tarchin Phillips charges $12,000 for

one day of corporate mindfulness

training. It’s a far cry from the

Buddhist custom of teachers giving

their time freely.

Practitioners seeking an account

of mindfulness that is responsive

to the kind of criticisms Purser

makes should consult Christina

Feldman and Willem Kuyken ’s new

book, Mindfulness: Ancient Wisdom

Meets Modern Psychology. Feldman,

a leading Buddhist teacher, and

Kuyken, a clinical psychologist at

Oxford University , are as critical of

“McMindfulness” as Purser.

“Mindfulness is neither a quick fi x

nor simple... it is not about emptying

the mind, not thinking, or turning

away from experience... it is not

attentional training that can be used

for ethically questionable practice,”

they write. For Feldman and Kuyken,

mindfulness can play a legitimate

role in reducing individual suffering

and facilitating wholesome action,

even if it only makes a neutral or

modest impact on the wider world.

Philosopher Amia Srinivasan has

written that we “should be guided by

both a concern for appreciating the

world as it is, and making the world

as it ought to be”. Purser makes

the fi rst concern an enemy of the

second. In the course of his plea for

“truly revolutionary” mindfulness,

perhaps inadvertently, he ends up

fulminating against evidence-backed

interventions that can ease suffering

in the here and now.

To order McMindfulness for £9.67

or Mindfulness for £22.99 go to

guardianbookshop.com or call

0330 333 6846

The movement has

sprouted mindful

surfi ng, mindful

bread and mindful

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