
McMindfulness: How mindfulness became the new capitalist spirituality - pseudolus
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/tapestry/mcmindfulness-and-the-case-for-small-talk-1.5369984/mcmindfulness-how-capitalism-hijacked-the-buddhist-teaching-of-mindfulness-1.5369991
======
anbende
Clinical psychologist who teaches and practices mindfulness here.

I often hear the argument that the current applications of mindfulness in
corporate or otherwise commercial settings are a perversion of the original
teachings. While to some extent it’s true that teachings have been adapted and
the adaptations are sometimes (maybe often) problematic, the assertion that
mindfulness training doesn’t belong in the boardroom seems silly to me.
Attention and acceptance training (the two fundamental aspects of mindfulness
in my research supported but not definitive view) don’t belong to Buddhism or
any other system or set of teachings. The underlying science of mind training
can be applied wherever we see fit. There’s no “what mindfulness is about and
what it’s not” in a corporate versus holistic sense. There’s only the strength
of the programs and how much value people derive from them, and if 20
executives are able to sleep and handle their stress a little better, there’s
nothing wrong with that.

The idea that mindfulness creates better killers or justified immoral behavior
also seems spurious to me. What we’re teaching is an awareness of what’s
happening inside of experience. Mindfulness is not a magical stress and
conscience lowering switch. It’s simply greater awareness of the nuances of
our internal state. That internal state is where moral judgment and
discernment live, so it’s hard for me to see how that would systematically
produce harmful or immoral actions.

And to the extent that we have a large number of poorly trained teachers
selling a poorly designed product AS mindfulness, THAT in my mind is the
larger issue, rather than the context or clientele. I saw a teacher once tell
a student that her overwhelming obsession with her physical pain WAS her being
mindful. This and the reverse problem whereby mindfulness is equated with
dullness, sleepiness, or numbness are the real dangers in my view.

~~~
gerbilly
> I often hear the argument that the current applications of mindfulness in
> corporate or otherwise commercial settings are a perversion of the original
> teachings.

Buddhism teaches that you should tackle the coarser causes of suffering first.
If there is a thorn in your foot, no one is suggesting you should go do a good
sit to deal with the pain. First you remove the thorn, then you sit.

In my opinion mindfulness at work (or anywhere) can be beneficial, but if we
only use it to paper over the structural problems that make work life
stressful for so many, we are losing the opportunity to eliminate the coarser
causes of suffering.

Think of it as an 80/20 rule. Probably eighty percent of the suffering at work
comes from twenty percent of the causes. We should be tackling those, and that
requires political engagement. It may even require oppositional methods in
some really bad cases.

~~~
anbende
I agree that in a larger sense, there are often greater problems at work than
the internal regulation of attention and stress.

From working with clients however, you might be surprised just how often
people come in not realizing that they have what is essentially a giant thorn
sticking out of their foot! Usually this looks more like chronic lack of
sleep, a bad relationship with their spouse or even a toxic work environment,
but shut inside their ball of stress and the narrow anxious attention that
accompanies it, they miss the forest of causes for the more immediate trees of
anxiety, tension and panic.

You might be surprised how often a person says “oh my god I’m tired and
stressed because I haven’t gotten a good nights sleep in 10 years!” after a
little awareness training.

~~~
gerbilly
What we're all really looking for in most workplaces is love and attention
[edit: acceptance], but we express that by working harder and harder in order
to 'earn' it.

In my opinion this is the most beneficial buddhist 'practise' for western
society: "You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is
more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that
person is not to be found anywhere."

If that were taken to heart, believed and practised, you would get rid of 80%
of most people's suffering.

~~~
gmfawcett
I am definitely not an expert on Buddhism, but "nobody in the universe
deserves your love more than yourself" doesn't sound like Buddhism to me. Is
that an actual classical teaching?

~~~
gerbilly
It is a direct quote from the buddha.

The point of it that some people don't start practise because they don't
believe they deserve to be happy.

~~~
praptak
I believe it is at best misquoted from the actual canon:
[https://tricycle.org/magazine/you-deserve-your-love-and-
affe...](https://tricycle.org/magazine/you-deserve-your-love-and-affection/)

The quote from the canon: _Searching in all directions With your awareness,
you find no one dearer than yourself. In the same way, others are thickly dear
to themselves. So you shouldn’t hurt others if you love yourself._

~~~
gerbilly
Now _that_ is interesting.

I heard that quote from a respected Zen master!

This is why I love HN. Thanks for the correction.

------
Ididntdothis
I once got an offer to teach a yoga and meditation class at a company. The
stated goal was to give employees tools to handle stress better. I pointed out
that the result of mindfulness would most likely be that people would see how
harmful a stressful environment Is and either try to change it or to avoid it.
Never heard back :)

The same happened with yoga. We picked a very small part of the tradition as
in asana and removed most of the spiritual aspects. Almost nobody teaches
pranayama or meditation in any meaningful way. It’s basically a different form
of aerobics or calisthenics.

~~~
thrwe4234safd
Hehe. This is what I basically wondered when someone told me that mindfullness
was helping her cope with pressure of work life.

The new decolonization movement in India has been thinking quite deeply about
this and other developments where Indian traditional knowledge is taken to the
US and then copyrighted, patented and trademarked, and then sold around the
world, incl. India. Amusingly, with American marketing being so brilliant,
Indian knowledge has in recent history become far more popular once it was
"U-turned" in this way. Lots of interesting work being done.

Interestingly, you can also see similar developments as those done to
appropriate non-Western mathematical/scientific knowledge in the centuries
prior within Europe. Yoga, and Mindfullness are en course to being de-rooted
and turned into Western inventions, by rewriting histories or by silencing
them. SOAS for instance has one guy who was anointed a Mahant, and he writes
books with another guy who says Yoga is a cynical rebranding of Swedish
exercises. It's all very very curious.

I suppose, if a foreigner flatters an Indian, he'll give you every bit of
wealth he has (and then cry foul later). Hehe.

~~~
mindfulthrow1
“SOAS for instance has one guy who was anointed a Mahant, and he writes books
with another guy who says Yoga is a cynical rebranding of Swedish exercises.”

I’m assuming you mean James Mallinson. I met him briefly in Jaipur and had
been wondering who the white guy with dreadlocks was that I kept seeing around
(here in the US it’s considered racist by people of color to wear dreads if
you’re not black). To make a long story short, he doesn’t practice yoga, is
largely a rich guy that likes the “sadhu lifestyle” (he’s a Baron in the UK),
and studies ancient texts in the way a typical white academic would. But I
will say for all my skepticism going into it, I read his “Roots of Yoga” and
it was great.

It’s clear that the practice of yoga is syncretic and means many different
things to many different people. We definitely should criticize all the white
girls in the west that are using Yoga as a brand for their calisthenics,
teaching without knowing anything about pranayama or dhyana. Their style of
practice is so far from any Hatha practice I’ve done you can’t even consider
it the same thing. Most of those standing postures they do I’ve never
encountered from my Hatha teachers. What these white western women are doing
is for the most part awful and pretty racist.

However, we should be equally skeptical of Hindutva making claims about what
Yoga is while ignoring the long, syncretic history and how it grew and
exchanged practices with Buddhists, Sufis, Jains, and all sorts of other sects
and groups through thousands of years.

~~~
pergadad
Why would doing yoga in a way that you consider 'wrong' as racist. That's an
incredibly ignorant statement. There are hundreds if not more branches of
hatha yoga, not to mention all the other kids of yoga. There is no racism in
doing it this or that or a completely different way. You might criticise that
they call it yoga, still it's not in any way racist.

Please open your mind.

Thank you, A fellow hatha yoga practitioner.

~~~
mindfulthrow1
It’s not about the asana being “right” or “wrong”, and in many cases I’d say
it doesn’t even matter what the asanas are in your practice, as long as
they’re moving the practitioner towards dhyana. But would you not admit that
there is a lot of cultural appropriation around yoga in the west? Girls on
Instagram with “Namaslay” shirts and dream catchers and sanskrit tattoos?
Taking, packaging, marketing, and selling things in this way is racist.

Of course the modern practice of asana in the west isn’t inherently racist,
and you don’t need to only be doing postures that were written down in old
books. But wearing an Aum shirt and never understanding the deeper cultural
contexts of what it is you’re wearing and practicing is racist. I’ve had
conversations with people that have practiced yoga for years and literally
have asked me “what’s asana?” and had never heard of pranayama. Were they
racist? No, probably not, but it does speak volumes to how yoga is sold in the
USA.

~~~
Ididntdothis
I don't think you should be using the word "racist" here. Seems people are
culturally disinterested but "racist" is something else.

------
wutbrodo
I apologize for the tangent, but:

> Google engineers [are] working 60-70 hours a week - very stressful.

Is this true? I worked a hard 35 hours a week when I was at Google. Granted, I
was a junior engineer, but the fact that I could get away with that and have
it not affect my career unduly always makes me surprised to hear descriptions
of Google as a sweatshop.

Can any Googlers say whether this has changed in the few years since I left? I
know they're a massive company so generalizing can be hard, but this is so far
from my experience that if be surprised if it was true of enough of the
company to make anything approaching a blanket statement. I've always thought
that it would be nice to go back to Google to retire in a few years.

~~~
nitwit005
Not a Googler, but I'd tend to assume they made the number up. Long hours are
part of the mythology around silicon valley companies.

~~~
wutbrodo
Yea, it's not strictly 100% rational of me but to see someone just grossly
lying (or being confident in his ignorance) about a fact I know otherwise
makes me skeptical of anything else he might have to say..

------
rgrieselhuber
I've always found the Japanese adoption of Zen to be very interesting
historically. As a "technology" or body of techniques, the advantages one can
gain from meditation, enhanced awareness, and asceticism are well-documented.

Where I would caution practitioners is to be very wary of religious
invitations to ego death and loss of control over chakras (Never "open" your
chakras - which are a physiological metaphor for very important aspects of
your Self. These aspects should be disciplined and controlled, never
"opened.")

Everything below your heart represents your base passions and failure to
discipline these most of all turns you into an easily manipulated slave.

~~~
GeorgeWBasic
Do you have any advice for someone looking to learn more about that? Any good
places to start?

~~~
rgrieselhuber
I wish there was something neatly compiled.

Plato's model in the Republic, when read as a manual for elites wishing to
control society on every level, is revealing in how people are enslaved
through their own lack of discipline.

This clicked, for me, with the physiological metaphor in my previous comment
when I realized that self-discipline often follows a path upward from control
over sexual desires, to control over hunger, to control over one's emotions
(the heart) and on up as you master each lower level.

Conversely, failure to exercise discipline over the upper levels, over time,
slides you down into the basest level, like an infant, where you lack control
even over your own biological functions. Apply the microcosm of your own self
to the macrocosm of society and the same principles are in effect.

------
decasteve
When you see mindfulness taught and promoted like some sort of relaxation
technique or that if you just think mindfully you’re going to cope with stress
better, then it’s easy for someone coming from a Buddhist practice to say,
that’s not mindfulness—at least not in the same spirit of the word.

I took transmission of the precepts twice and the 2nd time was with Thich Nhat
Hanh who called them the “Mindfulness Trainings” instead of the “Precepts”.
That’s how I came to know mindfulness. It is intertwined with refuge, the
Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. It’s a faith in the precepts. It’s not a
practice one can do on their own nor a practice that’s separate from
meditation.

If you relate corporate mindfulness with Buddhism, it is a perversion. It’s a
different practice and it’s dishonest to promote it otherwise. Call the
practice whatever you want, call it mindfulness, call it prayer, call it feel-
goodness, but it’s deceptive to call it a Buddhist practice if you ignore its
underpinnings.

~~~
vidarh
My impression is that most people promoting mindfulness are often keen to
avoid the association to Buddhism or at least downplay it, not exploit it, to
avoid a resistance to picking up a religious practice.

Gil Fronsdal in his "Introduction to Mindfulness Meditation" jokingly talk
about how organizations holding courses in "Mindfulness based stress
deduction" carefully avoid the "B-word", and then go on to give a pratical
introduction that barely mentions Buddhism.

Quite a bit of mindfulness meditation material has been published by Buddhist
monks and teachers that have taken care to stress their utility as methods
separated from the Buddhist tradition. Fronsdal's courses is one example.
Bhante Henepola Gunaratana's Mindfulness in Plain English is another popular
example that takes great care to explain its position in Buddhist practice and
then promptly point out that his book is a practical guide to the meditation
practice, not a guide to the spiritual aspects, and mostly ignores Buddhism
from then on.

When talking about mindfulness in a secularised form, we are usually talking
specifically about mindfulness based meditation, not the other aspects, or at
least to a lesser extent other aspects. To me that was what made it palatable,
as I'd had a casual interest for a long time, but found spiritually focused
descriptions very off-putting.

------
harimau777
It strikes me as odd to depict improving soldiers' performance as a distortion
of mindfulness without mentioning the long history of meditation in the
martial arts.

~~~
gherkinnn
That’s because the current _mindfulness_ (something about that term irks me)
trend originated in hippie circles. Or at least, everybody I came cross using
that term was of a notable flowery persuasion. Not meditation, mind you. But
_mindfulness_.

So it’s not surprising that some are shocked to find a core part of their
identity is used as a tool to improve those parts of humanity they despise the
most.

------
bigred100
Can someone tell me why it’s socially acceptable to have these mindfulness
things in work? I’m sympathetic to the argument that religions should be
largely kept out of the workplace, so this isn’t a “checkmate atheists”
argument. But if some guy came into my office and started saying we’re going
to recite the rosary with all the “Jesus” and “Mary” parts replaced with
something generic like “the universe” I cant imagine he’d get away with it.

~~~
depr
This is explained in the book:

“Successful branding stories are often characterized by disruption, which
turns an established industry or experience upside down. The MBSR brand is one
such disruptive force, with Kabat-Zinn’s talking points including pithy quips
such as: “The Buddha wasn’t a Buddhist,” or Buddhists “don’t own mindfulness”
because it is “an innate, universal human capacity.” Potential customers are
thereby assured that MBSR is a non-religious product, yet still offers the
best bits of what the Buddha taught. In Kabat-Zinn’s words, his version of
mindfulness is “a place-holder for the entire dharma.”

The Western world has co-opted an aspect of Buddhism, which works to improve
productivity, and discarded the part that doesn't fit its worldview; the other
pillars of Buddhism. This enables it to be sold as non-religious.

------
hownottowrite
Ironic that Ron Purser hijacked the term McMindfulness from Miles Neale who
first wrote about it back in 2011. In fact, the opening of Neale's essay
"McMindfulness and Frozen Yoga" sounds an awful lot like this post (not to
mention Purser's own 2013 article "Beyond McMindfulness").

Ref: "McMindfulness and Frozen Yoga: Rediscovering the Essential Teachings of
Ethics and Wisdom" (2011)

[https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5a8e29ffcd39c3de866b5...](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5a8e29ffcd39c3de866b5e14/t/5b5303d91ae6cf630b641909/1532167130908/McMindfulness.pdf)

~~~
depr
Purser acknowledges that Neale came up with the term in his book, and e.g.
here: [https://insighttimer.com/blog/ronald-purser-mcmindfulness-
we...](https://insighttimer.com/blog/ronald-purser-mcmindfulness-western-
mindfulness-movement/) so I'm not sure that counts as hijacking. Especially as
hijacking implies not retaining the original meaning of the word.

~~~
hownottowrite
Purser mentions Neale once in the book then takes the word and the entire
concept for his own use. I don’t want to be rude, but that’s the literal
definition of hijacking.

~~~
philwelch
No, the literal definition of hijacking is to forcibly commandeer a running
vehicle.

~~~
hownottowrite
The original definition of hijack refers to the seizure of goods in transit,
typically contraband. Vehicles were involved as well, but it was really about
prohibition booze. Exclusive application to vehicles didn’t come about until
the mid-late 60s. Since then, it’s been applied to ideas, concepts, and even
things like meetings and parties. Basically, taking things by force for other
means.

~~~
philwelch
Yes but I think most people think of eg storming an airliner cockpit as
“literal hijacking” and the notion of hijacking “ideas, concepts, and even
things like meetings and parties” as metaphorical.

~~~
hownottowrite
That doesn’t change the definition or the etymology of the term. Why are you
getting bent of shape about it? Or are you just hijacking the comment for
lulz?

------
prisonality
As with everything - context is required.

Mindfulness is only one aspect that is part of a system that is the 'eightfold
noble path' which have to be taken wholesome:

right view, right motivation, right speech, right action, right livelihood,
right endeavour, right mindfulness, right collectedness / stillness

They're of equal importance, if not higher: particularly #1, #2 and in the
context of the discussion: #4: right action.

------
mbrock
"The problem is that the way they brought these into institutions was very
non-confrontational, very non-oppositional, in order to to get a foot in the
door. And so they're working with these other elites in these institutions and
over time they became co-opted in my opinion. So by not offering a challenge
to these corporate interests, the radical revolutionary potential of these
practices have been neutered."

Somehow I have a feeling that this desire for meditation practices to be
"radical revolutionary" in terms of political economy is more Californian than
traditional Buddhist...

~~~
cjg
No - Buddhism sees its central ideas to be radical and counter-cultural -
particularly that one's actions should come from ethical principles rather
than just conforming to a group.

~~~
mbrock
Does it teach working laymen to embrace radical and countercultural ideas?
That’s not my impression of Buddhism in Thailand, Burma, Japan, etc.

------
toyg
Embracing mindfulness practices literally saved my business this year. It has
turned me into a machine, my productivity has skyrocketed. I work alone and
from home most days, procrastination was a massive issue - but now just
clearing my head twice a day through a simple routine ensures I never shy away
from anything.

I am not interested in the religious aspect, as much as I respect the fact
that the practice as we know it evolved through the ages thanks to Buddhist
and Hindu monks. I don’t see a problem with it: one doesn’t have to be
Christian to appreciate Latin calligraphy, or to be Muslim to appreciate
algebra.

This said, the critique against corporate entities coopting the practice is
predictable and inevitable. If any human technique or technology can be put to
good use in order to make money, it will be. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use
it. A pen can be used to write a novel or a prison sentence, it doesn’t mean
the pen itself is bad or that we are somehow “betraying” the intentions of the
original inventors of pens.

(Edit: i also don’t think I could ever really meditate with other people... I
bet most of these corporate congregations actually achieve very little and are
just another social occasion for the people involved).

------
cromwellian
The idea that the only source of stress comes from work or that you shouldn’t
separate mindfulness from the rest of Buddhist teachings seems wrong to me.
Buddhism takes generally useful philosophy and adds a bunch of supernatural bs
to it that isn’t need get the benefits.

IMHO Daoist philosophy got it right and is the secret to removing stress and
anxiety from almost everything. Daoist teachings have been adopted into
traditional cognitive behavior therapy now called “dialectic behavioral
therapy”

I learned this when I was in my 20s in college during huge bouts of depression
and social anxiety and haven’t been depressed in 20 years.

My son who was recently suffering from social anxiety disorder was practically
cured by it.

Strip down these mindfulness systems their simplest, and discard all the
supernatural mumbo jumbo, incense burning, and ritual chanting. It’s easier to
digest and remember.

If you just try to imagine that the past and future don’t really exist, that
categories and divisions of reality are wholly created models of it by our
mind, and that we can relinquish and let go and let negative thoughts or
events wash over us like water, you can get a long way to ignoring most of the
stress inducing phenomena in your life unless they are really salient.

At least that’s what’s worked form me. Should some starstuff on the pale blue
dot really get worked up by wholly changeable and artificial deadlines? You
can view them as important and plan for them yes, but don’t let your cortisol
levels flare when things don’t go according to plans. Plans are changeable,
life and health is more important.

------
ydb
Absolutely appalling. This is something that I've intuited happening for many
years now, but couldn't quite find the words to describe. This phenomena is
pervasive and, dare I say, integral to the functioning of capital in the 21st
century.

People are more alienated now than ever before in the course of history, so it
follows that the machinations of capital come to a pseudo-religion in order to
pacify dissent. It's staggering, and should give everybody on Hacker News
pause.

------
peterwwillis
Lots of the goals of mindfulness are useful, but I find the term overly
reductive, and the way it's taught too abstract. Ask yourself if the more
shallow goals of mindfulness make sense. For example, Thich Nhit Hanh
constantly says it's about presence, peace and happiness.

But you can't be happy all the time, and shouldn't be. If you're happy, can
you experience the moving emotion of a really tragic movie? Can you get angry
about social injustice? We need a range of emotions. Really we should want to
manage them better, not just always try to be happy, as if that's the state we
should always be in.

Also, thinking about the past and the future is useful, as long as you have a
practical purpose for it. Thinking about the future is a great motivator, and
can make us happy. Oh boy, my birthday is coming up! I almost have enough
money to buy that house! And the past is a great teacher to learn from.
Dwelling in a negative way is bad for us, but that can apply to the present,
too. Really we should just not be absent-mindedly preoccupied with negativity,
regardless of time.

~~~
jodrellblank
I am (morbidly?) curious how Thich Nhat Hanh is experiencing life after a
severe stroke; he is around 93 years old and has been paralyzed and unable to
speak for about 4 years now; we'll never have a clear view whether a lifetime
of mindfulness practice has helped him make peace with this compared to other
elderly stroke sufferers, or whether the damage to his brain has changed his
experience a lot. I've sometimes felt that the only way to get through a
massive life upheaval is to have prepared for it in advance - in more common
geeky terms, "I have already planned a secret so I can verify if I ever meet
my clone" is something you can only do in advance; possibly a state of being
OK with dementia or brain damage and waking every day not knowing where you
are is something you can only prepare in advance while healthy, so those
habits carry on after the point where you need them but no longer have the
wherewithal to create them.

 _But you can 't be happy all the time, and shouldn't be._

Dr David Burns, psychiatrist frames it to patients that people can expect 5
days of happiness and 2 crappy days in a given week, and if you don't have 5
happy days you should adjust something, but if you don't have 2 crappy days,
then you're bordering on manic and should adjust something the other way. But
then he considers a few minutes of feeling bad enough to count as time to take
note and adjust for it.

My take on this is that "you should be happy all the time" is the wrong way to
look at it, more "you shouldn't be unhappy against your will, because of
negative thoughts circulating in your head which you are ignoring and hardly
aware of". Being aware of your thoughts so you understand why you are unhappy
and then you are informed enough to take action if you choose to; but since a
lot of the reasons for unhappiness are fixations on the past and the future,
on the incorrect idea of permanence of the ego or disconnection of ego from
rest of world, or sadness at being imperfect, then becoming deeply aware of
these thoughts implicitly involves them dissipating away as you understand how
ridiculous they are; and with the sad, depressing, distorted thoughts fading
away, there's room for plenty of happiness in mindful pursuit of ordinary
activities. Thich Nhat Hahn uses examples like brushing your teeth or washing
your food bowl - these shouldn't be hurried through so you can get to the rest
of your life, these activities are your life and you should be aware of your
desire to hurry through them and be elsewhere which is making these activities
feel worse than they are. You need to do them, you don't need to wish-you-
weren't-doing-them-and-feel-sad. They need doing, you are doing them, you may
as well pay full attention to them and enjoy doing them. Alan Watts says "Zen
spirituality isn't thinking about God while peeling potatoes, Zen spirituality
is just to peel the potatoes", and "mindfulness isn't an activity to do while
sitting, mindfulness is just the way a Buddha sits (and the way a Budda does
everything)".

 _If you 're happy, can you experience the moving emotion of a really tragic
movie?_

If you're sad about not driving a Lamborghini and your startup customers
leaving and your partner being angry at you, and depressed about ageing and
your joints hurting, are any of those things helping you experience the
emotion of a really tragic movie? Yes I say a person who is generally happy
and content with life including all its problems can still experience the
emotions of a movie. (But would they want to? Can a person who is happy and
content really feel angry at treading in dog poop? Maybe they can, but would
they want to feel angry about such a thing?).

 _Thinking about the future is a great motivator, and can make us happy. Oh
boy, my birthday is coming up! I almost have enough money to buy that house!_

Which is fine in a measured way - but do be mindful that this happiness is a
fantasy about a future which has not happened, and might not happen, and
almost certainly won't happen perfectly in every way. To be excited for the
future is one thing, to base your happiness on being able to buy that house is
to invite suffering when you hit an unexpected bill and the house seller pulls
out of the market or someone else pays more, etc. Mindfulness as "be aware of
your thoughts, don't let them push you around" rather than "get rid of your
thoughts"

------
observr9
Mindfulness is being commercialized for the purpose of selling books and apps,
argues a person in a book that he is trying to sell.

~~~
ry_ry
And if the system works sans-ethics, is that a problem beyond moralistic
gatekeeping?

Since the main objection in the article was the military coopting the practice
- The basic tenants of mindfulness, as I understand them, are not anybody's
property - no matter how compelling the publisher's advances are.

And let's be honest with ourselves - the stationary and toilet paper the
military buy have the implicit eventual aim of making them better at making
things dead. I'm not convinced mindfulness training for troops is the problem
here.

Sure, there are rogue teachers, but that has applied to everything from
spurious gurus through to homebrew religions. At trial of sounding callous,
caveat emptor surely?

Nothing Mindfulness (as a brand) teaches is a super-secret arcane mystery
fercryinoutloud! If nothing else, the government spending time and money on it
can only do wonders to validate it and cement it in the public conscious.

------
Asooka
"when push came to shove, if it threatened the centres of corporate power,
these experiments in industrial democracy were basically unplugged and
defunded"

This sounds like when he got to having to tackle actual issues, he didn't have
the political tools necessary to effect real change. Of course if the
establishment was all on board to guarantee worker happiness, you wouldn't
even need mindfulness in the first place, but the problem right now is that
you can't replace the establishment and the establishment doesn't care about
you. He might want to look into working with unions and how to structure their
demands and policies in a way that will reduce people's stress. You don't
enact democracy by telling the current tyrant how cool it would be if all his
serfs revolted and took his head off.

------
pessimizer
It's not new; since the last half of the 20th century, there's been an often
unstated business religion that says that if you concentrate hard enough
you'll develop a psychic dominance that will make you successful (in sales and
management.) IMO the only reason it gets connected to Buddhism is since the
people who propagate it now are unaware of its origins (in Silva Mind
Control/Leadership Dynamics/Holiday Magic), and to give it a classier, older
pedigree.

The reason it seems like a bastardization of Buddhism is because it's not
really Buddhism at all, just a spurious justification of why the people who
are making the most money are making the most money, namely their more
perfectly ordered minds (rather than their connections and luck.)

------
nitwit005
If they wanted to provide a tested therapy as an option to staff, that would
be fine. It unfortunately generally seems to be some poorly thought out
program slapped together by management.

My mother used to be a nurse, and they brought in some people who were
apparently actual Bhuddhists of some sort. She found the whole thing offensive
for religious reasons.

On the more practical front, they were encouraging medical staff to all put
their hands in bowls of beads as an everyday activity. Not exactly the
greatest idea given that they want to keep everyone's hands sterile, and no
one washed the things.

------
benbojangles
This notion has long exited and is something which Buddhists are all to aware
of. Attachment, Value, What is there to hijack anyway when all is illusion?

It is just unfortunate that what humans have created within this inherent
existence is a reliance on money and laws protecting ownership.

If you read the Heart Sutra it will help you understand a little bit of the
struggle of absoloute reality and inherent reality.

Om Mani Padme Hum

------
8bitsrule
"corporate mindfulness"

AH ha ha. Military intelligence.

Oh well. I'd guess that Buddhism has wandered about as far from Buddha's
original teachings.

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qwerty456127
Mindfulness being trendy is a great thing. No matter how much people pay for
it or how well do they do. Wrong mindfulness is better than no mindfulness.
The more people become at least slightly more mindful - the better world we
are going to live in.

------
jwenig
Research suggests Mindfulness increases empathy and reduces anger and fear.
Wouldn’t reframing soldiers or CEOs worldview to be more compassionate
galvanize more positive change than trying to convince Sundar Pichai or
soldiers that they are bad people?

~~~
Kaveren
research does not indicate that [0]. mindfulness meditation isn't real, people
only believe it because it comes from the Mysterious East and it's Ancient.

[0] [https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/mindfulness-
no...](https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/mindfulness-no-better-
than-watching-tv/)

~~~
lexpar
You have a good citation for your first sentence, but not for your second.

~~~
Kaveren
It's like a religious person asking you to prove God isn't real. The science
favoring meditation in general is shoddy (such as [0]), when a metaanalysis
shows no evidence of a key claimed benefit to something, you'd want to be able
to demonstrate a flaw in the metaanalysis.

It's very much like acupuncture. Fake, but because it's steeped in tradition,
people will fall for it. Many Westerners have really uninformed views about
East Asian / Asian culture, which is why I believe that's the reason
meditation has the sway with people who would never convert to something like
Islam.

I comment about this all the time. Not once have I ever gotten a single good
reply challenging my claims and providing any good evidence that mindfulness
meditation is "real".

bonus: "Specifically, the moderation results showed that a significant
increase in compassion only occurred if the intervention teacher was a co-
author in the published study"

[0]
[https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/transcendental...](https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/transcendental-
meditation-pseudoscience/)

~~~
jwenig
On [0], this "Meta-Analysis" was only for pro-social behavior and the longest
study they looked at had people meditate for a total of only three months. You
are right science does not have rigorous research to support some of claimed
benefits of mindfulness meditation, but calling it fake and citing a sourc
that starts its article by declaring meditation pseudoscience does not exactly
seem rigorous either. I think the answer is somewhere in the middle: there are
definitely benefits to mindfulness meditation, but we need more research.

~~~
Kaveren
What quality evidence exists for a proclaimed benefit of mindfulness that is
unique to it, and not standard for relaxation in general?

~~~
Nancy59
The following well-conducted studies compared mindfulness to various other
'treatments':

Alsaraireh, et al. (2017). Mindfulness Meditation Versus Physical Exercise in
the Management of Depression Among Nursing Students. Journal of Nursing
Education, 56(10), 599-604.

Cherkin, et al. (2016). Effect of mindfulness-based stress reduction vs
cognitive behavioral therapy or usual care on back pain and functional
limitations in adults with chronic low back pain: a randomized clinical trial.
JAMA, 315(12), 1240-1249.

Costa, A., 2016. Turning towards or turning away: a comparison of mindfulness
meditation and guided imagery relaxation in patients with acute depression.
Behav. Cogn. Psychother. 44, 410–419.

Fissler, M., et al., 2016. An investigation of the effects of brief
mindfulness training on self-reported interoceptive awareness, the ability to
decenter, and their role in the reduction of depressive symptoms. Mindfulness
7, 1170–1181.

Kuyken, W., et al. (2016). Efficacy of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy in
prevention of depressive relapse: an individual patient data meta-analysis
from randomized trials. JAMA psychiatry, 73(6), 565-574.

~~~
Kaveren
Thanks, I'll look into the studies you mentioned.

Edit:

"CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE:

"Among adults with chronic low back pain, treatment with MBSR or CBT, compared
with usual care, resulted in greater improvement in back pain and functional
limitations at 26 weeks, with no significant differences in outcomes between
MBSR and CBT."

I don't consider this evidence in favor of mindfulness. The claim I make is
that mindfulness is merely meditation. The benefits ascribed to it are, I
claim, that of relaxation.

One other study compares physical exercise to mindfulness, but this isn't a
comparison with non-mindfulness relaxation. Also not great evidence. Same with
another. There's also one my IP can't access.

Also, I am aware that transcendental meditation isn't the same.

What would convince me mindfulness meditation may indeed have some unique
positive property: Study or even better metaanalysis with good quality and
reasonable sample size demonstrating that mindfulness meditation performs
significantly better than other forms of relaxation. Costa's comes closest to
this but the sample size is not very large. I do suspect there may be a
placebo effect at play.

~~~
Nancy59
I would have agreed with your comment 10-15 years ago – but now, the evidence
is overwhelming. I don’t have time today, but I will reply your comment in a
day or so (will also cite several meta-analyses). Meanwhile, you can take a
look at the many links I provided to your earlier (above) comment – they cite
many research studies as well.

------
swayvil
The teachings don't matter. What matters is the technique of mindfulness.

If you do the technique then you will get results.

Your reason for doing it, your philosophy of what and why. That matters not so
much.

It's like a marijuana joint in this way. Call it a spliff, reefer or doobie.
What you call it ain't gonna make a speck of difference to the high it
delivers.

So I say let the capitalists hijack it. Let them wrap it in whatever narrative
they like. As long as they do it.

Because it WILL make you smarter.

------
ptah
I would like to know what an actual Tibetan monk or Zen master thinks about
this. Westerners have a tainted "Gentle Jesus meek and mild" conception of
spiritual practice that seriously impairs our judgement on these matters

------
Barrin92
It just seems like the newest iteration of capitalism repurposing some
ideology in an Orwellian way. As Weber observed a long time ago despite
Protestantism shunning pleasures and material possessions, Protestants make
extremely good capitalists.

The same thing seems to be happening with Buddhism. I'm not Buddhist but a
pretty central teaching seems to be to let go of the self and to end desire,
whereas among the new caste of CEOs it seems to have been repurposed into a
tool to pursue ones mundane goals more effectively, and as a sort of social
signal among rich people who have so much wealth that buying a sports car
doesn't even convey any meaning any more. So now in addition to being rich
which is a precondition, you also need to reject all your wealth and meditate
in some bizarre ritual of one-upmanship.

In many ways I wish we could just go back to the olden days when those people
would do coke and throw lavish parties because at least that's honest rather
than Jack Dorsey meditating in a private retreat while minorities are being
chased down on the street by a mob organised on twitter.

------
robg
Can anyone tell me the difference between mindfulness and just deep breathing?

~~~
prisonality
the latter involves a conscious decision making of breathing in a specific
way. whilst mindfulness is a conscious decision of knowing how and when one
breathes, without necessarily forcing breathing in a specific way.

------
triangleman
And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is
no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of
righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds.

2 Cor 11:14-15

------
there_the_and
_[deleted]_

~~~
uoaei
Just participating in a culture or practice does not mean one is appropriating
it.

------
factorialboy
Keep in mind Buddhist "mindfulness" is the repackaging of existing "Indic"
ideas. This debate has been settled before. Repackage it as you like, as long
as it reaches and helps people in need.

Is capitalist mindfulness doing that? I'm not sure. If you don't like
capitalist mindfulness, do something about it.

------
smacktoward
In a capitalist society, any sufficiently popular idea will eventually get
turned into a way to sell products.

------
asimovfan
This doesn't matter. Someone who actually practices mindfulness will reap
benefits. Capitalism has no power over the method.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
Capitalism will quite happily reap the benefits by squeezing their mindful
employees just a little bit harder.

~~~
UserIsUnused
And mindfull employees will notice that and leave.

