November 17, 2025 • 22 mins
We explore a nuanced look at mindfulness: its benefits, the ethics behind how it is taught, and the critiques around commercialization and depoliticisation. William Edelglass helps us test the line between personal practice and social change with clear questions, research, and examples.
• Angela Davis’s question about mindfulness and injustice
• critiques of commodification and the mindfulness industrial complex
• instrumental use versus ethically grounded practice
• popularity of apps, corporate programs, and military adoption
• research on well-being, emotion regulation, and limits
• risks of individualising distress without systemic change
• reconnecting practice to Buddhist ethics and social responsibility
• trauma-informed design, consent, and community support
• practical ways to teach with integrity and context
• invitation to share perspectives and join deeper study
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:04):
Alright, welcome friends.
My name is Sean Fargo.
I'm the founder of MindfulnessExercises.
I was a Buddhist monk for acouple years, and I'm an
instructor for the mindfulnessprogram born at Google.
And in this episode, I thoughtit'd be really interesting to
share a lot of the commoncritiques of mindfulness that
(00:25):
some of us are hearing thesedays.
You know, mindfulness has becomeso popular over the last 20
years, largely because of itsevidence showing how good it is
for the brain and our nervoussystem and our resilience, our
mental health.
But there's also been somecritiques of mindfulness.
(00:47):
Some of them valid, some ofthem, in my opinion, not quite
as valid.
And I thought it'd be reallyfascinating to hear the take
from someone who's very, say,traditional, like I am, someone
who comes from the Buddhistworld, and to get their take on
(01:08):
the critiques of mindfulness.
So we invited William Edelglassto share his perspectives.
He is the director of studies atthe famous Barry Center for
Buddhist Studies out inMassachusetts.
He works with a lot of the topTheravadan monks and Tibetan
(01:30):
monks and Zen monks of theworld.
He's been a professor at severaldifferent universities around
the world, including Vermont,Bombay, Tibet, Emory University,
etc.
And he really knows his stuff.
And so he was a guest teacher ofour mindfulness teacher
(01:55):
certification program.
And in this talk, Williamexplores some of the more common
critiques of mindfulness, fromits commercialization and
cultural appropriation toquestions around its ethical
foundations and social impact.
(02:15):
It's a very thoughtful andnuanced reflection on what it
really means to practice andalso teach mindfulness with more
integrity in today's world.
So with that, let's get started.
SPEAKER_01 (02:31):
It may be a slightly different talk than some of the
speakers who I've seen haveshared with this community
before.
It will include some of thecritiques, ethical and political
critiques of mindfulness and themindfulness movement, and some
possible responses.
I work at a Buddhist center, Iteach retreats at IMS, the
(02:52):
Insight Meditation Society, theBarry Center for Buddhist
Studies, and other Dharmacenters.
So I should say I am kind offirmly rooted as a scholar
practitioner.
I think mindfulness is reallyimportant.
And I'm going to be sharing somethings which are critical of
mindfulness today and someresponses.
So I know that the reason you'reall here is because you have
(03:14):
your own thoughts and wisdom andbackground and experience and
reflections and readings, thequestions that I will be
exploring, and we'd all benefitfrom hearing multiple voices.
I don't know if everyone knowswho Angela Davis is.
She was, she is, a remarkable,remarkable human being, a
philosopher.
She was a professor ofphilosophy at UCLA before Ronald
(03:37):
Reagan had her fired because shewas a member of the Communist
Party.
She's also widely known as aBlack Panther, as a prison
abolitionist.
She's a great scholar,revolutionary activist, Marxist.
And she was in jail for sometime, the early 70s, when some
(03:59):
people used some weapons thatbelonged to her, but she was she
was not guilty.
But she was getting headaches.
And a doctor in the prison gaveher, doctor who was taking care
of some of the Black Panthers,gave her a book on yoga to
address her headaches.
And she became a lifelong yogior a many decade-long yogi who
(04:21):
is both doing yoga, posturalyoga, and meditation.
In 2014, there was a fundraiserfor the East Bay Meditation
Center.
There was a conversation betweenAngela Davis and John Cabotzin.
You can see a chunk of it, notall of it freely, but some of it
YouTube.
(04:42):
Angela Davis was a yoga studentof John Cabotzin's daughter,
Nashon Cabotzin.
And John Cabotzin, I assume youall know who he is.
He his father-in-law, HowardZinn, was a great, very
progressive historian, and hewas an active John Gabotzin was
an activist earlier in his life.
And Angela Davis opens thisconversation with the question:
(05:05):
what good is mindfulness if weare inhabiting a world that is
so unjust?
And that's kind of the questionthat I want to explore this
afternoon.
And complicated a little andexplored in various ways.
I should say that there is awidespread critique of
mindfulness for ethical and onethical and political grounds.
(05:28):
Some of you may be familiar withthis critique.
One of the most famous placeswhere this critique is found is
in a book by Ronald Pursercalled Mick Mindfulness.
He originally articulated thisin the Huffington Post
commentary.
The basic argument runssomething like this: that
mindfulness seems to have allthe authority of an ancient
(05:51):
Buddhist wisdom tradition likeBuddhism, and also the authority
of the legitimacy of modernscience as a practice for
healing and self-cultivation.
It has enormous authority.
And with that authority comesthis message that typically the
way many people talk aboutmindfulness suggests that the
(06:11):
well-being and stress of workersor members of communities and
family systems are theresponsibilities of individuals.
That is, it's my responsibilityto be mindful and take care of
myself rather than be ratherthan addressing structural
conditions that make us stressedor diminish our well-being.
(06:31):
So critics like Ron Purser arguethat mindfulness is a neoliberal
technology of the self.
And I'll unpack what all thatis, what how they think about
this that doesn't demand socialchange, but individualizes,
psychologizes, and medicalizesdistress in the framework of
consumer capitalism.
(06:53):
So if you unpack this critique,and there are a number of people
who've made this, it's not justRon Purser, but basically the
critique is that the discoursearound mindfulness
individualizes.
And by that, it makes us eachresponsible for our own
well-being and suggests that weshould all be dedicated to
self-improvement, that we shouldall be self-disciplining and
(07:16):
self-controlling.
And the another critique theymake is that mindfulness has
been commodified in aproblematic way.
So Calm had over half a billiondollars in income last year.
If you're able to teach in forcorporations, mindfulness, you
can make a ton of money.
I suspect that none of you aremaking tons and tons of money
(07:36):
teaching mindfulness.
So you may not relate to uh thisparticular critique.
And if I'm wrong, good for you.
And another critique that theymake that is made is that
mindfulness is instrumentalized.
So if you ask, well, ismindfulness good?
Then the question is, good towhat end?
So mindfulness in this case isthe claim is made.
(07:59):
Well, the sniper who's trainingwith mindfulness is using
mindfulness towards a bad end.
And I couldn't resist puttingthis quotation in from Rupert
Murdoch, somebody who, if youlive in Australia, the United
Kingdom, or the United States,all of our world, I mean, the
whole world has been profoundlyinfluenced by this man in ways
(08:20):
that some people appreciate andothers may not.
And he says, trying to learntranscendental meditation.
Everyone recommends, not thateasy to get started, but said to
improve everything.
So the critique is that, yeah,it improves everything, but if
you're doing things that are notwholesome, is that problematic?
And finally, the critique isthat it depoliticizes or
(08:44):
pacifies.
So instead of changing thematerial conditions, mindfulness
focuses on accepting them.
So I'm gonna come back to someof these later, but I wanted to
uh just put these out to giveyou a sense of what the critique
is.
And so in the kind of scholarlydebates about mindfulness,
(09:04):
mindfulness is used in all kindsof ways.
On the one hand, as a kind ofnatural or basic capacity to pay
attention, as what the criticswould say, a practice of being
mindful the way we talk aboutit, is conditioned by particular
interests that are oftenobscured, and then what they
(09:25):
call the mindfulness industrialcomplex.
So here are some questions thatwe're going to explore.
Is mindfulness an example ofindividual practice that
contributes to transformativesocial and political action?
Is mindfulness a form ofneoliberal self-governance?
Can it be either one dependingon the context?
Is it neither?
What about ethics?
How does mindfulness impact ourmoral lives?
(09:47):
Is mindfulness necessary forethics?
And again, as I said at thebeginning, my background is very
much rooted in Buddhism and inall classical Buddhist
traditions.
Mindfulness is indeed necessaryfor ethics, and mindfulness does
help us become more ethical.
So we're going to look at someof that.
So, first, some preliminaries.
One of the reasons that thiscritique, that these critiques
(10:10):
have been a part of thediscourse around mindfulness,
and many people are critical ofmindfulness, is that mindfulness
has become really popular.
In the United States, accordingto the National Institutes of
Health survey of 135,000Americans, something like 60
million Americans meditate.
(10:31):
Here it says 18.3%.
And these are people who aremeditating at least several
times a week.
And if you look at lessfrequent, this is a Pew research
study.
Overall, 23% of US adults saythey meditate for spiritual
reasons at least once a week.
(10:51):
And if you look at the number ofAmericans who are meditating at
all, about half say that theydo, or a little bit more than
half.
And if you look at the apps, theapps are hugely popular.
There are many millions ofpeople using the meditation
apps.
And between 2015 and 2020, therewere more than 2,500 apps that
(11:16):
were launched, meditation apps.
So that is giving access tomeditation that is much, much,
much more broad than there wasever before.
You don't have to live near ameditation teacher or never near
a meditation center.
You can just get on your phoneand start meditating.
So then it has percolatedthroughout society.
(11:39):
You can do programs on mindfulmoney, how to engage mindfully
with money, which is important,and how to be more mindful at
work.
So you're probably familiar withprogram meditation programs at
work.
These are some of the bigcompanies who offer mindfulness
(12:00):
programs to their employees.
And this is partly why thesecritiques have risen up, because
these colossals of capitalismhave invested real money into
providing mindfulness programsfor their employees.
You can do mindfulness in themilitary.
(12:21):
The military has its ownmindfulness app and a mind,
there's a military mindmeditation podcast.
So the military has invested alot into it.
It's, you know, this is acomplicated question.
People who soldiers who gothrough a mindfulness program
are less likely to suffer fromPTSD after their deployment than
(12:43):
soldiers who don't.
And so if soldiers are goinginto combat on behalf of their
society, or at least ordered toby their government, there's an
argument to be made that theyshould not have to suffer PTSD,
not be as likely to suffer PTSD.
But it's a question that peoplethink about.
(13:03):
There's probably familiar withmindful sex.
If depending on how mindful youwere, you may then it may then
be an opportunity for mindfulbirthing.
But of course, mindful sex mightbe, may or may not involve birth
control.
And that leads to mindfulparenting.
There's mindful athlete.
A meditation room, this headlinesays, could one day be as much a
(13:26):
part of an athletic program asthe weight room, film study, and
the training table, all thethings that are helpful for
athletes and major teams incolleges, high schools,
professional leagues.
There's a baseball team, afootball team, and a basketball
team, all have meditationprograms for their athletes.
And putting that together,here's even a book, Let Them
(13:47):
Play, The Power and Joy ofMindful Sports Parenting.
So there's a parenting andathletes come together.
So there's a mindful, a book forbeing a mindful sports parent,
depending on what happens withthe mindful sex and mindful
birthing.
There may be mindful marriage.
And if that doesn't work out,there's always mindful divorce.
Either way, one hopes thatthere's mindful aging and
(14:11):
eventually mindful dying.
And all along the way, ideally,there's mindful eating.
And if you need a product tomindfully eat, you have mindful
mints or trip, mindful blend,calm melon cucumber drink, or
mindful mayo, which is a veganmayo.
I mean, what you can see here isthat mindfulness sells.
(14:33):
Mindfulness has a certain, je nesais quoi, a certain power in
our society, in our culture,that things can be sold using
it.
If you don't like mindful vegan,you can have mindful meats.
These are organic meats that arecows or both dairy cows and then
become beef cows.
You can paint your room amindful gray and you can have
(14:54):
mindful gifts.
This is one of my favorite socksthat support mental health.
But if you if you want themindful moment curated gift box,
you can give someone a sock thatsupports their mental health, or
a mindful potion kit for a wildadventure, or mindful hair care,
or a mindful knittingcollection.
And here, especially coming froma Buddhist background where the
(15:14):
fifth precept is about not beingheedless, this is my personal
favorite.
Of the images I found, this is awoman in a meditative posture
with a bunch of pot plantsbehind her.
And she works for a cannabiscompany, which is called
Mindful.
This is their image.
(15:35):
And you can see, I don't know ifyou can read it, but Mindful's
Meg Sanders.
So Mindful is the company, thecannabis company.
And it's the power of positivebranding.
What this this is the cannabisbusiness times.
What it's saying is thatpositive branding is using
mindful.
So all of these things, oh, andhere's another one I like.
(15:56):
If you if you're taking themindful cannabis, here's mindful
munchies for you, masteringcannabis cravings.
So that's a book.
So all of this together showsthe power of mindfulness in our
society today.
And it is endorsed or justifiedby science, which brings
together kind of science is akind of a common language that
(16:18):
the shared interests ofreligious, typically Buddhist,
but not just Buddhist andsecular communities have.
And it provides economic andcultural resources.
I also want to say it alleviatessuffering.
I I don't want to leave, I don'twant to let that part go, but I
just want to talk about some ofthe cultural phenomena of
mindfulness.
And there's enormous amounts ofacademic literature now on
(16:42):
mindfulness.
So these are the number ofpublications in the last 55
years on mindfulness.
If you can see earlier slidesfrom 2018, the remarkable thing
is that it has continued to growand continue to increase at such
a remarkable rate.
So there's almost 3,000publications in 2020 on
mindfulness, and there's morenow.
(17:03):
I just couldn't find a morerecent graph.
This word map is taken from,with keywords, is taken from an
article which is a meta-analysisof all the publications on
mindfulness.
So you can see the differentcolors of their different areas:
acceptance, so the green,depression, anxiety, cognitive
(17:24):
behavioral therapy, thesetherapeutic ones, the red, the
red, emotion regulation,self-report, emotion,
personality, stress,intervention, outcomes, quality
of life, women.
It's it's a mindfulness isstudied now very, very broadly.
And there are all thesedifferent, all these different
therapies that reduce stress,that address mood disorders,
(17:49):
anxiety, bipolar, chronicfatigue, binge eating disorders,
maternal well-being during andpost-pregnancy, psychological
health and quality of life incancer patients, trauma
resilience, all kinds of things.
There's so many therapists nowusing mindfulness.
So you can see this list.
Better sleep is an interestingone because if you meditate more
(18:11):
than 45 minutes a day,supposedly, you're not going to
need as much sleep and you don'tsleep as deeply.
So people who meditate a lotdon't sleep as deeply
necessarily.
That was one of the findings ofWilloughby Britton, her first
one that made her recognize thatmeditation may not do everything
we might think it does.
And some of you may be familiarwith this study that Matt
(18:34):
Killingsworth and Dan Gilbertdid at Harvard.
They gave about 5,000 peoplehandheld devices.
And at random hours duringrandom times during waking
hours, they asked threequestions.
What are you doing?
What are you thinking about?
And how happy are you?
And there is a very strongcorrelation between thinking
about what you were doing andbeing happy.
So the more you were doingthings that you were thinking
(18:56):
about doing other things, theless happy you were.
And this is a widespreadcorrelation.
And it's also connected to kindof how people think about
Buddhism.
There's this book, The HappinessProject, which was a New York
Times bestseller.
And there's a chapter thatbegins when I told people I was
working on a book abouthappiness.
The single most common responsewas, you should spend some time
(19:17):
studying Buddhism.
A close second was, So are youdrinking a bottle of wine every
night?
So the book that gets mostrecommended to her is the Dalai
Lama's book, The Art ofHappiness.
And a friend says, I can'tbelieve you're not practicing
meditation.
If you're studying happiness,you really have to try it.
The fact that you don't want totry meditation means that you
need it desperately.
(19:37):
So you get all these books onhappiness in Buddhism, which is
really about happiness andmeditation for the most part.
Loving-kindness, therevolutionary art of happiness,
Buddhism for busy people findinghappiness in an uncertain world,
real happiness, the power ofmeditation, and of course the
Dalai Lama's book, The Art ofHappiness.
And Matthew Ricard is thescientist at the Center for
(20:01):
Healthy Minds at the Universityof Wisconsin, did a bunch of
tests on him, which led to thepress saying that he was the
happiest man in the worldbecause of his meditation.
So to sum a lot of that up,here's a systematic review and
meta-analysis of psychologicalinterventions to improve mental
well-being, which says thatmindfulness-based and
(20:22):
multi-component positivepsychological interventions
demonstrated the greatestefficacy in both clinical and
non-clinical populations.
So for overall well-being, thesepeople are arguing, mindfulness
is of paramount, well, is mostefficacious, which is why
sometimes you bump into people.
I work at a meditation center.
And so you may bump into peoplelike this Chinese monk.
(20:47):
If you're not familiar with TheOnion, it's a uh it's a
publication that, as it says,America's finest news source.
Historians discover meditationspread by from ancient China by
an annoying monk who wouldn'tshut up about how it changed his
life.
Just the idea being that thereare plenty of people, you
probably know some of them.
You may be one of them, for whommeditation has been
transformative and you want toshare it with others.
unknown (21:10):
All right.
SPEAKER_00 (21:11):
Thank you so much for listening.
You know, these guest teacherworkshops are just one of my
favorite parts of ourmindfulness teacher
certification program becausepeople like William share a lot
of nuanced thoughts andreflections that really help us
to grow and evolve andunderstand new perspectives.
(21:34):
And I'd be curious what yourtake on this is.
Like, do you feel likemindfulness is too commercial or
that it's lacking ethics, orthat it's not embodied enough?
Just be kind of curious whatyour take is on how mindfulness
is taught these days, and andwhat your perspective is.
(21:59):
So if you'd like to joinconversations with us with
people like William, you canjoin our mindfulness teacher
certification program atmindfulnessercises.com slash
certify, where you can deepenyour own practice and discover
your authentic voice as someonewho shares mindfulness with
(22:21):
others.
You can also connect and joinour supportive global community.
If this episode supported you insome way, we'd love it if you
could take a moment to give afive star review or share it
with your friends so that we canhelp others.
Thank you so much for listening,and I hope to see you again soon
(22:44):
in a different podcast episode.
Thank you.
Alright, welcome friends.
My name is Sean Fargo.
I'm the founder of MindfulnessExercises.
I was a Buddhist monk for acouple years, and I'm an
instructor for the mindfulnessprogram born at Google.
And in this episode, I thoughtit'd be really interesting to
share a lot of the commoncritiques of mindfulness that
(00:25):
some of us are hearing thesedays.
You know, mindfulness has becomeso popular over the last 20
years, largely because of itsevidence showing how good it is
for the brain and our nervoussystem and our resilience, our
mental health.
But there's also been somecritiques of mindfulness.
(00:47):
Some of them valid, some ofthem, in my opinion, not quite
as valid.
And I thought it'd be reallyfascinating to hear the take
from someone who's very, say,traditional, like I am, someone
who comes from the Buddhistworld, and to get their take on
(01:08):
the critiques of mindfulness.
So we invited William Edelglassto share his perspectives.
He is the director of studies atthe famous Barry Center for
Buddhist Studies out inMassachusetts.
He works with a lot of the topTheravadan monks and Tibetan
(01:30):
monks and Zen monks of theworld.
He's been a professor at severaldifferent universities around
the world, including Vermont,Bombay, Tibet, Emory University,
etc.
And he really knows his stuff.
And so he was a guest teacher ofour mindfulness teacher
(01:55):
certification program.
And in this talk, Williamexplores some of the more common
critiques of mindfulness, fromits commercialization and
cultural appropriation toquestions around its ethical
foundations and social impact.
(02:15):
It's a very thoughtful andnuanced reflection on what it
really means to practice andalso teach mindfulness with more
integrity in today's world.
So with that, let's get started.
SPEAKER_01 (02:31):
It may be a slightly different talk than some of the
speakers who I've seen haveshared with this community
before.
It will include some of thecritiques, ethical and political
critiques of mindfulness and themindfulness movement, and some
possible responses.
I work at a Buddhist center, Iteach retreats at IMS, the
(02:52):
Insight Meditation Society, theBarry Center for Buddhist
Studies, and other Dharmacenters.
So I should say I am kind offirmly rooted as a scholar
practitioner.
I think mindfulness is reallyimportant.
And I'm going to be sharing somethings which are critical of
mindfulness today and someresponses.
So I know that the reason you'reall here is because you have
(03:14):
your own thoughts and wisdom andbackground and experience and
reflections and readings, thequestions that I will be
exploring, and we'd all benefitfrom hearing multiple voices.
I don't know if everyone knowswho Angela Davis is.
She was, she is, a remarkable,remarkable human being, a
philosopher.
She was a professor ofphilosophy at UCLA before Ronald
(03:37):
Reagan had her fired because shewas a member of the Communist
Party.
She's also widely known as aBlack Panther, as a prison
abolitionist.
She's a great scholar,revolutionary activist, Marxist.
And she was in jail for sometime, the early 70s, when some
(03:59):
people used some weapons thatbelonged to her, but she was she
was not guilty.
But she was getting headaches.
And a doctor in the prison gaveher, doctor who was taking care
of some of the Black Panthers,gave her a book on yoga to
address her headaches.
And she became a lifelong yogior a many decade-long yogi who
(04:21):
is both doing yoga, posturalyoga, and meditation.
In 2014, there was a fundraiserfor the East Bay Meditation
Center.
There was a conversation betweenAngela Davis and John Cabotzin.
You can see a chunk of it, notall of it freely, but some of it
YouTube.
(04:42):
Angela Davis was a yoga studentof John Cabotzin's daughter,
Nashon Cabotzin.
And John Cabotzin, I assume youall know who he is.
He his father-in-law, HowardZinn, was a great, very
progressive historian, and hewas an active John Gabotzin was
an activist earlier in his life.
And Angela Davis opens thisconversation with the question:
(05:05):
what good is mindfulness if weare inhabiting a world that is
so unjust?
And that's kind of the questionthat I want to explore this
afternoon.
And complicated a little andexplored in various ways.
I should say that there is awidespread critique of
mindfulness for ethical and onethical and political grounds.
(05:28):
Some of you may be familiar withthis critique.
One of the most famous placeswhere this critique is found is
in a book by Ronald Pursercalled Mick Mindfulness.
He originally articulated thisin the Huffington Post
commentary.
The basic argument runssomething like this: that
mindfulness seems to have allthe authority of an ancient
(05:51):
Buddhist wisdom tradition likeBuddhism, and also the authority
of the legitimacy of modernscience as a practice for
healing and self-cultivation.
It has enormous authority.
And with that authority comesthis message that typically the
way many people talk aboutmindfulness suggests that the
(06:11):
well-being and stress of workersor members of communities and
family systems are theresponsibilities of individuals.
That is, it's my responsibilityto be mindful and take care of
myself rather than be ratherthan addressing structural
conditions that make us stressedor diminish our well-being.
(06:31):
So critics like Ron Purser arguethat mindfulness is a neoliberal
technology of the self.
And I'll unpack what all thatis, what how they think about
this that doesn't demand socialchange, but individualizes,
psychologizes, and medicalizesdistress in the framework of
consumer capitalism.
(06:53):
So if you unpack this critique,and there are a number of people
who've made this, it's not justRon Purser, but basically the
critique is that the discoursearound mindfulness
individualizes.
And by that, it makes us eachresponsible for our own
well-being and suggests that weshould all be dedicated to
self-improvement, that we shouldall be self-disciplining and
(07:16):
self-controlling.
And the another critique theymake is that mindfulness has
been commodified in aproblematic way.
So Calm had over half a billiondollars in income last year.
If you're able to teach in forcorporations, mindfulness, you
can make a ton of money.
I suspect that none of you aremaking tons and tons of money
(07:36):
teaching mindfulness.
So you may not relate to uh thisparticular critique.
And if I'm wrong, good for you.
And another critique that theymake that is made is that
mindfulness is instrumentalized.
So if you ask, well, ismindfulness good?
Then the question is, good towhat end?
So mindfulness in this case isthe claim is made.
(07:59):
Well, the sniper who's trainingwith mindfulness is using
mindfulness towards a bad end.
And I couldn't resist puttingthis quotation in from Rupert
Murdoch, somebody who, if youlive in Australia, the United
Kingdom, or the United States,all of our world, I mean, the
whole world has been profoundlyinfluenced by this man in ways
(08:20):
that some people appreciate andothers may not.
And he says, trying to learntranscendental meditation.
Everyone recommends, not thateasy to get started, but said to
improve everything.
So the critique is that, yeah,it improves everything, but if
you're doing things that are notwholesome, is that problematic?
And finally, the critique isthat it depoliticizes or
(08:44):
pacifies.
So instead of changing thematerial conditions, mindfulness
focuses on accepting them.
So I'm gonna come back to someof these later, but I wanted to
uh just put these out to giveyou a sense of what the critique
is.
And so in the kind of scholarlydebates about mindfulness,
(09:04):
mindfulness is used in all kindsof ways.
On the one hand, as a kind ofnatural or basic capacity to pay
attention, as what the criticswould say, a practice of being
mindful the way we talk aboutit, is conditioned by particular
interests that are oftenobscured, and then what they
(09:25):
call the mindfulness industrialcomplex.
So here are some questions thatwe're going to explore.
Is mindfulness an example ofindividual practice that
contributes to transformativesocial and political action?
Is mindfulness a form ofneoliberal self-governance?
Can it be either one dependingon the context?
Is it neither?
What about ethics?
How does mindfulness impact ourmoral lives?
(09:47):
Is mindfulness necessary forethics?
And again, as I said at thebeginning, my background is very
much rooted in Buddhism and inall classical Buddhist
traditions.
Mindfulness is indeed necessaryfor ethics, and mindfulness does
help us become more ethical.
So we're going to look at someof that.
So, first, some preliminaries.
One of the reasons that thiscritique, that these critiques
(10:10):
have been a part of thediscourse around mindfulness,
and many people are critical ofmindfulness, is that mindfulness
has become really popular.
In the United States, accordingto the National Institutes of
Health survey of 135,000Americans, something like 60
million Americans meditate.
(10:31):
Here it says 18.3%.
And these are people who aremeditating at least several
times a week.
And if you look at lessfrequent, this is a Pew research
study.
Overall, 23% of US adults saythey meditate for spiritual
reasons at least once a week.
(10:51):
And if you look at the number ofAmericans who are meditating at
all, about half say that theydo, or a little bit more than
half.
And if you look at the apps, theapps are hugely popular.
There are many millions ofpeople using the meditation
apps.
And between 2015 and 2020, therewere more than 2,500 apps that
(11:16):
were launched, meditation apps.
So that is giving access tomeditation that is much, much,
much more broad than there wasever before.
You don't have to live near ameditation teacher or never near
a meditation center.
You can just get on your phoneand start meditating.
So then it has percolatedthroughout society.
(11:39):
You can do programs on mindfulmoney, how to engage mindfully
with money, which is important,and how to be more mindful at
work.
So you're probably familiar withprogram meditation programs at
work.
These are some of the bigcompanies who offer mindfulness
(12:00):
programs to their employees.
And this is partly why thesecritiques have risen up, because
these colossals of capitalismhave invested real money into
providing mindfulness programsfor their employees.
You can do mindfulness in themilitary.
(12:21):
The military has its ownmindfulness app and a mind,
there's a military mindmeditation podcast.
So the military has invested alot into it.
It's, you know, this is acomplicated question.
People who soldiers who gothrough a mindfulness program
are less likely to suffer fromPTSD after their deployment than
(12:43):
soldiers who don't.
And so if soldiers are goinginto combat on behalf of their
society, or at least ordered toby their government, there's an
argument to be made that theyshould not have to suffer PTSD,
not be as likely to suffer PTSD.
But it's a question that peoplethink about.
(13:03):
There's probably familiar withmindful sex.
If depending on how mindful youwere, you may then it may then
be an opportunity for mindfulbirthing.
But of course, mindful sex mightbe, may or may not involve birth
control.
And that leads to mindfulparenting.
There's mindful athlete.
A meditation room, this headlinesays, could one day be as much a
(13:26):
part of an athletic program asthe weight room, film study, and
the training table, all thethings that are helpful for
athletes and major teams incolleges, high schools,
professional leagues.
There's a baseball team, afootball team, and a basketball
team, all have meditationprograms for their athletes.
And putting that together,here's even a book, Let Them
(13:47):
Play, The Power and Joy ofMindful Sports Parenting.
So there's a parenting andathletes come together.
So there's a mindful, a book forbeing a mindful sports parent,
depending on what happens withthe mindful sex and mindful
birthing.
There may be mindful marriage.
And if that doesn't work out,there's always mindful divorce.
Either way, one hopes thatthere's mindful aging and
(14:11):
eventually mindful dying.
And all along the way, ideally,there's mindful eating.
And if you need a product tomindfully eat, you have mindful
mints or trip, mindful blend,calm melon cucumber drink, or
mindful mayo, which is a veganmayo.
I mean, what you can see here isthat mindfulness sells.
(14:33):
Mindfulness has a certain, je nesais quoi, a certain power in
our society, in our culture,that things can be sold using
it.
If you don't like mindful vegan,you can have mindful meats.
These are organic meats that arecows or both dairy cows and then
become beef cows.
You can paint your room amindful gray and you can have
(14:54):
mindful gifts.
This is one of my favorite socksthat support mental health.
But if you if you want themindful moment curated gift box,
you can give someone a sock thatsupports their mental health, or
a mindful potion kit for a wildadventure, or mindful hair care,
or a mindful knittingcollection.
And here, especially coming froma Buddhist background where the
(15:14):
fifth precept is about not beingheedless, this is my personal
favorite.
Of the images I found, this is awoman in a meditative posture
with a bunch of pot plantsbehind her.
And she works for a cannabiscompany, which is called
Mindful.
This is their image.
(15:35):
And you can see, I don't know ifyou can read it, but Mindful's
Meg Sanders.
So Mindful is the company, thecannabis company.
And it's the power of positivebranding.
What this this is the cannabisbusiness times.
What it's saying is thatpositive branding is using
mindful.
So all of these things, oh, andhere's another one I like.
(15:56):
If you if you're taking themindful cannabis, here's mindful
munchies for you, masteringcannabis cravings.
So that's a book.
So all of this together showsthe power of mindfulness in our
society today.
And it is endorsed or justifiedby science, which brings
together kind of science is akind of a common language that
(16:18):
the shared interests ofreligious, typically Buddhist,
but not just Buddhist andsecular communities have.
And it provides economic andcultural resources.
I also want to say it alleviatessuffering.
I I don't want to leave, I don'twant to let that part go, but I
just want to talk about some ofthe cultural phenomena of
mindfulness.
And there's enormous amounts ofacademic literature now on
(16:42):
mindfulness.
So these are the number ofpublications in the last 55
years on mindfulness.
If you can see earlier slidesfrom 2018, the remarkable thing
is that it has continued to growand continue to increase at such
a remarkable rate.
So there's almost 3,000publications in 2020 on
mindfulness, and there's morenow.
(17:03):
I just couldn't find a morerecent graph.
This word map is taken from,with keywords, is taken from an
article which is a meta-analysisof all the publications on
mindfulness.
So you can see the differentcolors of their different areas:
acceptance, so the green,depression, anxiety, cognitive
(17:24):
behavioral therapy, thesetherapeutic ones, the red, the
red, emotion regulation,self-report, emotion,
personality, stress,intervention, outcomes, quality
of life, women.
It's it's a mindfulness isstudied now very, very broadly.
And there are all thesedifferent, all these different
therapies that reduce stress,that address mood disorders,
(17:49):
anxiety, bipolar, chronicfatigue, binge eating disorders,
maternal well-being during andpost-pregnancy, psychological
health and quality of life incancer patients, trauma
resilience, all kinds of things.
There's so many therapists nowusing mindfulness.
So you can see this list.
Better sleep is an interestingone because if you meditate more
(18:11):
than 45 minutes a day,supposedly, you're not going to
need as much sleep and you don'tsleep as deeply.
So people who meditate a lotdon't sleep as deeply
necessarily.
That was one of the findings ofWilloughby Britton, her first
one that made her recognize thatmeditation may not do everything
we might think it does.
And some of you may be familiarwith this study that Matt
(18:34):
Killingsworth and Dan Gilbertdid at Harvard.
They gave about 5,000 peoplehandheld devices.
And at random hours duringrandom times during waking
hours, they asked threequestions.
What are you doing?
What are you thinking about?
And how happy are you?
And there is a very strongcorrelation between thinking
about what you were doing andbeing happy.
So the more you were doingthings that you were thinking
(18:56):
about doing other things, theless happy you were.
And this is a widespreadcorrelation.
And it's also connected to kindof how people think about
Buddhism.
There's this book, The HappinessProject, which was a New York
Times bestseller.
And there's a chapter thatbegins when I told people I was
working on a book abouthappiness.
The single most common responsewas, you should spend some time
(19:17):
studying Buddhism.
A close second was, So are youdrinking a bottle of wine every
night?
So the book that gets mostrecommended to her is the Dalai
Lama's book, The Art ofHappiness.
And a friend says, I can'tbelieve you're not practicing
meditation.
If you're studying happiness,you really have to try it.
The fact that you don't want totry meditation means that you
need it desperately.
(19:37):
So you get all these books onhappiness in Buddhism, which is
really about happiness andmeditation for the most part.
Loving-kindness, therevolutionary art of happiness,
Buddhism for busy people findinghappiness in an uncertain world,
real happiness, the power ofmeditation, and of course the
Dalai Lama's book, The Art ofHappiness.
And Matthew Ricard is thescientist at the Center for
(20:01):
Healthy Minds at the Universityof Wisconsin, did a bunch of
tests on him, which led to thepress saying that he was the
happiest man in the worldbecause of his meditation.
So to sum a lot of that up,here's a systematic review and
meta-analysis of psychologicalinterventions to improve mental
well-being, which says thatmindfulness-based and
(20:22):
multi-component positivepsychological interventions
demonstrated the greatestefficacy in both clinical and
non-clinical populations.
So for overall well-being, thesepeople are arguing, mindfulness
is of paramount, well, is mostefficacious, which is why
sometimes you bump into people.
I work at a meditation center.
And so you may bump into peoplelike this Chinese monk.
(20:47):
If you're not familiar with TheOnion, it's a uh it's a
publication that, as it says,America's finest news source.
Historians discover meditationspread by from ancient China by
an annoying monk who wouldn'tshut up about how it changed his
life.
Just the idea being that thereare plenty of people, you
probably know some of them.
You may be one of them, for whommeditation has been
transformative and you want toshare it with others.
unknown (21:10):
All right.
SPEAKER_00 (21:11):
Thank you so much for listening.
You know, these guest teacherworkshops are just one of my
favorite parts of ourmindfulness teacher
certification program becausepeople like William share a lot
of nuanced thoughts andreflections that really help us
to grow and evolve andunderstand new perspectives.
(21:34):
And I'd be curious what yourtake on this is.
Like, do you feel likemindfulness is too commercial or
that it's lacking ethics, orthat it's not embodied enough?
Just be kind of curious whatyour take is on how mindfulness
is taught these days, and andwhat your perspective is.
(21:59):
So if you'd like to joinconversations with us with
people like William, you canjoin our mindfulness teacher
certification program atmindfulnessercises.com slash
certify, where you can deepenyour own practice and discover
your authentic voice as someonewho shares mindfulness with
(22:21):
others.
You can also connect and joinour supportive global community.
If this episode supported you insome way, we'd love it if you
could take a moment to give afive star review or share it
with your friends so that we canhelp others.
Thank you so much for listening,and I hope to see you again soon
(22:44):
in a different podcast episode.
Thank you.
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