The Roaring Twenties might refer to a historical era but the phrase also seems to be an apt description of the life trajectory of many founders. Even the Buddha indulged lavishly prior to renouncing the luxuries of the palace for the asceticism of the spiritual pursuit, eventually founding a religion that walked the Middle Path. Max Vallot and Tom Daly, the founders of District Vision, a company that began with running sunglasses and has since expanded to “tools for mindful athletes,” had a similar trajectory. In their mid-twenties, Vallot and Daly were working in the fashion industry in New York and enjoying all of the indulgences of that fast-paced lifestyle. According to Vallot, it showed.

“I was a nervous wreck,” he recalled of that period, when we spoke over Zoom. “Everything from my sleep to my digestion was a total mess.”

In the midst of this decadent phase Vallot entered a Transcendental Meditation studio that was next door to his office. “Instantaneously I knew that this was something I would be doing for the rest of my life,” said Vallot. “And that this might be the most important thing that I’ve ever done.”

The duo had always enjoyed running as a way of staying fit and curing hangovers, but it soon became a pursuit, along with mindfulness, that allowed them to engage with the world and build community in a fulfilling way. As Daly dove deeper into the world of running Vallot found himself hanging out with more athletes and becoming something of a mindfulness ambassador. He began to see a bridge between these two activities, in which mind and body have the opportunity to align, breath by breath and step by step, and started to offer meditation, relaxation techniques, and marathon mantras to his new friends.

By this time Vallot and Daly had left the palace, or in this case the high fashion industry, behind, but rather than found a religion they founded a brand. From the outset, they were committed to creating something as focused on product as on practice. “That was the philosophical starting point,” explained Vallot. “The umbrella that held it all together. And it still is today.”

Vallot describes mindfulness as not simply a wellness exercise but a lens through which one experiences and explores reality. It is no wonder, then, that District Vision’s foray into sports gear was through sourcing impeccably made sunglasses from a third-generation Japanese eyewear manufacturer with an artisanal approach to the craft. After the success of these sunglasses, District Vision launched into running apparel as well as courses related to aspects of practice like breathwork and mindful movement.

It would be easy to cast aside this combination of business and Buddhism as yet another example of McMindfulness: the appropriation of spiritual practice for the purpose of making a buck. As David Loy, a Zen teacher, professor, and author, and Ronald Purser, a professor and author of the book McMindfulness, stated in a viral article on the subject: “Rather than applying mindfulness as a means to awaken individuals and organizations from the unwholesome roots of greed, ill will and delusion, it is usually being refashioned into a banal, therapeutic, self-help technique that can actually reinforce those roots.” 

Since that article was published in 2013, mindfulness has only grown in popularity and many performance brands have taken note. In 2018, Nike partnered with Headspace to create a series of guided “mindful runs,” and in the same year Lululemon launched a mindfulness initiative centered around product feel and online courses. The optimist might say that this corporate embrace of mindfulness is a means for better business practices as well as the dissemination of practice itself. The pessimist would decry such an embrace as furthering greed and consumption via the savvy marketing of the very tool designed to weed them out. 

Which brings us back to District Vision. Do you really need $250 shades to run better? And how, exactly, does mindfulness make you a better runner? The answer to how you feel about a performance lens brand creating tools for mindful athletes might depend on whether you view such marketing through the optimist or the pessimist’s lens. 

Vallot is a realist. On the first point he concedes that you probably don’t need $250 shades, but it certainly doesn’t hurt, and the appreciation a beautiful and functional object can stir might even help one stay present. He likened it to the incense he burns while meditating. “It’s just another reminder to come back to the present moment, to come back to a simple awareness of what’s happening and come back to the breath,” said Vallot. “None of this stuff is ultimately needed. But I still have room for it. Even our product ultimately becomes a way of opening people up to all of this.”

As for whether mindfulness will make you a better runner, it often becomes the sticking point in conversations Vallot has with athletes. “The question that always comes up with runners,” says Vallot, “who are inherently competitive, is, ‘If it’s not going to make us faster, why should we bother?’ My response has been that it will definitely make you a wiser runner. You learn to bring attention to these raw sensations in the body as you move, and discern between the type of pain that is worth paying attention to or the type of anxiety that is worth reacting to. The mindful runner sees these states for what they are and understands that they’re transitory in nature just like everything else.” 

Julia Hanlon, an avid runner as well as a yoga and movement teacher, and the former host of the Running On Om podcast, is not one to get hooked by gear. She related to me that on a recent frigid New England day, since she doesn’t own any techy cold-weather running pants, she simply put on four pairs of pants and went for it. Yet Hanlon agreed that bringing mindful awareness to running is a way to blur the bounds between formal and informal practice. She described the impact of mindfulness as running through a black and white forest, and the colors suddenly “popping off.”

“It gives you such a deeper connection into your internal cues and into the cues of the environment around you,” explained Hanlon. “You’re really able to get clear on why it is you’re moving and what it is you’re moving for and how your movement can actually be in service of yourself.”

Hanlon herself has never felt any brand affinity, but she understands the attraction and the ability of a company to foster connection. “A brand has the potential to inspire community, and a community can show people a way of being and loving that might be different than their own,” said Hanlon. 

In addition, the right gear can take away ulterior concerns by eliminating unnecessary obstacles. It’s not that all obstacles should be removed but if tangential nuisances can be addressed by proper gear an athlete can drop more easily into a flow state. She mentioned a particularly challenging trail run she endured in Croatia, and the way her gear allowed her “to feel fully safe and fully present, because I had everything I needed with me.”

Ultimately, Vallot is well aware that there is quite literally an element of spiritual materialism in creating a mindful brand. In a materialistic society, however, this might offer one of the most relevant gateways to practice. “It’s a way of getting people into the funnel and opening their eyes,” says Vallot. “If you follow this lead, it is something that could profoundly change your life.” 

“The gear makes sense for now because this is what we’ve learned and I think we can add something there,” concluded Vallot. “But mindfulness is what I’ll spend my last breath practicing and sharing with the world.”

The post Can a Brand Be a Gateway to Practice? appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

In January 2020, the journal Mindfulness devoted a special section to “second-generation mindfulness-based interventions” (SG-MBIs), signaling a notable shift in the development of contemporary mindfulness practices. Though many psychotherapists still enthusiastically believe that mindfulness can be tremendously therapeutic, in recent years harsh criticisms of long-standing programs such as mindfulness-based stress reduction have started to dominate the conversation—particularly the widely promoted charge that they contribute to a superficial “McMindfulness” that offers relaxation but ignores the true causes of distress. The debate has become so contentious that the religious studies scholar Ann Gleig named it “mindfulness wars” in her 2019 book American Dharma.

Second-generation MBIs have arisen out of these clashes and are portrayed by their developers, like the British research psychologists William Van Gordon and Edo Shonin, as possible solutions to common criticisms. For example, Van Gordon and Shonin argue that unlike earlier forms, SG-MBIs are taught embedded within Buddhist ethical systems and exclusively by qualified, experienced teachers. If such practitioners now accept that a new generation of mindfulness practices is necessary to correct the failings of the old, then perhaps one side of the rhetorical “war” has already won. But what has been won, exactly?

Today, psychotherapists often feel trapped in a catch-22, convinced by many aspects of the McMindfulness critique yet also believing that mindfulness practices are powerful methods for healing suffering people. Critique is helpful for raising consciousness, but what should psychotherapists do with their new awareness? Should they stop using mindfulness practices altogether? And has the prominence of the McMindfulness critique been entirely positive, or are there ways that it can do more harm than good? The way clinicians answer these questions will have real consequences for the suffering people who come to see them for care.

Imagine you are one of those therapists, a social worker, perhaps, in your local VA hospital, providing counseling to veterans who have survived wars that are far from rhetorical. You’ve used therapeutic mindfulness practices since the 1990s, yet now, sitting across from this veteran, you feel conflicted. Your heart contracts as you listen to their harrowing stories of trauma and loss, as they tell you of sleepless nights and panic attack–filled days. Both research studies and your own experience tells you that mindfulness practices must be used with caution for some people struggling with trauma, but you also know that for many they can be absolutely transformative. What gives you pause today, however, is the rising chorus of concern about mindfulness that you’ve heard among your colleagues, other members of the meditation group you attend regularly, and even on Twitter. You became a social worker to help people, and furthermore, identifying as a committed Buddhist, you see it as part of your dharma path to reduce suffering wherever you can. At the same time, now you fear there could be ways you are actually inadvertently contributing to that suffering. You’ve often seen people struggle with avoidance. Could mindfulness be used to further it? Perhaps mindfulness could make us de-stressed to the point of numbed out, turning a blind (or non-judging) eye to the very problems that veterans face every day—homelessness, racism, feeling tossed aside and uncared for by society.

As both a practicing psychotherapist and a religious studies scholar who researches the history and development of how therapists have approached Buddhist traditions, I have heard clinicians increasingly describe this kind of situation. The debates, if not “wars,” surrounding mindfulness in the United States have roots that date as far back as the 1940s and 1950s, when such figures as the humanistic psychoanalyst Erich Fromm were already warning against treating Buddhist practices as clinical “techniques’’ extracted from a larger Buddhist path. However, as William Van Gordon wrote last year for Psychology Today online, “it seems unusual at the moment for even a week to go by without a media report surfacing somewhere relating to the superficial or negative side of modern mindfulness techniques.” The pervasiveness of criticism has brought with it what Gleig has called “the emergence of the mindfulness critic,” a sort of new “public and professional identity” who promotes such criticism. These professional critics have participated in the so-called mindfulness backlash for so long now that a series of publications periodically surfaces to catalog the wide variety of mindfulness critiques one regularly reads today.

Perhaps most prominent among them, however, is the McMindfulness critique. To summarize it, as explained by writers like Zen teacher, ecodharma activist, and scholar David Loy and Mindfulness and Its Discontents author David Forbes: ancient mindfulness practices have been culturally appropriated by profiteers in a global capitalist system and McDonald-ized, routinized into something superficial. Reduced to little more than a marketable commodity and promoted as a panacea for nearly every ill, mindfulness has become as recognizable as “the golden arches” in our cultural consciousness—and as lacking in true substance, true nutritional value. Moreover, these now-inauthentic mindfulness practices are being employed in corporate trainings by companies like Google to improve worker satisfaction and performance. As a result, McMindfulness has actually become a tool of global capitalism. And the public is persuaded that their struggles are an individual problem in need of “self-help” rather than a consequence of the systemic injustice many experience on a daily basis.

Perhaps professional mindfulness critics are guilty of the very ills they accuse others of as they establish McMindfulness franchises.

It doesn’t take a psychoanalyst to point out that some clinicians feel defensive in the face of the McMindfulness critique. The psychologist and author Lynette Monteiro, for example, told me that mindfulness practitioners initially felt attacked when first hearing of McMindfulness. Again, we may be able to empathize, as professional mindfulness critics often seem to “question the character of” practitioners (in Monteiro’s words) and speak about them in a “derogatory” way.

In response, some seem to want to turn the tables on those who promulgate the McMindfulness critique. Van Gordon highlighted in his Psychology Today post “one of the key problems [second-generation mindfulness techniques] seek to address—McMindfulness.” But he also issues a warning about the critique itself. He and Shonin call it “extreme” in an editorial they contributed to the January 2020 issue of Mindfulness, arguing that “despite no doubt having intentions of seeking to raise awareness of the inadequacies of some current approaches to mindfulness practice . . . [it] could easily become misguided due to seeking to establish and propagate its own legitimacy. In the event such a ‘McMindfulness ego’ were to emerge, it would only serve to foster additional superficiality and confusion.” Whether or not we are witnessing the emergence of a “McMindfulness ego,” it seems undeniable that, even as contemporary mindfulness practices are criticized for being co-opted within a consumeristic society, the McMindfulness critique is now its own global brand representing a cottage industry of books, podcasts, videos, and online classes, a wholly owned subsidiary of the larger mindfulness economy. Perhaps professional mindfulness critics are guilty of the very ills they accuse others of as they establish McMindfulness franchises pursuing a certain kind of celebrity or “social capital” along with financial capital.

As the McMindfulness critique has gained greater and greater prominence, commentators from various fields have entered to refute its basic claims. For instance, the philosopher Rick Repetti’s retort in a recent essay to the criticism that “mindfulness is all about self-help[;] it does nothing to change an unjust world” is that this sentiment is analogous to arguing that “a shortcoming of sports [is] that they do not try to change an unjust world into a just one . . . [or that] it is a shortcoming of psychotherapy that it fails to try to change an unjust world into a just one.” If mindfulness-based psychotherapists were to adopt the perspective of Repetti and others, they might argue that anything other than symptom reduction, easing the psychological pain of those who come to see them for care, is out of their “scope of practice.”

But psychotherapists have not dismissed the McMindfulness critique; they have actually been at the forefront of grappling with the questions it raises. In fact, it is interesting that Repetti chose psychotherapy as a counterexample in his above analogy. In reality, since the very invention of talk therapy, clinicians have debated whether psychotherapy should, indeed, seek to do more than only cure psychological illnesses and instead, as Repetti says, contribute to “chang[ing] an unjust world into a just one.” From contemporaries of Sigmund Freud himself like Alfred Adler to Erich Fromm to today’s feminist psychologists, there have always been therapists who have advocated for an understanding of the person as deeply interconnected within a larger society that can often be the primary source of their suffering. Some therapists actually consider Buddhist traditions to be the ultimate antidote to psychotherapies they see as overly focused on the isolated individual. They hold up Buddhist teachings on mutual co-arising and the interrelatedness of all human beings within their environments as a crucial corrective that should revise existing psychological theories (despite the fact that this is actually a relatively new modern[ist] understanding of Buddhist doctrine).

Though he is rarely credited, it was the mindfulness practitioner and psychologist Miles Neale who (in 2011) coined the term “McMindfulness.” His rhetorical flourish has gone on to itself be “culturally appropriated” time and again in the years since. But Neale told me that he felt somewhat alone in the 1990s when he first became concerned that therapeutic mindfulness practices could be misused to further not only materialistic but also nihilist elements in US culture. On the contrary, however, nearly all of the psychotherapists (mindfulness practitioners or otherwise) I have interviewed for my research have been concerned about some of the same issues now encapsulated under the banner of “McMindfulness,” such as how Buddhist practices have been incorporated into fee-for-service health care systems.

The pain of a person struggling with addiction or depression—the toll it takes on their mind, body, and heart—is not theoretical. Does this real-world pain get lost in conversation about the McMindfulness critique? A number of cultural commenters have questioned whether—even if we grant that the use of mindfulness practices could have the risks expressed by the McMindfulness critique—we should really, as Doug Smith suggests in an article for the Secular Buddhist Association, “throw the Buddha out with the bathwater.” Psychologist Lynette Monteiro told me that in her view especially the “initial stage of the McMindfulness movement was very diminishing of people’s suffering.” Practitioners were concerned, she said, that “by highlighting the criticisms of McMindfulness, we can withhold treatment that can be helpful.”

And the need for this treatment can sometimes be extremely urgent. There are those who struggle with urges to self-harm, to cut or burn themselves. Those therapists who believe that mindfulness practices can assist people to become nonreactive to those cravings might indeed believe it deeply unethical to deny them. Perhaps addressing these immediate needs should supersede any other consideration. We might recall an oft-evoked metaphor of an army medic in the midst of an unjust war. That medic may be gravely concerned with the evils of the battle they witness, but they will nonetheless still jump into action when confronted with a soldier writhing before them in anguish. A recent article on the McMindfulness critique in The Guardian used just this metaphor, citing the ethicist Jeff McMahan as saying “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.”

Importantly, psychotherapists, dating back to at least Erich Fromm’s time, have not felt satisfied by this argument. For medics who mend soldiers only to have them sent back onto the battlefield in advance of an unjust cause may wonder whether they have ultimately only contributed to more suffering. A therapist who helps to reduce someone’s anxiety without addressing its societal roots might unintentionally prevent those roots from fully coming to light.

Some psychotherapists have thus remained conflicted about their use of mindfulness practices—Neale, for instance, told me, “I see both the value and the critique at the same time”—and seek ways to resolve their dilemma. Some express optimism in the transformative power of mindfulness practices, arguing that even in corporate settings they will lead to liberation from greed, hatred, and delusion. Psychologists like Monteiro, meanwhile, believe that the use of mindfulness practices can undergo a positive “evolution.” Therapists, she says, should heed the “warning signals” of the McMindfulness critique, which should be “skillfully used to be protective of our clients, of people who suffer who come to us, so it’s not . . . ‘Oh, just go and sit and meditate and you’ll be fine. Oh, just breathe and it will all go away.’” But she also believes that mindfulness practices can be used in an ethical way to help transform society by, for example, recontextualizing their instruction within the eightfold path.

The situation is far more complex than a simplistic dualism of “good” and “bad” usages of mindfulness practices.

All of this can be lost in the sweep of the McMindfulness critique. In its narrative, the main actors are massive global social forces (like “capitalism” and “neo-liberalism”) that encounter Buddhism through mindfulness and threaten to consume both of them whole. But the people participating in the mindfulness movement are professionals struggling with a set of highly complicated issues. The psychotherapists I have met are not unreflective profiteers driven purely by greed or well-intentioned unwitting dupes naively furthering the aims of corporate interests. Many have expressed their own concerns about the trajectory of contemporary mindfulness practices for decades and have thoughtfully attempted to weigh out multiple and sometimes competing motivations. New developments like second-generation mindfulness practices are a continuation of an ongoing process that generations of psychotherapists and other mindfulness practitioners have taken part in.

Of course, there are surely significant flaws to be found in efforts like second-generation MBIs. It is far from clear, for example, whether they truly represent a new approach to teaching mindfulness practices or merely a new way of talking about them. But when we imagine ourselves in the position of practicing therapists today, what is clear is that the situation is far more complex than a simplistic dualism of “good” and “bad” usages of mindfulness practices. Corporate interests can undoubtedly have a stake in the promotion of the latest mindfulness apps for smartphones, but contemporary mindfulness practices have not only been used at corporate retreats; they were also found at the Occupy Wall Street protests. Practitioners do not only see mindfulness as doomed to foster a social amnesia of the social and historical causes of suffering; some marginalized communities have even taken them up for healing from the intergenerational trauma of racial violence.

If we are to move forward from a second generation of mindfulness practices to a third and beyond, we would do well to adopt the humility of a more nuanced and balanced perspective on the place of contemporary mindfulness practices in society.

The post The McMindfulness Wars appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Shortly before this issue went to press, the COVID-19 coronavirus swept across the entire globe, forcing millions into an ongoing period of isolation, deep uncertainty, and concern. As of early April, we still do not know how or when the situation will resolve.

In an attempt to help our readers address the fear and anxiety of the moment, we offered a variety of free resources, including live-streamed meditation sessions, a selection of timely articles, and video dharma talks. We hoped that these offerings would be of benefit, and those hopes seemed to bear fruit when we saw just how many others had been seeking a little guidance, a sense of community, and some peace of mind.

From Iran and Italy to the US and Uruguay, thousands of practitioners registered to attend the live meditation sessions led by dharma teachers such as Insight Meditation Society cofounders Sharon Salzberg and Jack Kornfield, nun Ani Pema Chödrön, Tibetan Buddhist and psychotherapist Mindy Newman, and Zen priest Koshin Paley Ellison. The outpouring of gratitude from attendees was encouraging, to say the least. Participant Ed Peterson wrote during one session, “It was beautiful and exhilarating to sit with everyone in this worldwide sangha. It is a great reminder of how connected we all are, in these troubled times and in all times.” D’Arcy Lyness remarked that the sessions reminded her that we are all connected even when we are apart because of social distancing.

Some, like attendee J.M. Sorrell of Northampton, Massachusetts, shared that such gatherings gave them hope that there may be a “silver lining” in these difficult circumstances, namely, a “much-needed wake up call” for those who forget the importance of compassion as they “scurry around.” “We are [now] more intentional with our love and kindness,” J.M. added. “What is important? Love. What is bupkis? Most everything else.”

We also appreciated the responses to our selection of free articles (“Practicing in a Pandemic”)  aimed at helping our readership remain grounded during the turbulent times. One reader, Cliff Erich, said that he was unable to practice because he was too overwhelmed by suffering and anxiety about the future, but there was one thing he was able to do—breathe. Fortunately, that’s all one needs to begin practicing. As Gary Singh remarked after he listened to Sharon Salzberg’s meditation instructions, “The healing is in the return. . . . If you lose your temper in the grocery store, [if there is] panic everywhere, then, like [Sharon] said, the most important moment is what comes after that. Return to the breath.” Slowly, returning time and again to our practice, we can begin to cultivate a state of calm awareness and remember that we’re all in this together.

Meanwhile, the discussion over the benefits and hazards of the secular mindfulness boom continues. A number of insightful reflections and heated debates took place on our website and on social media about the form Buddhism takes in our world. In “In Defense of McMindfulness,” for example, Boston University philosophy lecturer Amod Lele challenged the criticism of popular mindfulness as a cog in an unjust capitalist machine. It’s not that mainstream mindfulness lacks ethical Buddhist foundations, he wrote, but that it’s too Buddhist. Lele suggested that, without clear social doctrine, traditional Buddhist teachings neither condone nor condemn broad economic or governmental philosophies. Reader Susan Zivcec, whose background is in workplace wellness, disputed this point. She said she notices how the practice of mindfulness alone often fosters a socially ethical mindset. “It would seem that ‘McMindfulness’ has a tendency to clarify our personal values and higher purpose,” she wrote, “and as such we are more inclined to function in congruence with them.” For those who practice mindfulness, she asked, “does engagement in ‘right action’ naturally increase?”

In a similar vein, in “Meditation Barbie Wants to Be Your Dolly Lama,” Tricycle’s Web Editor, Karen Jensen, looked into toymaker Mattel’s claims that a new meditating Barbie could teach kids about mindfulness. While Jensen found the doll fell short, she addressed the possibility that an inkling toward awakening could exist even within a capitalist and consumer-driven system. Many readers found this perspective refreshing and balanced, while others argued that Barbie and Buddhism are antithetical. To dive into this debate, we encourage you to read these articles and stay tuned for more—it’s a topic of discussion that’s not going away any time soon.

The Question

How old were you when you started practicing?

I was 15, 1975, Biloxi, Mississippi. A progressive nun taught us yoga and meditation at Sacred Heart Girls High School. What a gift.
—Mary Anne Hudachek Deierlein

I was 11, in karate class.
—Koshin Paley Ellison

I was 25—now 50. I was introduced to mindfulness while studying philosophy as an undergrad. I still have the same mentor, who is now 82 years old! Currently we are working on a practice manual for mindful inquiry.
—Maria Kahn

I was 26. Now 40. Been a slow process. Didn’t really think I’d be going to the same Zen temple four or five times a week 14 years later. Work practice, retreats, reading, sangha celebrations. It’s a creeper.
—Chris Schroer

In 1977 I was a freshman at a progressive Catholic high school in New York City, when my uncle, now Roshi Robert Kennedy, helped me write a Zen koan in Japanese for an Asian religion assignment. Wish I had kept it!
—Ellen Mugivan Mullé

I was 16. I’m now 28, and I like the thought that in four years, half of my lifetime will have been influenced by dharma.
—Akasajoti

For the next issue:

Do you attend sangha meetings in person or online (or a combination)?

Email your brief responses to editorial@tricycle.org, post a comment on tricycle.org, or tweet us at @tricyclemag.

The post Letters to the Editor appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

The mainstreaming of mindfulness meditation continues at a rapid clip. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the percentage of adults meditating in the United States more than tripled, to 17%, from 2012 to 2017. The American market for provision of meditation-related services is now worth more than $1 billion and growing.

With any phenomenon this mainstream, one expects a backlash. Sure enough, there have been a number of pieces appearing recently that chastise meditation programs, like the one offered by my employer, Boston University,  labeling them “corporate mindfulness,” or more pithily, “McMindfulness.” Ron Purser, a management professor at San Francisco State University whose understanding of mindfulness has informed mine, has now written a very interesting book with that title.

Purser is certainly right to raise questions about the mindfulness movement, most notably the continual tension between its Buddhist roots and supposed secularity, to which I don’t think there are easy answers. But there is one theme running through nearly every chapter where—I might say “as a Buddhist”—I found Purser’s approach quite troubling. While Purser often takes himself to be chiding modern mindfulness for being insufficiently Buddhist, I think overall he is unwittingly criticizing it for being too Buddhist.

Purser’s critique begins with the 2014 Time cover proclaiming “the mindful revolution.” Purser retorts:

I am skeptical. Anything that offers success in our unjust society without trying to change it is not revolutionary—it just helps people cope. However, it could also be making things worse. Instead of encouraging radical action, it says the causes of suffering are disproportionately inside us, not in the political and economic frameworks that shape how we live.

Purser is entirely right that the rhetoric of revolution applied to modern mindfulness practices is overblown, and perhaps even a little ridiculous. So are many other claims made for the rise of mindfulness practice, like Jon Kabat-Zinn’s claim that it constitutes “a tremendous opportunity for addressing . . . the Orwellian distortions of truth we are now seeing on a daily basis in the news, and the perpetuation of dystopian ‘governance’ by seemingly elevating greed, hatred, and delusion to new heights.” 

All this is hype that is scarcely believable, and Purser is right to call it out. But I am not ready to follow Purser’s further step that it is “making things worse” to say “the causes of suffering are disproportionately inside us.” I agree that the “fundamental message of the mindfulness movement is that the underlying cause of dissatisfaction and distress is in our heads.” But are we so sure that message is a bad thing?

That message, after all, is impeccably and fundamentally Buddhist. It is right there in the second noble truth, which states the cause of dukkha (“dissatisfaction” or “suffering”) is craving. The 8th-century Indian Buddhist monk and scholar Shantideva, too, tells us that all fears and immeasurable sufferings come from the mind alone. Neither Shantideva nor the Pali suttas have any interest whatsoever in “radical action”; if anything, they discourage it.

Purser laments that modern mindfulness’s emphasis on results “prevents it being offered as a tool of resistance, restricting it instead to a technique for ‘self-care.’”  But why would we have ever thought it was a tool of resistance? It was not such a tool, after all, in the hands of the Buddha of the suttas. His monks, in important respects, opted out of the prevailing social order. They occasionally criticized it—but they did not fight it or try to change it. Rather, they created a separate (monastic) social order within the existing one—an order that one could even call “privatized.” The claim that mindfulness would or could be a tool of resistance seems like exactly the kind of hype that Kabat-Zinn engages in: making mindfulness something it is not. 

Throughout the book, Purser keeps pursuing the hope that mindfulness could be a revolution. New York Times reporter David Gelles notes, rightly I think, that “We live in a capitalist economy, and mindfulness can’t change that.” Purser replies: “Well, it certainly won’t if sold in those terms.” In which case I await the explanation of how a proper mindfulness, tied to a Buddhism as engaged as possible, will change the fact that we live in a capitalist economy—given that nothing else ever has, with the possible but highly questionable exception of a murderous set of barbarous régimes that killed more people than Hitler did. Purser was doing well to critique the overblown portrayal of mindfulness as revolutionary—why does he then still seem to hold up such faith that it could or should be revolutionary?

After rightfully critiquing the overblown rhetoric of revolution attached to modern mindfulness, Purser says: “There is no radical blueprint in paying attention. If the aim is to effect social change, then methods of pursuing it need to be taught.” And that’s true. But I think Purser is too ready to take up rhetoric that makes mindfulness into something it isn’t. In classical Buddhism the aim isn’t to effect social change, and maybe that shouldn’t be the aim of modern mindfulness either.

Purser notes that Buddhist mindfulness seeks to eradicate the three poisons of raga, dvesha/dosa, and moha, which he translates “greed, ill will, and delusion.” I could dispute a couple of these translations, but the basic point is correct. The thing to notice about it is: Purser objects to “a fundamental tenet of neoliberal mindfulness, that the source of people’s problems is found in their heads.” But “in our heads” is exactly where we find raga, dvesha, and moha! If you are telling us that the source of our problems is not in our heads, then you are telling us that that source does not consist of any of these problems. But that does seem to be exactly what Purser is saying. If he accepts the Buddhist critique of dvesha, it is grudgingly at best:

According to mindfulness science, certain emotions—such as anger, disgust, sadness, contempt, frustration, and aggression—are “destructive,” negative affects requiring emotional self-regulation. But what if one is angry, even enraged, about injustice? Just let it go. Focus on your breath. Bring your attention back to the present moment. Of course, mindfulness practitioners still have thoughts outside of practice, but they are conditioned to see these as problems if strong emotions get involved. This has a disempowering impact on political thinking. Even if it helps not to act with anger, we still need to act if we want things to change outside our heads. 

Many do follow such a project, which prioritizes fighting injustice and pays incidental attention at best to fighting our own anger. But it seems to me that such a project is quite far from traditional Buddhism—in a way that “neoliberal mindfulness” might not be. Which then raises the question: Should we be far from traditional Buddhism? 

McMindfulness and Engaged Buddhism: The Twin Innovations

Purser’s critique of McMindfulness is in line with William Edelglass’s critique of the “happiness turn” in Western Buddhism. Purser and Edelglass are both right to note that something new, less traditional, is going on in modern mindfulness. For there are parts of Buddhism that secular mindfulness leaves out, intentionally. Purser is right about that: right mindfulness (sammasati) is only one part of the traditional noble eightfold path, and mindfulness practices often leave out the rest. And so he is also right to ask the question: 

[W]hat is mindfulness for? Is it merely to attain better health, higher exam scores, focused concentration at work, or “self-compassion?” Is it a medical form of self-improvement? In a way, posing the question is tantamount to asking what constitutes “the good life,” the traditional basis of philosophy. 

Indeed it is. And that is of course a difficult question. But it is important that the traditional Buddhist answers to that question are no closer to Purser’s anti-capitalist activism (or to Edelglass’s concern to alleviate “deprivation, violence, illness, racism, and environmental degradation”) than they are to secular mindfulness. I suspect they are further away from it. 

Purser makes a biting critique of a Wisdom 2.0 conference in San Francisco that featured corporate mindfulness teachers: “such outmoded traditions as Buddhism clearly need upgrading from Wisdom 1.0.” It is easy to laugh at such attempts to modernize Buddhism. But Purser should be careful which houses he throws stones at. For he then compliments the protesters outside this conference, objecting to San Francisco’s tech-driven housing crisis, led by Amanda Ream. He tells us that “Ream, a member of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, was effectively teaching ‘Wisdom 101.’” Purser’s language at least suggests that the Buddhist Peace Fellowship (BPF)—ground zero for the Western engaged Buddhism movement—is teaching authentic premodern Buddhism in a way that corporate mindfulness is not. Such a claim would be absolutely false, and should not be allowed to stand. 

Purser tacitly admits as much when he describes Thich Nhat Hanh, born in 1926, as “one of the pioneers of socially engaged Buddhism,” effectively implying that this particular brand of “Wisdom 1.0” was pioneered in the 20th century, just as modern mindfulness was. Engaged Buddhism is a modern movement with Western roots, much of which rejects some of classical Buddhism’s core tenets. The BPF, in particular, was founded in explicit defiance to the instructions of its early members’ more traditional Buddhist teachers. 

Engaged Buddhism and mainstream mindfulness together make up a large component of the complex that is modernized Buddhism. Their histories are closely tied, both going back to colonial-era reformers like the Sinhalese Buddhist rivivalist Anagarika Dharmapala, who wanted to make Buddhism newly relevant in an age that valorized science, capitalism, and political participation. Anagarika Dharmapala and other engaged Buddhists add to traditional Buddhism a belief in the importance of activism, with strong roots in the Victorian era’s utilitarian and Marxist traditions; likewise, modern mindfulness adds a belief in the importance of science, denying rebirth, and turning to psychological research. 

Now, I’m no advocate of trying to maintain a pristine premodern Buddhism. Engaged Buddhists have a right to try to update Buddhism to reflect their political commitments. What they have no right to do is make the false claim that their political engagement is one iota less of a modern innovation than the corporate mindfulness movement is. Engaged Buddhism is every bit as untraditional. If we are going to critique corporate mindfulness for being untraditional, we cannot reasonably do so from the standpoint of engaged Buddhism, and if we are going to update Buddhism to be politically engaged, we cannot then fault corporate mindfulness for its updating Buddhism.

This same critique, I must note, applies in reverse. I myself have been critical of engaged Buddhists’ innovations while praising other modern innovations like naturalizing karma. I’ve tried to be clear that engaged Buddhism’s innovations are not themselves the problem. That activism and scientific naturalism are modern innovations does not make either one bad, as long as we don’t pretend that they were already there in the dharma from the start. 

We need to acknowledge that each modernized Buddhism is a fusion of Buddhism with non-Buddhist elements. That is not a criticism, since most existing Buddhist traditions also include non-Buddhist elements. The key is to note which non-Buddhist elements are added, and evaluate those on their own merits. That’s not an easy thing to do—in many ways it comes down to evaluating an entire ethical system, which in turn requires identifying one’s own system. But that more general process of ethical evaluation, rather than considerations about innovation or the lack thereof, needs to be our basis for critique. Inconsistency is a problem in any ethical system, and when we belong to multiple traditions—which is what a modernized Buddhism effectively requires—the risk of inconsistency is higher. But there too, we are better off consider the potential inconsistencies than we are writing off innovation as such.

Purser is right to point out that modern mindfulness is detached from the ethical framework in which traditional mindfulness was embedded. But I would argue that that fact makes modern mindfulness more compatible with socially engaged Buddhism! The ethical framework of traditional Buddhism is one that does not pursue the systemic change of society and is sometimes even hostile to it. And that is so for reasons Purser has himself noted: it claims our real problems are craving, anger, and delusion, which are phenomena in our minds and not the world—and trying to change the world might make them worse. We may well disagree with those reasons and prefer a modern post-Victorian ethic of activism to a classical Buddhist ethic of monastic restraint—but if we do, then we are lucky that modern mindfulness separates itself from traditional Buddhist ethics. That separation actually ends up making modern mindfulness more compatible with engaged Buddhism than traditional mindfulness was. 

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This article first appeared in two parts on Amod Lele’s blog Love of All Wisdom. Read part one here and part two here.

The post In Defense of McMindfulness appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Sahanika Ratnayake was raised a Buddhist in Sri Lanka and New Zealand but had no interest in meditation before going to Cambridge. Clinical psychologists were exploring the therapeutic potential of mindfulness and, like many other students, Ratnayake learned to practice mindfulness meditation to help her cope with the stress of student life. Mindfulness helped her “to be calmer, more relaxed, and better able to step away from any overwhelming feelings,” but she “also became troubled by a cluster of feelings that [she] couldn’t quite identify.” She “could no longer make sense of [her] emotions and thoughts,” she wrote in a July article for Aeon. 

In a Medium article the following month, Jamie Bristow, director of the UK-based Mindfulness Initiative, which teaches meditation to politicians, expressed his sympathy for “the troubled feelings and confusion that [Ratnayake] attributes to undertaking mindfulness training.” But, he explained, “No psychological intervention is without risks. Like exercise or pharmaceuticals, we must develop our understanding of how to deploy them skillfully so as to reduce the chance of harm, but we can never eliminate the possibility. Not because harm is intrinsic in the instance of mindfulness practice, but because of the latent vulnerabilities that it may trigger or potential misunderstandings about how it is intended to be practiced (edit August 20, 2019).” 

Does Ratnayake represent a vulnerable population susceptible to side-effects of mindfulness? Is she misrepresenting mindfulness, or is Bristow, while meaning well, pathologizing Ratnayake to discredit the way she makes sense of her experience? Alternatively, could Bristow believe that Ratnayake does not understand how mindfulness is intended to be practiced?

As well as being raised a Buddhist, Ratnayake gained a PhD in the philosophy of contemporary psychotherapy. Her account is critical of the nature of mindfulness practice both in its Buddhist as well as therapeutic incarnations. After practicing mindfulness, she no longer knew which thoughts or feelings to trust. Should she use mindfulness to register and dismiss her worrying thoughts and anxious feelings? How could she know which ones were real and which ones were imaginary?

In spite of clinicians’ attempts to cloak mindfulness in a cognitive smokescreen, Ratnayake does not believe her concerns have anything to do with her personal vulnerabilities. While mindfulness has migrated from Buddhism into a clinical context, it is taught to teachers by Buddhists who are well aware that it is designed to develop insight into tenets of Buddhist doctrine: impermanence, suffering, and no-self.

The instructions for mindfulness meditation are simple. Typically, the practitioner learns to disengage attention from thinking and to focus on body-based sensations. Maintaining one’s focus on body-based sensations, thoughts and feelings become transient phenomena passing through the mind. This does enable people to disengage from worry, rumination, and self-critical thinking. However, as Ratnayake points out, changing the way we experience thoughts and feelings raises profound existential and philosophical questions—as voiced by one participant in a Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy course that I observed while training to teach: “If I am not my thoughts, what am I?”

As in Buddhism, mindfulness courses teach a calming method of concentration that disengages attention from troublesome thinking. When existential questions are raised in therapeutic mindfulness courses (and certain modern hybrid forms of Buddhism that have been influential in the development of mindfulness), these questions are also objectified, registered, and dismissed as “thinking.” Nonjudgmental awareness of thoughts, feelings, and sensations arising from moment to moment becomes a refuge. This can lead to devaluing and avoiding critical thinking.

A natural intelligence led Ratnayake to explore existential questions and may be responsible for Ratanayake’s all too real and distressing experience. It is farfetched to describe this as a “vulnerability” to mindfulness. If the potential for entertaining existential concerns is a clinical contra-indication to mindfulness, this has serious implications. Ron Purser, author of McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality (Repeater, 2019), goes further: “Through the reductive explanatory narratives of psychologism or biologism, psychic and mental disturbances are depoliticized. What remains is an individualistic view of human distress, with the underlying premise that those who suffer are dysfunctional.”

Ratnayake agrees. “In spite of a growing literature probing the root causes of mental-health issues, policymakers tend to rely on low-cost, supposedly all-encompassing solutions for a broad base of clients,” she wrote in her article. “The focus tends to be solely on the contents of an individual’s mind and the alleviation of their distress, rather than on interrogating the deeper socioeconomic and political conditions that give rise to the distress in the first place.” 

This is true of all evidence-based cognitive psychological and pharmaceutical therapies because clinical trials are primarily concerned with quantifying the way therapy reduces emotional distress. The social and economic causes of that stress are typically outside the scope of therapy. 

Bristow, in his response, recognized that “our cultural histories will inevitably color our experience”; however, he continued, “as mindfulness is a way of being aware, we can bring it to bear within and upon whatever frameworks shape our world.” 

But the notion of mindful awareness is, in fact, loaded with metaphysical assumptions and beliefs about the nature of self and reality. It cannot be stripped of its cultural context despite Bristow’s claim.

Two-and-a-half thousand years ago, the lives people led and the beliefs they held were very different from those of today. The Buddha dismantled the illusion of an eternal soul as a means to escape the suffering of endless rebirth as a sentient being. In the social context of his time, this empowered individuals to seek their own salvation and dispossessed the priestly caste of their magical power. Whether it was his intention or not, the Buddha’s message may well have been a threat to the social order of his day.

Like every tradition, Buddhism, morphs to fit different cultures. Existential and philosophical questions are carefully examined in traditional forms of Buddhism to dispel the myth of a permanent essence of self that Hindus believe is reborn from one life to the next.

Today, the function we attribute to mindfulness as therapy is to reduce the impact of stress on health and well-being. This psychological form of Buddhism is built on a series of assumptions about the nature of self: the way we relate to thoughts and feelings is the subjective source of suffering. We can escape this suffering if we are accepting of it and we apply curiosity to understand the psychological processes that cause us to react to uncomfortable feelings.

Mindfulness as self-help may help us to be more self-accepting, think more clearly, make better decisions, and even be more aware of the way others feel. Psychological Buddhism, however, is inseparable from the assumptions upon which it is based. It is inseparable from the meaning and purpose we attribute to it. It is inseparable from the cultural context in which it is practiced. It is packaged in a particular contemporary worldview, even if we are not aware of it—and few of us are likely to become so unless it is pointed out.

More than ever before, we need to examine existential questions into the nature of self, not to escape rebirth but to find purpose in our lives, engage in meaningful activity, and make a positive contribution to society. Ratnayake concludes: “To look for richer explanations about why you think and feel the way you do, you need to see yourself as a distinct individual, operating within a certain context. You need to have some account of the self, as this demarcates what is a response to your context, and what flows from yourself.”

We need to develop better ways of teaching mindfulness that recognize that the awareness we cultivate is shaped by what we believe, and what we believe is as much a product of our own thinking as it is of common beliefs of society. Purser proposes a “social mindfulness” that “starts with the widest possible lens, focusing attention on the structural causes of suffering.” He continues: “Liberating mindfulness requires us to face our own delusion. Although this is sometimes a solitary process, it isn’t a retreat from the outside world. Instead, it can deepen our sense of connection, provided we see beyond clinging to the illusory separateness of self.” 

Often, we can do little on our own. If we think we are independent actors, we are more likely to accept things as they are. We need to see that we have to work together to make a more compassionate society—and safeguard the future for generations to come. We need to construct a more inclusive and interconnected sense of identity to do this.

In the absence of social rituals and human intimacy that make us feel safe and connected to others in community, attentional training can regulate self-defeating thinking. If this is all mindfulness can do, then it is no more than a self-administered anesthetic to the distress we experience as a result of modern working life. We are loving, caring, crying beings, and at the same time, we are capable of unimaginable acts of cruelty and stupidity.

The claim that clinical mindfulness can be value-neutral does not hold water. Some smell a rat when they are told to apply nonjudgmental awareness to thoughts and feelings. As a human socio-biological function, mindfulness always comes with a subtext that can have very different effects, individually and collectively. In the current context, psychological Buddhism is often irresponsibly deployed, making individuals feel responsible for their own suffering while pathologizing the critical thinking that we must address the social and material causes of distress in our society.

We need to design mindfulness programs that recognize that we need to work together to make a better world. There is little we can do alone. The human mind cannot be broken down and reconstructed from its parts like Frankenstein’s monster. Our approach to mindfulness has to include an understanding that our sense of identity, beliefs, and feelings are social as well as individual constructions. To dismiss existential questions as signs of pathology and depoliticize mindfulness by making it a value-neutral psychological intervention risks making it a form of social control. It is either ill-informed to argue, or dishonest to pretend otherwise.

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Further reading: If you enjoyed this article, you may also be interested in our Tricycle Talks interview with McMindfulness author Ron Purser, Rande Brown’s essay on why mindfulness is not a substitute for therapy, and our online course on the history (and practice) of mindfulness. 

The post Who Is Misrepresenting Mindfulness? appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

In the western imagination, Buddhist meditation in Japan evokes the stoic monk sitting full lotus on a tatami mat or the lone hermit climbing to his mountain hut. But in today’s Japan, the models for these images are slowly receding as many people embrace a growing phenomenon—mindfulness, or maindofurunesu (the English word, now a Japanese loanword).

In 2017 at least three major Japanese magazines ran cover stories touting the benefits of mindfulness, citing scientific studies, and advocating its use in business settings. Mindfulness events cropping up across the country are just one sign that the practice is starting to stick.

Some monks see the growing interest in meditation as an opportunity to revive Buddhism, which most Japanese people view as stuffy and irrelevant.

“In Japan, Buddhism is considered conservative—a traditional organized religious institution,” Reverend Takafumi Zenryu Kawakami recently told Tricycle in an email.

Rev. Kawakami is the deputy head priest of Shunkoin, a Rinzai Zen temple in the Myoshinji complex in Kyoto. He’s part of a small group of Zen priests who have been promoting mindfulness in hopes of demonstrating the relevance of Buddhism in people’s lives. He has long been interested in teaching Japanese and Western audiences how Buddhist ideas can cut through our preconceived biases, and has given lectures at universities, corporations, and TEDx conferences. He also leads meditation classes at Shunkoin temple for foreigners and locals.

The approach of this Zen priest may sound similar to those of many other mindfulness teachers, but he’s an exception among his fellow Japanese monks, who do not spend a lot of time teaching meditation. Instead, most temples primarily provide memorial services— expensive Buddhist funerals—for deceased followers.

In hopes of reviving popular interest in Buddhism, monks across Japan in recent years have endeavored to shed the stereotype of money-mongering spiritual undertakers in hopes of reviving societal interest in Buddhism. Some of their efforts, like spearheading a renta-priest startup with the online retailer Amazon, or launching an easy-to-use website offering low-cost memorial services, are savvy attempts to enliven and modernize the priests’ role in Japanese funerals. Other Buddhist monastics have tried more unconventional strategies—starting organic farms and cafés, mixing cocktails at monk-themed bars, engaging in environmental activism, or using anime figures as part of their efforts to appeal to the young.

But for Rev. Kawakami, the future of Japanese Buddhism is intertwined with maindofurunesu—and he is choosing to take part in the mindfulness industry with a heedfulness that bespeaks both spiritual and business savvy.

Related: The Mindfulness Movement and Its Surprising History

Other monastics are noticeably less enthusiastic. Resistance to mindfulness is evident in a dialogue between Daiko Matsuyama, a Zen priest ordained, like Rev. Kawakami, in the Myoshinji tradition, and corporate mindfulness instructor Yuka Shimada. Their exchange appeared in a 2017 issue of the Japanese women’s magazine President Woman. “The mindfulness of today is used rather like a technique, a how-to,” Matsuyama remarked. “It’s a bit of a shame—mottainai [a waste].” He added that the “right mindfulness” of the Buddha’s eightfold path cannot be simply extracted for general use. While agreeing that mindfulness alone does produce benefits for the practitioner, he says such results mistake the insignificant for the essential.

Although Rev. Kawakami hasn’t shied away from the m word when promoting his temple, underneath those efforts lies a deeper intent.

“I want to teach people what mindfulness lost in the processes of secularization and universalization,” Kawakami explains. “The ideal version of mindfulness is not just for use as a therapeutic method to make ‘you’ happy. It should be used as a way to understand the nature of the interdependent, impermanent self.”

Does mindfulness as a chirpy Western import have the potential to revolutionize a funeral-oriented Japanese Buddhism? Right now, Rev. Kawakami teaches most of his meditation courses in English, mainly to foreigners.

“The answer can be yes and no,” the Zen monk maintains. “If ‘Mc­­Mindfulness’—a shallow focus on well-being—becomes the major movement in Japan, then definitely, mindfulness will damage us more.

“But if Buddhist priests, who have profound experience in both traditional Buddhism and contemporary mindfulness, speak out about the issues of well-being and happiness, this could be a great opportunity for Buddhism to revive itself in Japan.”

The post Can Mindfulness Save Buddhism in Japan? appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

One of the most insistent trends on offer in the spiritual marketplace has been the cult of meditation, which has had important implications for Buddhism. Secular mindfulness has found a place in society, but occupying a somewhat different cultural and spiritual space, a new Buddhism has emerged alongside it. Its adherents claim that the fruits of the Buddhist tradition can be acquired through sitting meditation alone. Contemporary practitioners, in other words, need not bother with study, ethical precepts, ritual practice (other than meditation), or merit making. The proponents of the “just sitting” trend often claim the mantle of traditional systems, whether Theravada Vipassana, Japanese Zen, or Tibetan Dzogchen. All share the assumption that meditation must be as non-conceptual in content as possible, and that all other forms of activity can be largely, if not entirely, ignored.

Related: The Untold Story of America’s Mindfulness Movement

While these new meditation programs are called Buddhist, their presentations of meditation run counter to those of the dharma from all periods of Buddhist history. Indeed, the most clearly defined and often cited status of meditation within Buddhist doctrine and practice positions it as one of the three trainings, the other two being ethics and wisdom. As the great ancient Indian Buddhist thinker Nagarjuna declared in his Letter to a Friend,

In superior moral discipline, superior wisdom
And superior contemplation, one must constantly train.
More than one hundred and fifty trainings
Are truly included in these three.

Without the ethical development brought about by training in ethics—“the foundation of all qualities,” according to Nagarjuna—meditation is a spiritual dead end.

When one examines the place of meditation in the Vajrayana in particular, one finds again that it is not considered a self-sufficient means of spiritual accomplishment. It comes second in the triad of view, meditation, and action. View signifies the correct vision of reality that the Vajrayana master imparts to the student, and meditation signifies the subsequent development and stabilization of the glimpse afforded by this introduction. Thus, it is only through both view and meditation, together with their enactment and testing in action, that one could even approach spiritual accomplishment.

Related: What is Right View 

As expressed by the 14th-century lama Karmapa Rangjung Dorje:

Certainty in the view arises from severing doubts about the basis.
The essential point of meditation is to maintain this without distraction.
The supreme activity is mastery of this meditation.

Reacting to the demand for an entirely non-conceptual form of meditation, Buddhist reformers have clamored to reimagine bare sitting as the core or entirety of Buddhism, a drive that animates a considerable part of the modern refashioning of dharma. While mere sitting may produce certain mental effects, one must nonetheless ask, To what end? Unallied with any ethical imperative and directed by unexamined assumptions, meditation becomes a purely internal mental technology. In other words, such allegedly non-conceptual meditation will, at best, be a neutral activity. Unmoored from the Buddha’s teachings, it cannot lead to the particular compassion and wisdom that he taught.

As the Nyingma master Mipham Rinpoche explains:

Most settling meditations without analysis
Can produce a mere calm-abiding
But from this meditation certainty will not arise.
If certainty, the one eye of the path of liberation
Is abandoned, the obscurations cannot be dispelled.

It is ignorance of this vital point that frequently leads neophytes to overrate their meditation experiences, occasionally with catastrophic outcomes. Experiences of non-conceptuality, bliss, or clarity, all of which are common but fleeting, leave some individuals imagining they are enlightened.

The more fortunate subsequently discover that they have fooled themselves. The less fortunate, though perhaps more ambitious, simply proceed to redefine the actual nature of enlightenment so as to preserve their status. Enlightenment becomes merely a term for a transient meditation experience. This gets around the awkwardness of the fact that such “enlightened” meditators are still, after all, beings subject to disturbing emotions and ignorance.

More seriously, such free-floating meditation is ripe for subversion to whatever political or economic ends its proponents prefer. It easily absorbs the values of the most unsavory elements of our culture. Worse, many meditators, thinking they are practicing the essence of the dharma, remain completely ignorant of the ideological commitments that might come to underpin the meditation they practice. In our society, this is likely to be a ruthless individualism congenial to both the market and state.

To compensate for this, meditation in the West grounds itself in a mélange of self-indulgence and gesture politics masquerading as compassion—a “compassion,” it must be said, that cannot see beyond self-regard. The result is the same vapid posturing that dominates so much of contemporary culture.

If current trends continue, meditation will become a mere app for stress-free living. In other words, it will simply come to accommodate the harmful consumption-driven lifestyles that still characterize much of life in wealthy Western countries. In such a scenario meditation would serve as a reinforcing agent to stabilize delusion.

Sadly, we’ve been down this road before. Those learned in Japanese Buddhist history could perhaps cite as an example the subversion of Zen meditation by the samurai and its horrific reemergence in the Japanese militarism and imperialism of the first half of the 20th century.

In any event, it seems foolish to deny that the severing of meditation from ethics and wisdom could produce undesirable consequences. Given that many of us have little education in the dharma, the potential for misappropriation and derailing of Buddhism is huge.

One of our major problems is the difficulty of convincing people to take training in Buddhist ethics seriously. Knowing so little about the dharma, many don’t have a worldview that supports such training.

One possible solution for this dilemma is to initially teach meditation alone in order to meet what seems to be a popular demand, and only later introduce the ethical and philosophical dimensions of the dharma. But unless links are made quickly and authoritatively to the other two trainings, a negative outcome is more likely to develop from this strategy than genuine spiritual progress.

Perhaps the best answer for our dilemma is to teach all three trainings more or less simultaneously, while being mindful of the logic to their sequential development. A student’s progress in one training will enable progress in the others. As the reordering of our life, brought about by moral training, creates the environment for meditation, the stillness of mind created by meditation will make possible the examination of reality that is the hallmark of wisdom.

[This story was first published in 2015]

The post Living by Meditation Alone appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Nothing is permanent, so everything is precious. Here’s a selection of some happenings—fleeting or otherwise—in the Buddhist world this week.

U.S. Investigating Rohingya Camps

The U.S. State Department has been investigating atrocities against the Rohingya people to make a case for prosecuting Myanmar for crimes against humanity, Reuters reports. About 20 investigators have been interviewing people at refugee camps in Bangladesh during March and April. The probe is expected to wrap up in May or June, government sources told Reuters, at which point it will be up to the Trump administration to impose sanctions or take legal action. Meanwhile, the Rohingya living in the camps are bracing for monsoon season, which is expected to bring “enormous deaths” from mudslides and disease.

McMindfulness Meets McMansions

The latest trend in luxury real estate is homes that promise to reduce stress—for only $4 million, the Wall Street Journal reports. “The path to inner peace may lie in the right amenities, or so the rising popularity of wellness real estate would suggest,” the Journal writes.

Sri Lanka Bans Meat on Buddha’s Birthday

Sri Lanka has banned the the sale of meat and liquor on the Buddha’s birthday, the Times of India reports. The ban will cover the celebration of Vesak on April 29 and 30. The new rule follows a controversial decision to move the labor holiday of May Day from May 1 to May 7 to avoid a conflict with the Buddhist holiday in an apparent effort to appease the religious majority, who feared the holidays would overlap.

Thai “Princes” Become Novice Monks

Boys in Thailand participated in a ritual to become Buddhist novices this week. The children, mostly from the Shan ethnic group, dressed as colorful princes as part of the Poy Sang Long rite, in which they recreate the early life of Siddhartha Gautama, according to Reuters. During the multi-day ceremony, the boys trade their colorful garb for simple white outfits and have their heads shaved before being ordained at a monastery.

Studies Find Meditation Helps with Anxiety and Sexual-Assault Trauma

Meditation can lower anxiety after just one session, a small new study finds. “Our results show a clear reduction in anxiety in the first hour after the meditation session, and our preliminary results suggest that anxiety was significantly lower one week after the meditation session,” study author John Durocher of Michigan Technological University told medicalxpress.com. Meanwhile, a study at Rutgers University found that a combination of aerobic exercise and meditation can help women recover from the trauma of sexual assault. The study, which used an intervention called MAP (Mental and Physical) Training, found that after six weeks the women’s trauma-related thoughts decreased significantly.

Sacred Buddhist Mountain Taken Off Stock Market

China bowed to pressure from Buddhist monks to withdraw an initial public offering (IPO) for Mount Putuo, one of four sacred Buddhist mountains, Bloomberg News reports. Religion has become a big business in China, with two of the mountains already listed on the stock exchange. And the state-run Mount Putuo Tourism, which initially listed the mountain, took in more than $126 million in revenue in 2017 from selling ferry tickets.

Hell in the Headlines

The lowest level of Buddhist hell, Avici, found its way into the news this week with the death of the Swedish musician Avicii, whose real name is Tim Bergling. Bergling, 28, was found dead in Oman, where an autopsy later ruled out foul play. His moniker—which adds an extra i to Avici because some else already had the name on Myspace— refers to the part of Naraka (one of the six realms) where those who commited the gravest offenses are reincarnated.

Dalai Lama Calls for Buddhism in Schools

His Holiness the Dalai Lama has called on Indian schools to integrate ancient traditions into modern education. “Buddha was an ancient Indian scientist. I consider myself as half monk and half scientist,” he said, according to the Economic Times. The Dalai Lama pointed to the Nalanda monastery and school of the 13th century as evidence that the ancient Indian traditions can “help solve problems in the world.” Meanwhile, Tricycle has reported that a school in Woodstock, New York, is integrating Buddhist teachings into its pedagogy. And in California, the Dharma Realm Buddhist University (DRBU) announced this week that it has been granted initial accreditation by the WASC Senior Commission of Universities and Colleges. The Ukiah-based school offers an MA in Buddhist Classics and a BA in Liberal Arts.

Shambhala Takes New Step Against Sexual Abuse

A member of the Shambhala International community has moved on to the next phase of addressing years of alleged sexual abuse by creating a healing toolkit for victims. Project Sunshine, which was created by Shambhala member Andrea M. Winn to bring cases of misconduct within the community to light, is currently raising funds for Phase 2, which seeks to create “an open, transparent, decentralized healing process outside the influence of Shambhala’s hierarchy.”

MoMA Screens Buddhist Documentary

The film Becoming Who I Was, about a young Ladakhi boy who is believed to be a reincarnated Tibetan Buddhist lama, will be screening at the Museum of Modern Art on Tuesday, May 1 in New York City. The documentary, directed by Chang-Yong Moon, was filmed over eight years.

Harvard Holds Tibetan Art Symposium

Harvard University will be hosting a symposium on “New Directions in the Study of Tibetan Buddhist Art History” on April 28–29. The event will bring together experts in Tibetan art to discuss how rediscovered Tibetan texts along with new technologies and research approaches have changed the field.

Update (4/30):  A previous version of this article identified Project Sunshine founder Andrea Winn as a former Shambhala member. She is still a member of Shambhala. 

The post Buddha Buzz Weekly: April 27, 2018 appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Outside a conference on mindfulness for the Silicon Valley crowd stood a corkboard and a pad of yellow Post-it Notes. There, in keeping with the conference’s “Wisdom 2.0” name and theme, attendees were invited to write down their thoughts on creating a “global wisdom culture.” There were 50 or 60 suggestions on the board, mostly for things like online platforms to encourage “lateral communication.” But something was missing, I thought. I grabbed a pen, tore off a Post-it, and added a word that was conspicuously absent from the board: Wisdom.

I know: It might seem like a cheap shot. It’s just that, well, even the very name of the conference seemed off somehow. In the tech world, “2.0” is used to note a newer, better version of the original product. Upgrading the world’s wisdom teachings is a pretty heady ambition. Maybe an inflated sense of self-importance is simply to be expected when an executive from one of the organization’s corporate sponsors, himself a speaker at the event, says things like “Wisdom 2.0 is, quite possibly, the most important gathering of our times.”

Really? The most important gathering of our times? Not the Yalta Conference, or Nixon in China, or the UN Special Session on Nuclear Disarmament? Can’t we at least give the Kyoto talks on the environment an honorable mention?

There’s a revolutionary, fast-paced, and transformative wave sweeping through the elite cultures of the 21st century—but it’s not what its boosters think it is. It’s a wave not of technology but of narcissism, and it’s cresting at the intersection of wealth, corporate power, and guilt, as the rich and wannabe rich nourish their acquisitive drives with expressions of self-love. The third annual Wisdom 2.0 conference was suffused with the same self-satisfied glow that’s found at corporate feel-good events like the Clinton Global Initiative’s annual meeting, events where powerful and wealthy elites come to network, schmooze, and congratulate themselves on their own generosity and understanding. Every other presentation at the Clinton gathering seemed to feature images of impoverished African children dancing in water from their village’s new well, while almost entirely missing was any discussion of the role some of the corporations represented there played in creating that poverty.

The Wisdom 2.0 conference provided the same kind of balm for the corporate conscience, but in a different way. While there were some excellent speakers, too many presentations merely offered purveyors of frequently mindless online pastimes the chance to convince themselves that they’re really promoting mindfulness.

If “mindfulness” is to create genuine change in our society, it must involve being mindful of more than just our own need for comfort, good health, or serenity. It must entail being mindful of the social and economic forces that allow some to prosper while others struggle, forces that promote and perpetuate certain behaviors and thought patterns while discouraging or suppressing others. Without that awareness, “mindfulness” will quickly descend into another luxury item that permits the few to ignore the impact of their behavior on others. If they are to attain the significance to which they aspire, conferences like Wisdom 2.0 must open themselves up to a broader kind of awareness than they can achieve by promoting a feel-good, tunnel-vision version of “mindfulness.”

The gathering, which was held February in a hotel and conference center in Silicon Valley, was presented as an exploration of the intersection of modern technology and ancient spiritual traditions. Its theme, according to the website, was “living with awareness, wisdom, and compassion.” It featured well-known Western Buddhist teachers like Jack Kornfield, Jon Kabat-Zinn, and Roshi Joan Halifax. The spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle was also one of the featured speakers, and some newer figures on the scene, like psychologist and mindfulness teacher Kelly McGonigal (her website tells us it is “where science and compassion meet”) and her sister, my former colleague Jane McGonigal, whose work on computer gaming and social change has made her a rising media star who has been profiled at length on shows like Fareed Zakaria’s CNN program. (Our chat was interrupted in mid-sentence by a couple of investment consultants eager to “network” with her; it was that kind of event.)

Wisdom 2.0’s sponsors and supporters have included such tech giants as Google, Yahoo! and Facebook—and it shows. Their support helped organizers gather this constellation of Western mindfulness luminaries, often pairing them with executives from sponsoring corporations in sessions that felt like awkward blind-date dinner conversations. The “Zynga Meets Zen” session, for example, featured Roshi Joan Halifax and Eric Schiermeyer, a founder of the online game company Zynga, and himself a Wisdom 2.0 supporter. The roshi seemed to bristle slightly as conference organizer Soren Gordhamar introduced Zen and gaming on seemingly equal terms—but it could be argued that she didn’t bristle enough. “There is a kind of brilliance in Zen,” said Gordhamar, “and a different kind of brilliance in games….”

Gordhamar’s remark seemed to equate Zen Buddhism’s accomplishments with those of a company whose most notable achievement is the Facebook game FarmVille, but Schiermeyer was not one to see any incongruity in the comparison. Rather, he went on to effusively praise his own venture’s capacity for “clarity and insight.” Schiermeyer, like many other speakers, pushed the idea that mindfulness can and should be marketed the same way companies like Zynga market FarmVille, or with the same techniques they use to motivate their owners and employees—through acquisitiveness and need, or what Schiermeyer called “the technology of incentive.” There is a world in which the works of Dogen and Eisai as human achievements are indistinguishable from a game that encourages users to buy and trade pastel-colored animals on social media sites. To attend conferences like Wisdom 2.0 is to enter that world.

Like last year’s Buddhist Geeks conference, the meeting also included a lot of talk about “branding.” Schiermeyer’s bent for motivational selling proved to be popular, never more incongruously so than when he said that “if somebody wants to become a millionaire, which a lot of people do, and … you can convince them that the best way to become a millionaire is to adopt these practices in a directed, conscious way, then you’ll end up having a bunch of really conscious millionaires.”

A venture capitalist in the audience agreed, telling me afterwards that “people today want to be millionaires, so we should market spirituality together with the ability to become a millionaire.” He defended Schiermeyer’s position. “What’s the worst that could happen? “You’d have a lot of mindful millionaires. That would be a good thing.” Unfortunately, comments like these may have been inevitable, since conference organizer Gordhamar was occasionally given to saying things like “there’s a place for the authenticity of a lineage and a practice … and there’s this other voice which says No, but every generation is different, let’s just go wherever they’re putting their attention, who cares where the hell they’re putting their attention, let’s meet them there and let’s be very creative in how we can incorporate it … both potentially have a place.”

Is that so? What about the matter of motivation? What matters isn’t just whether you’re mindful but also what you are mindful of. If your awareness is centered on money and comfort, does that help anyone else? Does it help you?

The Wisdom 2.0 conference and its organizers were also promoting a technology-centered vision of mindfulness like that reflected in the Buddhist Geeks podcast and conference, websites like Indranet, and a growing cottage industry of techno-spirituality books, blogs, and software products. At their best, these sites and gatherings can represent a kind of democratic leveling of differences among participants. We saw this, for example, at the Buddhist Geeks conference, where, much as they do on the Internet itself, attendees mixed without regard to name recognition, status, sect, or practice. But at their worst, Buddhist technophiles confuse science with spirituality and information with insight, and in the process, they overlook their own best opportunities to make a real contribution to society.

The clinicalization of spirituality, which seems to reduce it to a matter of physical and mental health, is a common feature of these conferences. While there is some good data suggesting that mindfulness and meditation can have a beneficial impact on individual health, that shouldn’t be confused with wisdom. Too many of these conferences and speakers conflate wisdom with well-being, enlightenment with ease, and compassion with comfort. A quick review of history’s great spiritual figures—the Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad being among the best known— shows that they often rejected their own ease and comfort in pursuit of higher wisdom, or sacrificed themselves for a higher purpose once they found it. The journey from sacrifice to enlightenment is codified in religious traditions that range from Native American Sun Dance rituals to Tibetan practices of solitary meditation in caves.

If the subject is wisdom, those reams of blood pressure reports and magnetic resonance studies aren’t as meaningful as their champions claim. “The hours of folly are measured by the clock,” wrote the poet William Blake, “but of wisdom, no clock can measure.”

As at so many gatherings in the digital delta, the discussion at Wisdom 2.0 often confused the medium with the message— or, as they say now, the “platform” with the “content.” Digital technology—computers, cell phones, the Internet—are indeed a breakthrough in human communication, much as printed books, radio, and television all once were. But if the purveyors of those technologies were equally convinced they were revolutionizing the human experience, they left no record of it. The printing press played a central role in the Protestant Reformation, but it is hard to imagine Gutenberg sponsoring a gathering to praise the new wisdom he was bringing into being through his invention. Television pioneer David Sarnoff never tried to book Gandhi into a meeting room to praise the revolutionary human potential of his medium. What is it about digital entrepreneurs that creates such excessive self-regard? A greater sense of history—of block printing in the spread of Buddhism, or books in the democratization of Christianity— would provide these conferences with greater context for discussing newer technologies.

The “awareness” at Wisdom 2.0 too often lacked the “wisdom” and “compassion” organizers promised. The many hagiographic references to Steve Jobs praised a digital pioneer who became, of course, extremely wealthy. Jobs’s turtleneck-wearing, quasi-Buddhist persona was a natural fit for this crowd. But few attendees showed any interest in the tragic world of workers at the Chinese factories who built Jobs’s Apple products. According to independent reports, their lives were made much worse because Jobs chose to ignore reports from aid groups and others about working conditions there.

It’s a shame. Conference organizer Soren Gordhamar has written a book, also called Wisdom 2.0, and he’s a good writer with many useful things to say. It’s unfortunate that the conference didn’t stick more closely to the themes he explored in the book, which asks good questions about the balance between online time and “real life,” the medium’s untapped potential for aiding personal growth, and the challenges of being human in a digital age. You could build a good conference around those questions. The digital generation has few maps to guide it through the new territory wrought by its technology, and support and kindness are always worth sending toward any group of people trying to find their way. But this approach won’t meet their needs any more than it will meet society’s.

Some speakers spoke to those needs eloquently. Jon Kabat- Zinn openly discussed social issues in a way that challenged the insular nature of the gathering. Representative Tim Ryan, a member of Congress from the struggling Ohio Rust Belt, offered a refreshing break from entrepreneurial self-congratulation to discuss the value of mindfulness in urban settings and among children from impoverished families. Congressman Ryan, who has written a book called Mindful Nation, was generous in his assessment of the conference when I spoke with him a few months afterward. It’s “progress,” he said of the conflict between entrepreneurial acquisitiveness and mindfulness.

But the surprise challenge to self-satisfied cocooning came from Eckhart Tolle. I haven’t read much Tolle, who had always struck me as a nebulous and New Agey figure, but he led a meditation exercise masterfully. Tolle told a story about the usefulness of silence—one that ended with a friend sending him a blank text message. That led to the joking idea of an app that sends blank text messages to iPhone users at intervals throughout the day. More importantly, Tolle’s remarks brought a broader awareness into the room. We need a new social order, he said in a soft voice, and a new banking system. These systems have been created by the old egoic consciousness, he added. What’s more, said Tolle, we could drown in an excess of information and suppress creativity through an excess of thinking. These words challenged both the self-satisfaction and the economic goals of many conference attendees, and in doing that, Tolle provided a glimpse of what gatherings like this can be— and what they must become, if they are to be meaningful.

Instead, Wisdom 2.0 featured too many words like those that appeared on a conference whiteboard: “Can the soul learn to tweet?”

Wisdom is not necessarily synonymous with comfort, or better health, or even happiness. If Wisdom 2.0 had addressed the sometimes painful conflict between technological growth and human needs, it would have been forced to challenge its attendees, its speakers—and yes, its corporate sponsors. It could be argued that this, and not feel-good sessions for acquisitive millionaires, is the work of wisdom. Philosophers like Mortimer Adler, along with later thinkers like the economist Kenneth Boulding, created a simple hierarchy, known as DIKW, that was applied to early thinking about computer technology. It stood for Data, Information, Knowledge, and Wisdom, with data at the lowest rung on the ladder and wisdom at the highest. Each of these rungs is important. But data and information are not knowledge, and knowledge is not wisdom.

One week after the conference ended I found myself at a different gathering, this one a gathering of Sufi musicians in South Africa, where I had traveled to follow the work of an aid group working with HIV-positive Zulu villagers. A young Sufi singer from Mauritius made a striking observation. “All prophets in history,” she said, “came to upset the social order, not reinforce it.” That should be the goal of Wisdom 2.0 or any other gathering that claims to pursue true innovation—because insight is disruptive, wisdom upsets the old order, and mindfulness must inevitably lead us to confront those aspects of ourselves we’d rather bury in self-congratulation.

“Wisdom,” said William Blake, “is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy.” That market isn’t a great place to “network” with potential customers, or to find venture capital for your next start-up company. But if these conferences genuinely want to promote wisdom, they’ll need to go there eventually.

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Search “Google and Buddhism” on—what else?—Google, and it’s a safe bet that none of the 1,690,000 entries will cite the Internet behemoth as a stop on the Buddha Way. Yet amazingly, thanks to a 38-year-old software engineer named Chade-Meng Tan, the dharma appears to have infiltrated the Googleplex, the ur–search engine’s headquarters in Mountain View, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley. Meng, as everyone calls him (“Americans can’t do names with more than one syllable,” the Singapore native quips), firmly denies that he’s introducing Buddhism into corporate life, however. “I’m not interested in bringing Buddhism to Google,” he states. “I am interested in helping people at Google find the key to happiness.”

No small goal, but Meng is well positioned to deliver. After eight years as a systems designer, he now heads the company’s School of Personal Growth, one of four in-house schools comprising Google University. Google—named Fortune magazine’s #1 Best Place to Work for two years running—is jokingly called the Emerald City for its menu of perks that includes free gourmet meals, subsidized massages, volleyball games, and endless-wave swimming pools. But the personal growth program marks perhaps the first time a major corporation has added spiritual development to the list. “Google wants Googlers to grow as human beings on all levels—emotional, mental, physical, and beyond the self,” Meng says.

The concept isn’t as new agey as it sounds. There’s a practical side to developing well-rounded employees: they’re likely to be more creative and thereby contribute more to the bottom line. Since it started up in early 2008, the school has offered a variety of courses designed to expand employees’ horizons, from one on sleep taught by Stanford Medical School professor Dr. William Dement—a pioneering researcher who founded the world’s first sleep lab—to one of the most popular, the history of wine.

Among the initial offerings was a course on mindfulness-based Emotional Intelligence. So far, some 200 of the 20,000 or so Googlers at the Mountain View campus have been through the seven-week class, which covers the practice (and neuroscience) of meditation, as well as instruction in things like mindful listening and mindful emailing.

Known as SIY—for “Search Inside Yourself”—was developed in consultation with psychologist and author Daniel Goldman (who popularized the concept of emotional intelligence, or EI), along with Mirabai Bush, founder of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, and Zen priest Norman Fischer, spiritual director of the Everyday Zen Foundation. Fischer continues to teach the course with Meng.

And self-development is only part of the story: just as important is “beyond the self’” training. The SIY curriculum includes, for example, modules on empathy and social skills. “The full development of a person has two aspects,” Meng says. “The intrapersonal aspect is wisdom; the interpersonal is compassion.” Spiritual development, he emphasizes, “has to include both creating inner peace and happiness and giving service and compassion to the world.”

Meng practices what he preaches. He established the Tan Teo Charitable Foundation in 2005 to promote peace, liberty, and enlightenment, and along with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, he’s a founding patron of Stanford’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education. Meng is also indirectly responsible for introducing Google’s top executives to Dr. Larry Brilliant, the physician who heads Google.org, the company’s philanthropic arm. Brilliant, who helped eradicate smallpox in India and cofounded the Seva Foundation to address blindness in the developing world, was one of Meng’s invited speakers at the Googleplex.

Meng has also brought in a number of well-known Buddhist teachers, including Sharon Salzberg, Lama Surya Das, Matthieu Ricard, and the creator of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, Jon Kabat-Zinn. Meng’s own teacher, Shaila Catherine, founder of Insight Meditation South Bay in Mountain View, teaches a weekly class.

Behind all this is Meng the man. After graduating from a Catholic high school and Nanyang Technical University in Singapore and becoming an award-winning computer engineer, Meng came to the United States in 1998 for graduate study at the University of California at Santa Barbara. In America, his inquisitive mind found a natural home.

Joining Google in 1999, Meng worked on a variety of improvements to the search engine, including adapting it for Chinese-language use. Today, around Google headquarters, he’s equally well known for the wall of snapshots—titled “All the Presidents’ Meng”—that picture him grinning broadly alongside more than 200 political leaders, movie and media stars, and other assorted dignitaries. Here is Meng cozying up to Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Mikhail Gorbachev, Muhammad Ali, Robin Williams, Tom Brokaw, Jane Goodall, Jane Fonda, and Black-Eyed Peas frontman will.i.am, to name a few. Asked if there’s anyone else he’d like to invite to Google, Meng quickly names the Dalai Lama. “I think he’d have fun,” Google’s unofficial host observes.

Fun has been central to the Google ethos since its 1998 start-up, and in that respect, Meng fits right in. In fact, he’s something of a wag. His business card lists his title as “Jolly Good Fellow,” a play on the “Fellow” title bestowed on top-performing Google engineers (though not on Meng). His personal website, “Meng’s Little Space” (chademeng.com), cites his motto, “Life is too important to be taken seriously,” along with the unabashed self-assessment “As you might have guessed, I’m quite a funny guy.”

Back in 1995, Meng launched one of the first Buddhist websites, calling it “What do you think, my friend?” It includes classic texts, Buddhist tales, and—in keeping with what he describes as its “highly personal and practical approach”—questions and answers on the dharma, “contributions from ordinary people,” and—surprise!— Buddhist humor. Meng is thinking of changing the name of the site to the Jolly Bodhi, with the tagline “Because Buddhism should be fun.”

Even about his own practice, Meng can’t resist cracking a joke. Asked if his wife and nine-year-old daughter are also practicing Buddhists, he says, “My daughter and I sit for two minutes a day. That’s the full attention span of a child and an engineer.”

For all his wisecracks, however, Meng is a dedicated—if unorthodox—practitioner. Raised a cultural Buddhist, he was 21 before a talk by Sangye Khadro, an American nun living in Singapore, hooked him on the dharma. He studied with various teachers, eventually settling into a Vipassana practice.

Last year, Meng did a monthlong solo retreat—at Google headquarters: “I found a secluded corner and meditated.” As the retreat wore on, he noticed that “colors became more vibrant; I was able to hear my heart beat; I was able to differentiate between the moment of sensation and the moment of perception.” Above all, he experienced “an aftertaste of happiness throughout the day.”

One time after sitting, Meng recalls, “everybody looked attractive— not physically beautiful, but I liked them even more than before. I have a theory: this is the origin of social mind.” He likens it to what he observed as his daughter was growing up: “First she learned to smile and liked everyone, then she developed shyness, stopped smiling, and had a fear of people. Social mind develops between learning to smile and fearing people.”

Meng calls social mind “the foundation of compassion. If you like everyone you meet, then you want to help everybody. I had a glimpse of that without going to the mountain,” he continues. “There’s a Chinese saying: ‘The small retreat is in the forest and the big retreat is in the city.’”

Meng’s plans for the School of Personal Growth include introducing a course on happiness and one on shamatha (calm abiding). “The workplace is the best place to enlighten adults,” he insists. “To do that, you have to align people’s worldly interests with the interests of business.”

The precedent lies in corporate exercise programs: “Just as we can help people get fit at work, we can help them get enlightened.” Meng foresees a day when every company will have a School of Personal Growth.

So is teaching meditation how he plans to save the world? “I’m not saving the world,” Meng corrects. “I’m trying to save the world. I have this image that I’m rowing my boat in the ocean, and the waves are very high. I can’t see over the waves, and I don’t know if the boat is going in the right direction. All I know is that I’m rowing. The only thing I can control is trying.”

From all appearances, he’s right on course.

The post Buddha in the Googleplex appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.