FALSE PROMISES OF CONTEMPORARY MINDFULNESS
Recently my meditation teacher Frank Jude Boccio referred to our contemporary notion of mindfulness as “McMindfulness.” I sad-laughed at the reality that on the whole the Western world has bought, sold and appropriated an ancient practice to the level that famed celebrities and athletes, CEO’s of Fortune 500 companies, and even the military are heavily endorsing it’s techniques for their own profit driven agendas. We went from a culture that feared yoga and meditation, admonishing it’s “demonic roots” to completely exploiting the practice, stripping it of its true meaning.
We’re being fed a version of mindfulness that can be likened to a quick and easy drive-thru Big Mac - so convenient you don’t even have to leave your car (but never as satisfying or nourishing as the real thing). We forget that there is nothing quick and easy about a true mindfulness practice. It’s a discipline that requires ardent dedication.
We forget there is nothing quick and easy about a true mindfulness practice.
The implementation of “mindfulness” into the workplace and schools to counteract the oppressive workloads they unload on their staff and students paints a clear picture of the ways we’re cashing in on a diminished version of a sacred practice. Sorry to burst your bubble, but sitting on a cushion for ten minutes when you’re feeling the pressure of your corporate job boiling over will only temporarily alleviate your stress. It’s a short-term fix to an overarching systemic matter. The root of the issue can found in the way our capitalistic world views people as consumers/producers instead of living breathing human beings, with complex feelings, thoughts and past experiences. Corporations are the major contributing factor to the problem here, yet they deflect all responsibility onto the individuals themselves, encouraging them to take part in board room mindfulness programs as a band-aid solution for their mental health. A measly ten minutes on a cushion here and there is not going to cure the stress and anxiety of an innately flawed system.
The Western world has stripped the practice of any ethics and morality making it a tool - a means to an end - as opposed to a lifestyle. We must understand that mindfulness is a practice of relationship. Your “formal practice” on your cushion is in fact a practice for real life - “informal practice” off of your cushion. Mindfulness looks like the constant integration of new insights, of remembering past mistakes and old patterns and choosing differently, of purifying our intentions, of taking an inward practice outwards in service to the world.
If practiced authentically mindfulness should change us from the inside out where we naturally begin to see sila (right action or ethics) beautifully - or perhaps uncomfortably - emerging into our actions of body speech and mind. It’s the hope that we begin to see the five precepts which are non-violence, non-greed, proper use of our energy, truthfulness and clarity of mind (discernment) becoming a part of who we are.
When we diminish the practice of mindfulness, manipulating it for our own selfish benefit to increase the productivity of our employees and students, or to gain an athletic edge over our competitors with the soul purpose of winning, or to produce more efficient killers for the military, we’re completely missing the point. We’re turning a practice of selflessness into a practice of selfishness. Our mindfulness practice should be revealing to us the illusion of separate “self” and awakening us to our true nature as interconnected beings. It should be waking us up from the slumber of our comfortable lives, forcing us to take a serious look at the world around us thats alarmingly out of balance. Mindfulness is not a tool for a means to an end devoid of any morality and ethics, it is a radical practice intended for action and change.
While it’s true, we’re each enough as we are, I feel zero hesitations in saying that our mindfulness practice should be making us better individuals - making us better humans collectively...because with the way the future looks for humanity today? I have higher expectations for the human race. We can do better, and we must.
