McMindfulness: How mindfulness became the new capitalist spirituality • Hacker News Board

Re: McMindfulness: How mindfulness became the new capitalist spirituality

#31

Post by mindfulthrow1 » Thu, Nov 28, 2019, 4:58 PM UTC

thrwe4234safd wrote: post #4

Ididntdothis wrote: post #3

I once got an offer to teach a yoga and meditation class at a company. The stated goal was to give employees tools to handle stress better. I pointed out that the result of mindfulness would most likely be that people would see how harmful a stressful environment Is and either try to change it or to avoid it. Never heard back :) The same happened with yoga. We picked a very small part of the tradition as in asana and…

Hehe. This is what I basically wondered when someone told me that mindfullness was helping her cope with pressure of work life. The new decolonization movement in India has been thinking quite deeply about this and other developments where Indian traditional knowledge is taken to the US and then copyrighted, patented and trademarked, and then sold around the world, incl. India. Amusingly, with American marketing bein…

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

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

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

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

Re: McMindfulness: How mindfulness became the new capitalist spirituality

#32

Post by collyw » Thu, Nov 28, 2019, 5:02 PM UTC

Ididntdothis wrote: post #24

jes wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may also happen that as they wake up they discover other aspects of Buddhism that lead them to continue to evolve their practice so they are not harming others.

When I look at famous business people that claim to be practicing Buddhism and meditation I have my doubts. They still run greedy, selfish and exploitative companies. Steve Jobs is a good example.

Steve Jobs jumped into my mind as I read your first sentence. Then I see you were thinking of the same person.

Re: McMindfulness: How mindfulness became the new capitalist spirituality

#33

Post by decasteve » Thu, Nov 28, 2019, 5:04 PM UTC

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

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

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

Re: McMindfulness: How mindfulness became the new capitalist spirituality

#34

Post by gerbilly » Thu, Nov 28, 2019, 5:05 PM UTC

anbende wrote: post #29

gerbilly wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I often hear the argument that the current applications of mindfulness in corporate or otherwise commercial settings are a perversion of the original teachings. Buddhism teaches that you should tackle the coarser causes of suffering first. If there is a thorn in your foot, no one is suggesting you should go do a good sit to deal with the pain. First you remove the thorn, then you sit. In my opinion mindfulness at w…

I agree that in a larger sense, there are often greater problems at work than the internal regulation of attention and stress. From working with clients however, you might be surprised just how often people come in not realizing that they have what is essentially a giant thorn sticking out of their foot! Usually this looks more like chronic lack of sleep, a bad relationship with their spouse or even a toxic work envi…

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

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

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

Re: McMindfulness: How mindfulness became the new capitalist spirituality

#35

Post by jwenig » Thu, Nov 28, 2019, 5:05 PM UTC

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

Re: McMindfulness: How mindfulness became the new capitalist spirituality

#36

Post by chachachoney » Thu, Nov 28, 2019, 5:19 PM UTC

Ididntdothis wrote: post #23

anbende wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and I saw that the author made this point as well. But again, mindfulness isn’t a stress lowering switch, it’s literally training in awareness of what is happening in one’s field of experience which includes a toxic environment if present. Awareness training should NOT render one insulated against your surrounding environment. It should highlight it as you become more aware and attentive. Now, a LOT of mindfulne…

”I just wish they wouldn’t call it mindfulness.” Yes, sell it as relaxation exercise or breathing practice. But don’t make people believe this has anything to do with Buddhism. We already watered down and distorted what people think yoga is. Let’s not do this to Buddhism.

Indeed. Embrace, extend, extinguish comes to mind.

Re: McMindfulness: How mindfulness became the new capitalist spirituality

#37

Post by cjg » Thu, Nov 28, 2019, 5:20 PM UTC

mbrock wrote: post #6

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

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

Re: McMindfulness: How mindfulness became the new capitalist spirituality

#38

Post by cjg » Thu, Nov 28, 2019, 5:24 PM UTC

jwenig wrote: post #35

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

One would hope that soldiers who had some experience in mindfulness would begin to notice their discomfort at killing other human beings.

Re: McMindfulness: How mindfulness became the new capitalist spirituality

#39

Post by peterwwillis » Thu, Nov 28, 2019, 5:29 PM UTC

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

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

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

Re: McMindfulness: How mindfulness became the new capitalist spirituality

#40

Post by thrwe4234safd » Thu, Nov 28, 2019, 5:29 PM UTC

mindfulthrow1 wrote: post #31

thrwe4234safd wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hehe. This is what I basically wondered when someone told me that mindfullness was helping her cope with pressure of work life. The new decolonization movement in India has been thinking quite deeply about this and other developments where Indian traditional knowledge is taken to the US and then copyrighted, patented and trademarked, and then sold around the world, incl. India. Amusingly, with American marketing bein…

“SOAS for instance has one guy who was anointed a Mahant, and he writes books with another guy who says Yoga is a cynical rebranding of Swedish exercises.” I’m assuming you mean James Mallinson. I met him briefly in Jaipur and had been wondering who the white guy with dreadlocks was that I kept seeing around (here in the US it’s considered racist by people of color to wear dreads if you’re not black). To make a long…

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

Non sequitur - this has never been a point of contention in India. I know this is typical of the press in the English-speaking world (and thus the peoples of these places as a whole), but its hilarious to see "Hindutva" being projected as a "Hinduism is supreme, and everything else must be suppressed" (and now all the propaganda with Nazis/Hitler ... my oh my). Criticisms of "Hindutva" from these sources are so insipid and stupid that they are not even worth acknowledging.

(Note - I'd place a large portion of the Indian elite within the English speaking world.)