7 ms·

To be fair, there's a multi-layered thing going on here. Yes, there is a mindfulness "industry" nowadays, and it's terribly fashionable right now, and with fas

by dmje 5y ago

To be fair, there's a multi-layered thing going on here. Yes, there is a mindfulness "industry" nowadays, and it's terribly fashionable right now, and with fashion comes The Horde, and with that comes The Charlatans (not the band) - and in the modern world this is all now followed by The Influencers and adverts and apps and a whole plastic money-fuelled nothingness that accompanies the modern world. But. Under the hood is a centuries-old tradition of self-investigation and awareness. It's often laid at the door of Buddhism, and as a discipline, no other faith (or non-faith, whatever you choose to call it) has taken this set of "Rules for Life" and made them their own quite as much - but the contemplative method is there in pretty much every tradition. There can be a religious element to all of this, so yes, there is a "faith" angle to it, and the associated perpetuation / zealotry, but there is also a path to be trod which is secular, and holds a lot of worth and meaning. The article itself isn't terribly interesting, IMO. Yes, there are moments like Flow when doing something familiar (piano playing, coding) which are apparently "mindless" but in fact are themselves deeply mindful, in that they feel like they connect action almost directly to the subconscious. Or this at least is how it feels when I play piano - I have literally no idea how my fingers do what they do, and if I think about it too hard, things fall apart. And then - as I posted quickly elsewhere on this thread - there is the notion of mindlessness actually being set in a mindful context. It could all go a bit Rumsfeldian but I find there is some value in thinking about "mindful mindlessness" vs "mindless mindlessness". Sitting down and saying "I'm now going to look at some s*t on the web" but being aware of how that mindless rabbithole is making you feel has a different flavour to it than just doing it without focusing on the position of the self when doing the same. ps. I quite like "vague notions" like "feelings", myself :-)

beckman466 5y ago
> Yes, there is a mindfulness "industry" > But. > I quite like "vague notions" like "feelings", myself :-) it's funny how what you write is exactly "what you would hear from an 'intergalactic encyclopedia salesman'", to quote OP. thanks for proving OP's point. i think the reason mindfulness falls flat is because it ignores the material reality of the working class in our profit-seeking economic system. it makes like miserable for a large group of people. the problem is that you can't meditate your way out of poverty of precarity by using "a centuries-old tradition of self-investigation and awareness". mindfulness is 'for' the propertied classes who usually collect all types of rent [1] and who aren't living paycheck to paycheck. try telling an exhausted Amazon warehouse worker to 'try' mindfulness. often it's just a bunch of gaslighting hoo-ha [1] https://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-08-03/book-day-corruption-capitalism-guy-standing/ https://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-08-03/book-day-corru...
- texasbigdata 5y ago
  Falls flat? You can MRI and observe neuroplasticity type changes based on level of meditation experience. Also, I believe it was Berkley affiliated, a monthly review of papers published on mindfulness and it's impacts often had 80+ meaningful entries on an average month: some of the use cases around therapy, around endangered populations (ptsd), disorders (agoraphobia, etc). Your general point about society might not be wrong, but the main claim that meditation does nothing is woefully incorrect. The argument in this thread seems to "late night TV sold me a shake weight, it's a bullshit, those scam artists, who needs strenght training anyways?". There's other ways.
  - Brakenshire 5y ago
    Can you really see neuroplasticity in an MRI?
    - smorgusofborg 5y ago
      One measures oxygen levels by MRI while doing a task before and after the intervention to determine changes to what regions get enlisted for the task.
  - andi999 5y ago
    You have neuroplastic changes if you practice guitar or golf.
- whynaut 5y ago
  This is silly. I discovered mindfulness early in life and it definitely does help one contend with the (mental) pains of poverty. Please at least minimally research the topic before descending to call it “gaslighting hoo-ha”.
  - beckman466 5y ago
    my problem is that we are living in one of the most globally unequal times [1]. i just don’t know how relevant a hijacked practice is that misrepresents it’s origins. the way ‘mindfulness research’ filters down today is a type of gaslighting. ‘McMindfulness’ (as Ron Purser calls it - he wrote a book with that same term) is often a vanity project by CEOs/executives/school boards in the west who have too much time on their hands. they impose it on their organizations and want to be patted on the back for their 'enlightened' solution. but it does nothing to improve the alienating material conditions most of the working class face, which is the root cause of their suffering. “Mindfulness is said to be a $4bn industry. More than 60,000 books for sale on Amazon have a variant of “mindfulness” in their title, touting the benefits of Mindful Parenting, Mindful Eating, Mindful Teaching, Mindful Therapy, Mindful Leadership, Mindful Finance, a Mindful Nation, and Mindful Dog Owners, to name just a few. There is also The Mindfulness Colouring Book, part of a bestselling subgenre in itself. Besides books, there are workshops, online courses, glossy magazines, documentary films, smartphone apps, bells, cushions, bracelets, beauty products and other paraphernalia, as well as a lucrative and burgeoning conference circuit. Mindfulness programmes have made their way into schools, Wall Street and Silicon Valley corporations, law firms, and government agencies, including the US military.” [2] and: “What is the problem with people making money out of mindfulness? I guess if you’re a devout capitalist there probably isn’t a problem. But the issue is that it’s a capitalist spirituality. It’s under the big umbrella of the ‘wellness industry’. What is troubling is how easily it has become accommodated within the mainstream marketplace – I think that should give us pause. Mindfulness is so market-friendly because it appeals to this highly individualistic, entrepreneurial ethos. It’s all about ‘me’ and self-improvement. It’s thriving in a culture of narcissism. The focus is firmly on delivering a more happy self. This is a real kind of social myopia: it squarely places the responsibility of being ‘happy’ within the individual themselves, rather than taking into account all the systemic, structural aspects of society that are causing the cultural malaise that has so many people flocking to the wellness industry for answers.” Purser does offer a potential alternative: “Is it possible to reclaim mindfulness from the marketplace? Mindfulness has been hijacked by the neoliberal narrative, but I think it could be reclaimed by expanding its scope. From the very start, the Buddhist community, or sangha, was always going against the grain of the Hindu caste system in India. Buddhism was always countercultural. Mindfulness is now all about critique being turned inward, toward ourselves. We need to flip that critique back out, toward the systems and practices that are causing the problems in the first place. A collective form of mindfulness would not throw the baby out with the bathwater; it wouldn’t throw out self-care, would not disregard the therapeutic benefits of meditation — but it would expand the scope of its environment. We could sever its ties to the marketplace, to create a more collective practice that focuses on the alleviation of collective social suffering, rather than just that of the individual.” [3] lastly though, i think it’s ironic that this article mentions a “classic study [that] had skilled golfers attempt to sink putts under different experimental conditions”. so you’re saying that in a stressed out society where people in the working class get no time for themselves to reflect, academic researchers in the west are going to do research on the golf playing propertied class to look for alternatives/solutions (no matter if those solutions are either 'mindfulness' or 'mindlessness' or whatever else)? [1] https://mronline.org/2019/09/29/iphone-workers-today-are-25-times-more-exploited-than-textile-workers-in-19th-century-england/ https://mronline.org/2019/09/29/iphone-workers-today-are-25-... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/jun/14/the-mindfulness-conspiracy-capitalist-spirituality https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/jun/14/the-min... [3] https://www.huckmag.com/art-and-culture/books-art-and-culture/how-mindfulness-became-the-new-capitalist-spirituality/ https://www.huckmag.com/art-and-culture/books-art-and-cultur...
YokoZar 5y ago
> The article itself isn't terribly interesting, IMO. Yes, there are moments like Flow when doing something familiar (piano playing, coding) which are apparently "mindless" but in fact are themselves deeply mindful, in that they feel like they connect action almost directly to the subconscious. Or this at least is how it feels when I play piano - I have literally no idea how my fingers do what they do, and if I think about it too hard, things fall apart. If you're willing to define both reflective thinking and task-driven nonthinking as mindfulness, then what exactly isn't?
- taneq 5y ago
  Anything that didn't involve someone getting paid to teach a course.
andi999 5y ago
"But. Under the hood is a centuries-old tradition of self-investigation and awareness. It's often laid at the door of Buddhism,". Could you be more precise? Which Buddhism? And which buddhist (meditation) practice? I am getting more and more the feeling that this is as true as 'ikigai' being something rooted in japanese culture (which it is not). People know little in depth about Japan, and/or Buddhism (but perception is positive), so somebody might just have come up with some amalgation of something and sell it with 'but we know from thousends of year of buddhist practice...' and so on. So which one is closest to mindfullnes: Theravada, Mahayana, Zen, or some other smaller branch and which meditation practise exactly? I realize I sound very confrontational, I dont mean to attack you (I think it is important to have this precise question though)
- forkLding 5y ago
  Probably Chan or Zen Buddhism, the word Chan 禅 means meditation. Zen is the Japanese pronunciation for Chan. Although they all belong to Mahayana Buddhism and Mahayana Buddhism has meditation practices, the more modern formats that the Western world has exposure from is likely Zen Buddhism.
  - andi999 5y ago
    I was thinking so (know too little about mindfulness). If you look at the state of Zen in Japan it is in a sharp decline and probably the vast majority does not practice meditation (couldn't find numbers though). While I sympathize with meditation it somehow has been taken over by modern life
- nathias 5y ago
  I have a feeling they just took the hood.

by dmje 5y ago

beckman466 5y ago

> Yes, there is a mindfulness "industry" > But. > I quite like "vague notions" like "feelings", myself :-) it's funny how what you write is exactly "what you would hear from an 'intergalactic encyclopedia salesman'", to quote OP. thanks for proving OP's point. i think the reason mindfulness falls flat is because it ignores the material reality of the working class in our profit-seeking economic system. it makes like miserable for a large group of people. the problem is that you can't meditate your way out of poverty of precarity by using "a centuries-old tradition of self-investigation and awareness". mindfulness is 'for' the propertied classes who usually collect all types of rent [1] and who aren't living paycheck to paycheck. try telling an exhausted Amazon warehouse worker to 'try' mindfulness. often it's just a bunch of gaslighting hoo-ha [1] https://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-08-03/book-day-corruption-capitalism-guy-standing/ https://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-08-03/book-day-corru...

texasbigdata 5y ago
Falls flat? You can MRI and observe neuroplasticity type changes based on level of meditation experience. Also, I believe it was Berkley affiliated, a monthly review of papers published on mindfulness and it's impacts often had 80+ meaningful entries on an average month: some of the use cases around therapy, around endangered populations (ptsd), disorders (agoraphobia, etc). Your general point about society might not be wrong, but the main claim that meditation does nothing is woefully incorrect. The argument in this thread seems to "late night TV sold me a shake weight, it's a bullshit, those scam artists, who needs strenght training anyways?". There's other ways.
- Brakenshire 5y ago
  Can you really see neuroplasticity in an MRI?
  - smorgusofborg 5y ago
    One measures oxygen levels by MRI while doing a task before and after the intervention to determine changes to what regions get enlisted for the task.
- andi999 5y ago
  You have neuroplastic changes if you practice guitar or golf.
whynaut 5y ago
This is silly. I discovered mindfulness early in life and it definitely does help one contend with the (mental) pains of poverty. Please at least minimally research the topic before descending to call it “gaslighting hoo-ha”.
- beckman466 5y ago
  my problem is that we are living in one of the most globally unequal times [1]. i just don’t know how relevant a hijacked practice is that misrepresents it’s origins. the way ‘mindfulness research’ filters down today is a type of gaslighting. ‘McMindfulness’ (as Ron Purser calls it - he wrote a book with that same term) is often a vanity project by CEOs/executives/school boards in the west who have too much time on their hands. they impose it on their organizations and want to be patted on the back for their 'enlightened' solution. but it does nothing to improve the alienating material conditions most of the working class face, which is the root cause of their suffering. “Mindfulness is said to be a $4bn industry. More than 60,000 books for sale on Amazon have a variant of “mindfulness” in their title, touting the benefits of Mindful Parenting, Mindful Eating, Mindful Teaching, Mindful Therapy, Mindful Leadership, Mindful Finance, a Mindful Nation, and Mindful Dog Owners, to name just a few. There is also The Mindfulness Colouring Book, part of a bestselling subgenre in itself. Besides books, there are workshops, online courses, glossy magazines, documentary films, smartphone apps, bells, cushions, bracelets, beauty products and other paraphernalia, as well as a lucrative and burgeoning conference circuit. Mindfulness programmes have made their way into schools, Wall Street and Silicon Valley corporations, law firms, and government agencies, including the US military.” [2] and: “What is the problem with people making money out of mindfulness? I guess if you’re a devout capitalist there probably isn’t a problem. But the issue is that it’s a capitalist spirituality. It’s under the big umbrella of the ‘wellness industry’. What is troubling is how easily it has become accommodated within the mainstream marketplace – I think that should give us pause. Mindfulness is so market-friendly because it appeals to this highly individualistic, entrepreneurial ethos. It’s all about ‘me’ and self-improvement. It’s thriving in a culture of narcissism. The focus is firmly on delivering a more happy self. This is a real kind of social myopia: it squarely places the responsibility of being ‘happy’ within the individual themselves, rather than taking into account all the systemic, structural aspects of society that are causing the cultural malaise that has so many people flocking to the wellness industry for answers.” Purser does offer a potential alternative: “Is it possible to reclaim mindfulness from the marketplace? Mindfulness has been hijacked by the neoliberal narrative, but I think it could be reclaimed by expanding its scope. From the very start, the Buddhist community, or sangha, was always going against the grain of the Hindu caste system in India. Buddhism was always countercultural. Mindfulness is now all about critique being turned inward, toward ourselves. We need to flip that critique back out, toward the systems and practices that are causing the problems in the first place. A collective form of mindfulness would not throw the baby out with the bathwater; it wouldn’t throw out self-care, would not disregard the therapeutic benefits of meditation — but it would expand the scope of its environment. We could sever its ties to the marketplace, to create a more collective practice that focuses on the alleviation of collective social suffering, rather than just that of the individual.” [3] lastly though, i think it’s ironic that this article mentions a “classic study [that] had skilled golfers attempt to sink putts under different experimental conditions”. so you’re saying that in a stressed out society where people in the working class get no time for themselves to reflect, academic researchers in the west are going to do research on the golf playing propertied class to look for alternatives/solutions (no matter if those solutions are either 'mindfulness' or 'mindlessness' or whatever else)? [1] https://mronline.org/2019/09/29/iphone-workers-today-are-25-times-more-exploited-than-textile-workers-in-19th-century-england/ https://mronline.org/2019/09/29/iphone-workers-today-are-25-... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/jun/14/the-mindfulness-conspiracy-capitalist-spirituality https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/jun/14/the-min... [3] https://www.huckmag.com/art-and-culture/books-art-and-culture/how-mindfulness-became-the-new-capitalist-spirituality/ https://www.huckmag.com/art-and-culture/books-art-and-cultur...

YokoZar 5y ago

> The article itself isn't terribly interesting, IMO. Yes, there are moments like Flow when doing something familiar (piano playing, coding) which are apparently "mindless" but in fact are themselves deeply mindful, in that they feel like they connect action almost directly to the subconscious. Or this at least is how it feels when I play piano - I have literally no idea how my fingers do what they do, and if I think about it too hard, things fall apart. If you're willing to define both reflective thinking and task-driven nonthinking as mindfulness, then what exactly isn't?

taneq 5y ago
Anything that didn't involve someone getting paid to teach a course.

andi999 5y ago

"But. Under the hood is a centuries-old tradition of self-investigation and awareness. It's often laid at the door of Buddhism,". Could you be more precise? Which Buddhism? And which buddhist (meditation) practice? I am getting more and more the feeling that this is as true as 'ikigai' being something rooted in japanese culture (which it is not). People know little in depth about Japan, and/or Buddhism (but perception is positive), so somebody might just have come up with some amalgation of something and sell it with 'but we know from thousends of year of buddhist practice...' and so on. So which one is closest to mindfullnes: Theravada, Mahayana, Zen, or some other smaller branch and which meditation practise exactly? I realize I sound very confrontational, I dont mean to attack you (I think it is important to have this precise question though)

forkLding 5y ago
Probably Chan or Zen Buddhism, the word Chan 禅 means meditation. Zen is the Japanese pronunciation for Chan. Although they all belong to Mahayana Buddhism and Mahayana Buddhism has meditation practices, the more modern formats that the Western world has exposure from is likely Zen Buddhism.
- andi999 5y ago
  I was thinking so (know too little about mindfulness). If you look at the state of Zen in Japan it is in a sharp decline and probably the vast majority does not practice meditation (couldn't find numbers though). While I sympathize with meditation it somehow has been taken over by modern life
nathias 5y ago
I have a feeling they just took the hood.