How social is your mindfulness?

Meg writes…

I am reading an excellent book at Steven’s suggestion: Selling Spirituality: The silent takeover of religion, by Jeremy Carrette and Richard King.

The book makes many interesting arguments (and I am only one chapter in so far!), such as pointing out that whilst religion is commonly criticised (in the west) as Marx’s ‘opiate of the masses’, there has (until recently at least) been relatively little criticism of the ideological institutions and practices of forms of corporate capitalism which present secular ideologies and regimes of thought-control. As well as giving a useful overview of topics such as neoliberalism, colonialism and corporate capitalism for unfamiliar readers, the book presents a persuasive argument that recent forms of western ‘spirituality’ tend to strip out the radical, ethical and social aspects of the religions they are drawn from, and are then sold as consumer products.

I found the following list of features particularly useful. Carrette and King suggest that contemporary forms of spirituality can be categorised in terms of the degree of accommodation or resistance they exhibit to each of these features (and thus each could be conceived as a spectrum). Perhaps advocates of various versions of mindfulness and mindfulness therapies could do well to reflect upon where they are located on each of these features and the implications of that.

‘1. Atomisation: the individualisation of responsibility with no consideration of society.

2. Self-interest: an ethic of self-interest that sees profit as the primary motivation for human action.

3. Corporatism: placing corporate (not community) success above welfare and job security of employees.

4. Utilitarianism: treating others as means rather than ends (e.g. seeing humans as consumers to be persuaded, other businesses as competitors to be overcome, or employees as resources to be used).

5. Consumerism: the promotion of unrestrained desire-fulfilment as the key to happiness.

6. Quietism: tacit or overt acceptance of the inevitability of social injustice rather than a wish to overcome it.

7. Political myopia: a claim to political neutrality – the refusal to see the political dimensions of ‘spirituality’.

8. Thought-control/accommodationism: use of psych-physical techniques, described in terms of ‘personal development’, that seek to pacify feelings of anxiety and disquiet at the individual level rather than seeking to challenge the social, political and economic inequalities that cause such distress.’

Carrette, J. & King, R. (2005).  Selling Spirituality: The silent takeover of religion. London: Routledge. p.21

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Mindful academia

Meg Barker and Steven Stanley reflect on the potentials of social mindfulness for academic life and work.

Rosalind Gill has recently spoken out about the secrecies and silences which exist about the injuries of academic life (Gill, 2010). Gill names these injuries as ‘exhaustion, stress, overload, insomnia, anxiety, shame, aggression, hurt, guilt and feelings of out-of-placeness, fraudulence and fear of exposure’ (p.229). She locates them within: the precariousness of academic work, particularly for career-early academics and those trying to secure promotion; the intensity of work in a world driven by research excellence frameworks and constant monitoring and tracking; the ‘Sisyphean’ nature of inboxes and to do lists and sense of being ‘always on’; and the toxicity of processes of review, appraisal and application where people are frequently judged and dismissed by their peers, and even subject to brutal and dehumanising attacks.

Mindful self-care
How might mindfulness practices help us to engage differently with this academic world? On a very simple level, building mindful practices into our lives individually ensures that we pause regularly to reflect on our current experience before plunging in again. Perhaps this will help us to engage with projects which most connect with our values in the present moment, instead of spending hours marking one essay or writing one paragraph when that is not the place that we are in right now. Perhaps it will help us to know when we need to retreat and reflect, and when we are ready to act (Batchelor, 1997).

Also, mindfulness practice alerts us to the cravings which may be in play in our work: Are we yearning for approval or validation? Are we driven to make sense of our own (and others’) experience or to prove others wrong? Are we caught up in the everlasting (and neverending) quest for the completed to-do list or the empty inbox? Finally, in its rejection of any notion of a fixed self, mindfulness may enable us to treat the dismissive review or the unsuccessful application for promotion more lightly. Instead of personalising the experience and falling into a spiral of shame and a sense that we must be a fraud who has been – or will be – ‘found out’, we can locate such experiences in disconnections between ourselves and others or within systems. We can recognise that we are not fixed by one particular presentation we give, or piece of writing that we produce, or the response that we receive about it.

Mindful change
Lest this sounds like a recipe for acceptance of the toxic structures, systems and processes which Gill rightly highlights, we need to remember the social engagement and political activist focus of early Buddhist mindfulness. Tuning into, and reflecting upon, our experiences in these ways will likely cause us to bring them into question, and if we can speak these questions then this can be a power for change.

Thanks to Marion Nao for allowing us to share her poem which reflects so well on the challenges of social mindfulness.

The mindful self

I’m mindfully
Awakened to myself

Meaning and non-meaning
Cannot escape my depths of being

And so I identify
With non-identifying

What harm is there in that?

I’ve done so for many years
More, I believe, than you

I’m mindful

Which instils in me a kindness
By virtue of its proclamation

I’m mindful

If everyone were like me,
The world would be a better place

Yet, I cannot leave life to its own devices
I must act in accordance with my beliefs

Mindfully engaged,
I know right from wrong

My action makes amends for
The non-action of others

My judgement rectifies their wrongs

I must follow both my heart and head
To crusade my own morality

I’m mindful,
Don’t you see?

by Marion Nao

Meditation for teenagers in prison

Thanks to Mindful Space for this link.

Some of New York City’s angriest teens are learning the way to a more peaceful path with a little help from the Buddha.

NBC New York recently was given access to the Crossroads Juvenile Detention Center in Brownsville, where there was a stark contrast between the kids in their orange detention suits and the monks in their brown robes.

Privilege & Oppression, Conflict & Compassion

Meg Barker and Jamie Heckert reflect upon different strategies for dealing with conflict, and what can be learnt from a dialogue between naming oppression and compassionate listening.

The political project of learning to recognise and name patterns of oppression has been, and continues to be, an important one. It has helped us to recognise that our own experiences of pain are not just personal; they are also political. And so we have become involved in social movements responding to these patterns and creating new ones. In this way, learning to name oppression can help to create a sense of connection among those who experience it.

At the same time, we notice that an idea (or ideology) of connection can substitute for the more complex experience of direct connection, of listening to another’s stories and of empathising with another’s pain. Political identity based on oppression can assume that experiences are identical: that all LGBT folk, all workers, all women, or all people of colour will have experienced the same oppression and should have the same politics. Of course, this all falls apart when we notice that everyone is characterised in different ways at different times in different contexts. No one is simply LGBT or a worker, or only a woman or a person of colour. Assumed, rather than directly experienced, connections rapidly fall apart when those who are assumed to be identical point out that they are not. Queer, working-class women and transfolk of colour experience all four of these patterns of oppression in particular ways (and, quite possibly others around ability, age, appearance, education and more). No politics of identity can incorporate so many differences.

Mindfulness: A strategy for social engagement?

In this post, Meg Barker reflects on the possibilities of mindfulness for social engagement.

People who read my blogs and other writing will know that one of the things I’m heavily into is  mindfulness. This is, broadly speaking, the practice of cultivating awareness, often through meditation where you gently focus on your breath going in and out, or on the sounds around you, or on your bodily sensations as you walk very slowly back and forth.

My excitement about mindfulness may seem a bit peculiar to those who know that the other areas which I’m passionately engaged in are all very social: issues around relationship structures, discrimination of marginalised groups in society, and power and conflict. Mindfulness seems such an internal, individual thing, how can it possibly be relevant to these matters. As somebody asked in an Open University seminar on the topic: ‘where is the social?’

Such questions were the motivation behind a weekend workshop/retreat which I attended earlier this month. Steven Stanley and I put together the weekend with a group of colleagues to address the question of social mindfulness. The weekend consisted of a combination of periods of meditation and other mindful-type practices (such as Qigong), together with presentations and discussions linking mindfulness to various social issues including sustainability, interpersonal and intergroup conflict, prejudice and discrimination, mental health and communication.