My key takeaways from Ronald Purser’s McMindfulness

Ronald Purser feels that the current mindfulness fad is the entrepreneurial equivalent of McDonald’s. Spiritual salesmen are commoditizing mindfulness and making money by marketing it as a more efficient, calculable, predictable, and controlled form of meditation for improving mental fitness. “One invests in mindfulness as one would invest in a stock hoping to receive a handsome dividend,” says Purser in the book “McMindfulness: How mindfulness became thenew capitalist spirituality”. As a mindfulness teacher and author of a book on the subject, I was attracted to the book to understand Purser’s criticism as well as to check how my teaching stands against Purser polemic. In this article, I will summarize the key points from the book and in a subsequent article, I will write my response to Purser’s critique as well as assessment of journey-led mindfulness that I teach against the critique.

Which mindfulness? Before we look at Purser’s criticism, let’s understand what is the form of mindfulness Purser is putting under the scanner. It includes Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) an 8-week therapeutic intervention championed by Jon Kabat-Zinn initially in a clinical setting and subsequently expanded to corporations, schools, government, and the military. Purser also looks at corporate mindfulness programs such as Google’s “Search Inside Yourself” which was subsequently spun off as a leadership institute.

The mindfulness under review here is “nothing more than basic concentration training. Although derived from Buddhism, it’s been stripped of the teachings on ethics that accompanied it, as well as the liberating aim of dissolving attachment to a false sense of self while enacting compassion for all other beings.” It involves paying attention to the present moment, non-judgmentally. And, shifting from “doing” mode to “being” mode.

Now, let’s look at Purser’s key arguments.

Crisis is in the head: Purser feels that giant corporations like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Apple are monetizing and manipulating our attention. Rather than looking at this aspect, mindfulness champions are telling people to go inward, be in the present moment and let go of judgments. He says, “Mindfulness has, like positive psychology, and the broader happiness industry, depoliticized and privatized stress. If we are unhappy about being unemployed, losing our health insurance, and seeing our children incur massive debt through college loan, it is our responsibility to learn to be more mindful.” “We are repeatedly sold the same message that individual action is the only real way to solve social problems, so we should take responsibility.” Purser feels this approach stifles critical and radical thinking.

Tool for self-improvement: We are told that if we practice mindfulness and get our individual lives in order, we can be happy and secure. Google’s “Search Inside Yourself” program champion Meng promises, “Mindfulness can increase my happiness without changing anything else.” Jon Kabat-Zinn is quoted in the book saying, “Mindfulness may actually be the only promise the species and the planet have for making it through the next couple of hundred years.” David Gelles, author of Mindful work, says in his book, “Mindfulness can be a source of employer value proposition and may in the long run provide organizations with a valuable tool to manage high burnout levels of employees.”

What’s wrong if all this could actually happen? Purser points out that the scientific evidence for these improvements is poor. Thupten Jinpa, The Dalai Lama’s interpreter and a PhD from the University of Cambridge says, “The scientific study of meditation and its effects is very rudimentary.”  Another scientist is quoted saying that there is convincing evidence that mindfulness studies suffer from positive reporting bias, suggesting therapies are more effective than they really are. “Mind the hype” an article authored by fifteen researchers says, “As mindfulness has increasingly pervaded every aspect of contemporary society, so have misunderstandings about what it is, whom it helps, and how it affects the mind and brain. At a practical level, the misinformation and propagation of poor research methodology can potentially lead to people being harmed, cheated, disappointed, and/or disaffected.”

Secular approach without ethics or wisdom: While the secular mindfulness programs have their roots in Vipassana tradition, Purser feels that the ethics and wisdom part of Buddhism has been kept out. He says, “The claim that major ethical changes intrinsically follow from ‘paying attention to the present moment, non-judgmentally’ is patently flawed.” In Buddhist tradition, right mindfulness is one of Buddha’s eightfold path along with right perception, intention, speech, action, livelihood, effort, and concentration. Purser points out that secular mindfulness programs leave other seven things out. Buddhism also points to the constructed self or the insight of interdependence or pratitya-samutpada. To see that the feeling of independent self is a cognitive illusion is an important aspect of Buddhist teaching. Many mindfulness programs, especially in the clinical settings, leave this part out. If mindfulness helps you to connect with the real you, then what do you do after that? If you simply bliss out and accept injustice, how is it different from being a drug addict, sedated into zombified oblivion? Purser asks.

Purser’s suggestions: He feels that a truly revolutionary mindfulness would challenge the western sense of entitlement to happiness irrespective of ethical conduct. He feels mindfulness should aim towards individual and collective “conscience explosion,” converting exhaustion, depression, and burnout into constructive forms of activism. It should move towards personal, social, and ecological liberation. It should combine spiritual practice with radical action. By first witnessing shared vulnerabilities and acknowledging social suffering it should develop collective capacities for resistance by building trust and empathy.

Contrarian aspects of my life: no-religion, no-job, no-certification

India is a populous country. There is a competition for resources on the road, for buses, for college admission, for jobs, in hospitals, cricket match tickets, temples, and even in crematoriums. A contrarian position helps reduce the fight and eases life to some degree.

I learned driving while in the US, and when I returned to India in Bangalore in 1998, I realized driving here needs a whole set of new skills. For example, taking a right turn onto a main road was a nightmare for me. I kept waiting for someone to let me in, and became a target of serious honking from behind. I was no match for the swiftness and guts of the autowalla who used to become impatient waiting behind me. Soon, I found a trick. I started letting the auto move ahead, and I began following him. That was much easier. But I had a bigger Aha moment a few months later.

I realized the streets are empty when there is a cricket match on TV. I had not followed cricket for almost a decade by then. I started driving the family around during that time. We visited Gangarams, movie theatres, Ulsoor lake, HAL museum, Cubbon Park, etc. I began to learn the benefits of a contrarian position. Now, I haven’t watched cricket for a quarter of a century. Subsequently, I ended up taking contrarian positions much bigger than don’t-follow-cricket position, some by design, many others by circumstances. Here are three of them: No-religion, no-job, and no-certification.

No-religion: By the time I returned to India, I was convinced that the process of becoming is an illusion created and sustained by society and the culture. You must become successful by acquiring name, fame, and wealth – has been the dominant narrative. Hindu religion, with which I had a loose sense of belonging, is no exception. Right from birth to death, a set of rituals is “mandatory” so that “all will be well” for you during this and future births. That is the grand promise. For me, it looked like a crooked game being played by a small community, mostly Brahmins, for millennia. I lost interest in becoming anyone, and as a side effect, the grand promise of the Hindu religion looked meaningless to me.

For the past two decades, I haven’t been participating in any rituals – birth and death included. No idol worship, no temple visit, and no expenditure on anything remotely ritualistic. Over the last ten days, Gauri and I travelled from Dehradun to Ghangaria in Bhyundar valley. We trekked to the Valley of Flowers and to the Hemkund Sahib gurudwara. We have no plans of visiting any of the Char Dhams including Badrinath where most of the crowd is headed. Sometimes, I don’t have a choice, in which case I just chill out nearby. For example, when Gauri visited Kashi Vishwanath temple in Varanasi, I went to Mani Karnika ghat nearby and watched the sunrise. At the Puri temple, I looked after her belongings outside. Yesterday, when Gauri visited the oldest temple of Rishikesh, Bharat temple, I managed to strike a conversation with the school-going fourth graders about what they liked in school (they said – playing, except one girl who said she likes studies).

I continue to be a serious student of Upanishads, especially Katha Upanishad (my blog), that of Nagarjuna’s Sunyata as depicted in the 2^nd-3^rd century text Mulamadhyamaka Karika (my blog), and Ramana Maharshi’s UpadesaSaram (my blog), none of it requires me to belong to a religion. I study these texts in Sanskrit. When the Government census guys visited us in 2011, I asked them if they had “no religion” as an option. They didn’t. So, I got counted as a Hindu.

No-job: I have been a big beneficiary of capitalist structures. I worked for a decade after finishing my studies, two years in the US and eight years in Bangalore. I got stock options, and after IPO, I sold them and it helped in partial repayment of the home loan. I have been debt-free for the past fifteen years. However, capitalism demands that every for-profit company keep growing revenue, profits, and shareholder value. Given my disregard for the process of becoming, I realized it is better to step away from the corporate world and make a living independently without any pressure for growth. I quit my job in 2006, and I have been freelancing ever since. I still needed to pay the bills and work around the inflation. Moreover, I had to stand out from the crowd, market myself, create a niche, and deliver value. That’s not easy. I got lucky, got good collaborators, and kept getting assignments from for-profit, not-for-profit, and government organizations.

What’s in a name? One may ask. But the name I ended up giving for my consulting practice – Catalign Innovation Consulting acted as a beacon. It implied three things I would do: One, my primary role would be a catalyst – someone who helps an individual or teams move from intent to impact effectively. The primary role won’t be an activist driving an agenda of my own, won’t be a solution provider, and won’t be a knowledge imparting teacher. Two, I would be helpful in aligning strategy and execution. And three, I would help organizations in their innovation journey.  

Can innovation capacity building become obsolete, making me redundant? Sure, it can. However, if I look around, I see some of the innovation world leaders struggling right now, like Intel, Boeing, even Apple. Indian companies – both startups and established players are under pressure to innovate, especially in deep-tech innovation. I clearly see an opportunity in innovation capacity building in India at least for another decade, perhaps more. I also see myself playing a role in raising awareness on the dark side of innovation – using innovation towards predatory practices allegedly used by big corporates like Apple, Google, Amazon, Meta, Flipkart, etc. In short, I don’t see any dearth of opportunities right now.

No-certification: Indian society is obsessed with certificates. If you have a certificate from a prestigious institute, good for you, or better still if it is from a foreign institute. The obsession is understandable given the number of applications for any position and the number of bogus certificates floating around. I have been a big beneficiary of two certificates, one a bachelor’s of technology from IIT Bombay and the other, a doctorate from University at Buffalo, USA, both in Computer Science. I got my last certificate in 1996, almost thirty years ago. And then I decided to stop playing the certification game. I let my writing and my work become my credentials. This is a contrarian position, given that the three areas I work in: innovation capacity building, design thinking, and mindfulness have very little to with Computer Science. I have no certificate in any of these areas. My father finds it odd how I make a living by claiming expertise in areas in which I carry no certificate.

One implication of no-certification is that I don’t take an existing framework (or a case study for that matter) and adapt it. For example, I don’t do a certification in executive coaching or I do not do a certification from a foreign product management program and resell it in India. These are great and lucrative business models. But I don’t go there. I only work with my frameworks published through my books and blogs. Of course, these frameworks are created by building on top of existing studies and frameworks, and they are given due credit (each chapter of our innovation book has an average of 35 references).   

All my frameworks have one common assumption that is uncommon. They assume a biased-agent model versus a rational-agent model. If a president, a prince, or a portfolio manager participates in underage sex trafficking, it can happen only under a biased mental model. I was blown away when I heard Daniel Kahneman say, “Rational agent model is a non-starter” more than a decade ago, and it stuck.

To summarize, no-religion, no-job, and no-certification are some of the contrarian positions in my life. They have helped me navigate life relatively smoothly so far.

image source: Gemini AI