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.