Clearing the Muddled Path of Traditional and Contemporary Mindfulness: a Response to Monteiro, Musten, and Compson
Ronald E. Purser
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) College of Business, Bus 349, San Francisco State University
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1600 Holloway Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94132
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USA
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In their article, Monteiro, Musten and Compson (2015)
explored the criticisms regarding the proliferation of
contemporary mindfulness programs by attempting to represent the
positions and concerns of the traditional Buddhist
community. They noted that traditional Buddhists have
raised alarms over the proliferation of mindfulness programs
primarily because such contemporary applications have
significantly diverged from canonical definitions of
mindfulness as derived from the vast corpus of traditional
Buddhist texts and practices. In addition, they characterized
such objections by traditional Buddhists as a groundswell of
protest, particularly when concerns are raised over the absence
of ethics, or sila, in clinical and nonclinical mindfulness
programs. They also touch on issues pertaining to a clash of
worldviews between religion and science, as well as the
teaching of secular mindfulness programs in corporations
and the military.
Monteiro et al. (2015) framed the debate, first in terms of
two streams, the traditional Buddhist community (which is
depicted as fiercely critical of the other stream)namely,
contemporary mindfulness, as propagated and practiced by
secular and clinical mindfulness practitioners. This framing
has some merit, as the concerns raised have been the subject of
much debate and attention in both the popular press and
Buddhist blogosphere, such as Purser and Loys (2013)
Beyond McMindfulness, Norths (2014) op-ed piece The
Mindfulness Backlash in the New York Times, Thompson
(2014), The Mindfulness Wars, Whitakers (2013) 2013 as
the year of mindfulness: Critics and defenders, and Rocas
(2014) The Dark Night of the Soul. In addition, numerous
Buddhist teachers and religious studies scholars have weighed
in on the medicalization and psychologization of mindfulness,
considering how such reinterpretations alter the meaning,
function and ends of such secular practices (Bazzano 2013;
Brazier 2013; Buswell and Lopez 2014; Cohen 2010; Lopez
2012; Samuel 2014; Stanley 2013; Thanissaro 2012; Wallace
2007). In addition to analyzing and describing the trend
towards the decontextualization of mindfulness and the role it
plays within an integrated Buddhist path of liberation, a
number of scholars have also described, perhaps more importantly,
how contemporary mindfulness applications have undergone
a refashioning and make over in order to accommodate the
needs of Western society deeply rooted in individualism,
consumer capitalism, along with its pragmatic demands for
tangible and worldly benefits (McMahan 2008; Schedneck
2013; Stanley 2013; Wilson 2014).
Monteiro et al. have emphasized two extreme views by
narrowly framing the debate simply in terms of definitional
squabbles of what constitutes right mindfulness and the
absence of an explicit ethical framework for mindfulness-based
interventions (MBIs). Bhikkhu Bodhi (2014a) has chronicled
this polar opposition in what he calls a fusion of horizons.
On one side of the polarity are the conservative Buddhists,
who believe the Dharma must be kept pure, that it should be
preserved and protected, and that introducing any changes is
simply a slippery slope to an eventual degradation and
wholesale dilution of the Buddhist teachings. On the other end of the
spectrum are the contemporary mindfulness advocates, who
believe that Buddhism has always evolved as it migrates to
new cultures, and that the West is not any different. Therefore,
the Dharma is mutable and should be adaptive and relevant to
modern times by shedding its religious overtones,
superstitions, and cultural baggage. Contemporary mindfulness is
pragmatic and therapeuticits aim is to reduce suffering in
the here and now. The slogan, meeting people where they are
at, is the mantra for contemporary mindfulness advocates.
While there is some degree of validity to these
characterizations, this extremist comparison, which Monteiro et al. focus
on as being representative of the tangle of concerns, often
depicts Buddhist traditionalists as inflexible, dogmatic, and
deficiently adaptive, in effect, setting up traditional Buddhism
as a straw man. This is curious, given that the Bhikkhu Bodhi
(2011, pp. 3536), an American monk and one of the key
voices for traditional Buddhism in the West, has remarked
that:
I do not think we need be alarmed about the
adaptation of Buddhist practices for secular ends. I call to mind
a statement the Buddha made in the weeks before his
death: The Tathagata has no closed fist of a teacher with
respect to teachings. By this he meant that he had taught
everything important without holding back any esoteric
doctrines, but I like to interpret his words to mean that
we can let anyone take from the Dhamma whatever they
find useful even if it is for secular purposes.
In their characterization of a growing and
sometimesfraught debate between trad (...truncated)