Clearing the Muddled Path of Traditional and Contemporary Mindfulness: a Response to Monteiro, Musten, and Compson

Mindfulness, Dec 2014

Ronald E. Purser

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Clearing the Muddled Path of Traditional and Contemporary Mindfulness: a Response to Monteiro, Musten, and Compson

Ronald E. Purser 0 ) College of Business, Bus 349, San Francisco State University , 1600 Holloway Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94132 , USA - 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)


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Ronald E. Purser. Clearing the Muddled Path of Traditional and Contemporary Mindfulness: a Response to Monteiro, Musten, and Compson, Mindfulness, 2015, pp. 23-45, Volume 6, Issue 1, DOI: 10.1007/s12671-014-0373-4