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Whenever y’all are ready to go in on Mindfulness™, holler.
Like, has it occurred to you that Mindfulness™ perfectly plays into the moralizing, guilt-powered control mechanisms of the religious systems it proposes to replace? They’re just stocking a new product on the shelf.
Like, has it occurred to you that Mindfulness™ perfectly plays into the moralizing, guilt-powered control mechanisms of the religious systems it proposes to replace? They’re just stocking a new product on the shelf.
The culturally denuded Mindfulness™ instructions available in bookstores, schools, employee trainings, and mental health facilities everywhere are exactly what you would design if your primary goal was to control people’s behavior by giving them spiritual feels as a side effect.
I’m not saying Mindfulness™ doesn’t work! It DOES work. Just not exactly as advertised.
From a Buddhist POV — if I may be permitted to use my Twitter account to project such a ridiculous thing — a world where the Mindfulness™ movement is successful would be like everybody having utterly normal bodies except for cartoonishly ripped biceps.
I forgot prisons https://twitter.com/kyosaku_jon/status/1351173048607641601
Should have put this in the thread: https://twitter.com/kyosaku_jon/status/1351193111523946499
Maybe this can help me clarify what I was trying to say a few days ago. The category “meditation” is broad (read: vague) enough to encompass at least two *polar opposite* kinds of things. There’s meditation-as-conditioning, and meditation-as-deconditioning. I like the latter. https://twitter.com/kyosaku_jon/status/1349768804134498312
“[B]y that very effort to coerce yourself into a new & improved state of consciousness, you divide yourself into two.” https://twitter.com/shibumigido/status/1351242753385095180?s=21
This raises an important point. Mindfulness™ was *devised* as a therapeutic application of dharma insights. I think there’s a LOT to be gained by deploying it as part of “health.” But this is also how crass *consumer* Mindfulness™ derives its authoritative market position. https://twitter.com/ehipassiko444/status/1351244845231316993
Pretty hefty “nothing,” isn’t it?? https://twitter.com/techgnostic/status/1351254343379390465
This said, nor do I want to suggest that deploying mindfulness in health care is always or even *usually* good. The risks are exactly what the risks with spiritual teachers always are, except add on society’s stigmas about “mental health.” https://twitter.com/kyosaku_jon/status/1351250151478874113
I *still* messed this up (cc @sam_havens). I FULLY believe that there are pro-conditioning meditation practices that can generate beneficial results (they just don’t work on me). Mindfulness™ is far more specific. It’s what they’re conditioning you *for* that’s objectionable. https://twitter.com/kyosaku_jon/status/1351196361308446723
