Social and Personality Psychology Compass

Mindfulness: Towards A Critical Relational Perspective

Journal:

Social and Personality Psychology Compass SPCO-0486.R1 Article

Manuscript ID:

Wiley - Manuscript type:

Date Submitted by the Author: Complete List of Authors:

r Fo
Category: Abstract:

19-Jan-2012 Stanley, Steven; Cardiff University, Cardiff University School of Social Sciences Critical Psychology < Compass Sections, Social Psychology < Sociology < Subjects, Social Psychology and Personality < Subjects, cross-cultural < Key Topics, positive psychology < Key Topics Significant attention has been given to mindfulness and mindfulness meditation in Western culture often allied with a concern to enhance subjective wellbeing through interventions aiming to ameliorate stress, depression and anxiety. While much professional and scientific research has been conducted which studies the nature and effectiveness of mindfulness-based interventions, few critical accounts exist. I seek to produce a social critique of current understandings of mindfulness in relation to contemporary psychology. I illustrate how mindfulness has become individualised as an object of contemporary psychological investigation. I then propose a relational approach which instead sees mindfulness as socially contingent and as a potential resource for individuals and communities to cultivate a critically distant stance towards society. This involves revisioning our basic understanding of mindfulness as not only an inner state of mind, but also as a public social practice.

Social and Personality Psychology Compass

Pe

er

Re

vi

ew

Page 1 of 20

Social and Personality Psychology Compass

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

Introduction

Significant attention has been given to mindfulness in Western culture alongside present moment awareness, acceptance, and wellbeing. Popular titles such as The Mindful Manifesto: How Doing Less And Noticing More Can Help Us Thrive in a Stressed-Out World (Heaversedge & Halliwell, 2010) give the impression that mindfulness meditation is a panacea for a variety of modern ills from stress to shyness, fear to physical pain. Mindfulness is often presented as a tool for enhancing individual wellbeing, happiness, and peace of mind in everyday life, work and

relationship contexts.

Critical psychology helps us adopt a sceptical position towards this contemporary orientation. There is a risk that mindfulness has become individualised and psychologised as a technique for improving individuals functioning within late capitalism. I propose rethinking our approach to mindfulness following Carrette and Kings (2005) critical psychology of spirituality.

Spirituality, Capitalism & Mindfulness

In Selling Spirituality: The Silent Takeover of Religion Carrette and King critique the commodification of religion through contemporary forms of spirituality. In the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Buddhism entered the Euro-American cultural landscape as a consequence of European colonial expansion; New Age spirituality later became a means of colonising and commodifying Asian wisdom traditions (p. 87). Psychology provided one of the mechanisms of individualisation (p. 71) that

Fo

Social and Personality Psychology Compass

rP ee rR ev iew
1

Social and Personality Psychology Compass

Page 2 of 20

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

bridges religion and capitalism in a neoliberal world; giving scientific legitimation for translating the religious world into a concern for individual health and maturity (p. 74). It built upon Enlightenment and Romanticist ideas that locate religion within the private sphere of individual experience and choice. Meditation became psychologised as a religious experience and individual state of consciousness.

As capitalism spread globally, a psychologised understanding of spirituality was used to silence resistance to the growing power of corporate capitalism and consumerism. Consumer-oriented and individualised spiritualities accompanied a corporatisation of spirituality, satisfying neoliberal corporate business demands for an efficient, productive and pacified workforce. Psychology took spirituality as an object of study and thereby brought it into the realm of assessment, measurement and productivity. The product of spirituality was an apparent cure for the isolation created by a materialistic, competitive and individualised social system (p. 27).

By suggesting that the individual is solely responsible for his or her own suffering, the New Age movement has largely pacified the social and potentially revolutionary aspects of religion. But ancient religious traditions have the potential to challenge ideologies of individualism, corporatism and social conformism. The origins of the Buddhist movement lie in the counter-cultural renouncers of the monastics who rejected dominant social values and ways of living. While their goal was release from cyclical existence, they created models of monastic communities, which may now provide the seeds of a critique of capitalism. Whereas capitalist spiritualities subordinate and exploit religious themes and motifs to promote an individualist and/or corporate-oriented pursuit of profit for its own sake, the

Fo

Social and Personality Psychology Compass

rP

ee

rR

ev

iew

Page 3 of 20

Social and Personality Psychology Compass

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

traditional religious emphasis upon self-sacrifice, the disciplining of desire and a recognition of community (ibid., p. 23) rejects the capitalist ideology of neoliberalism where life is determined by market forces alone.

A similar critique could be directed towards the current secularisation of mindfulness amongst privileged social groups in the West, not least because it is frequently linked to the notion of spirituality. Discussions of mindfulness often assume the inherent goodness of individual autonomy and responsibility, selfexpression, personal development, enhanced subjective wellbeing, emotion regulation, and the pursuit of happiness irrespective of social conditions or ethical/moral conduct. Arguably the individualisation mindfulness as a health or psychotherapeutic practice helps individuals accommodate their lives to capitalism.

This relies upon the notion of the autonomous individual self, so central to modern forms of government and democracy. But it maybe misleading to read classical Buddhist thought as promoting modern Western individualism. Indigenous subjectivities can sometimes contradict and challenge dominant Western notions of the bounded isolated self. We may draw upon Buddhist notions of subjectivity in the Pali Canon as challenging the notion of a self which supports consumer capitalism. We need to recover ideas of interdependence from Buddhism as a way of counteracting the individualism of modern spiritual capitalism. We also need to reclaim mindfulness as one way of cultivating a critically distant stance towards the status quo of society and social values.

Fo

Social and Personality Psychology Compass

rP

ee

rR

ev

iew

Social and Personality Psychology Compass

Page 4 of 20

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

Historical Roots of the Psychologisation of Mindfulness

Cohen (2010) argues that the lofty ideals of awakening and liberation embodied in Buddhist traditions have been compromised in Buddhist Modernism and psychologised versions of Buddhism. Buddhist Modernism is the particular take on Buddhism in the West developed in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (McMahan, 2008). Complex historical processes of globalisation made the world traditions of Buddhism available to us. Westerners (mainly American and European) engaged with Buddhism through thought traditions of Enlightenment, Rationalism, Romanticism, Protestant Christianity, Science, Psychology, and Postmodernism. This engagement involved three processes: demythologization, detraditionalisation, and

psychologisation.

We cannot help but engage with Buddhism through our own cultural frameworks and projects. There is no Asian language word for Buddhism or Buddhist; the words were creations of Victorian imperialist colonisers attempting to understand and control Buddhism for their own ends. It might have been more accurate to describe Buddhisms, which include a complex mixture of schools (Theravada, Mahayana, Vajrayana), changing depending on their varying historical, cultural and social conditions (geographically Southern, Eastern, Northern, and Western). Where Buddhism goes, it is transformed by its host culture, and accumulates distinctive styles from the native culture. Mindfulness as a meditation practice has its roots mainly in Theravadan (Southeast Asian), Chan (Chinese) and Zen (Japanese) Buddhism.

Fo

Social and Personality Psychology Compass

rP

ee rR ev iew
4

Page 5 of 20

Social and Personality Psychology Compass

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

Cohen (2010) shows how the psychologisation of Buddhism has involved a journey From the Bodhi tree, to the analysts couch, then into the MRI scanner. Schopenhauer and Nietzsche began the Western reinvention of tradition wherein Buddhism is stripped of its religious, cultural and historical context and transformed into a form of secular positivism (p. 100) in turn presented as a restoration of an original, or purer, form of Buddhism. Instead of a cultivation practice that leads to full awakening mindfulness becomes yet another coping mechanism for dealing with the stresses of modern life (p. 111). Secularisation means that we are rarely required to make the necessary and demanding life changes that Buddhism originally

required (p. 111).

Buddhism is often understood as an ancient psychology relevant to modern times. It has been engaged through seemingly every tradition of psychology, including early functionalism/pragmatism, psychoanalysis, existentialism, phenomenology, behaviourism, humanistic psychology, cognitive psychology, transpersonal psychology, positive psychology and now neuroscience (see, inter alia, James, 1902; Fromm et al., 1960; Varela et al., 1991). Contemporary research is dominated by cognitive behavioural approaches alongside cognitive neuroscience. Mindfulness is often taken as a therapeutic approach, connected to acceptance-based forms of psychotherapy, for the treatment of depression, anxiety and stress. It exists against a background of a transition claimed by some positive psychologists from deficit or pathology focused approaches to flourishing or wellbeing approaches.

Buddhist Modernism involves a reversal of the early Buddhist disenchantment of life towards a re-enchantment. Even postmodernist appropriations of Buddhism

Fo

Social and Personality Psychology Compass

rP ee rR ev iew
5

Social and Personality Psychology Compass

Page 6 of 20

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

which encourage appreciation of the changing, decentred and fragmented self are compatible with a consumer society and neoliberal political economy which requires that we constantly adapt to changing conditions of work (Lee, 2003).

Research projects seek to define and measure mindfulness, study its workings and cognitive and neural underpinnings, and assess its effectiveness as an intervention for a variety of mental health problems and social issues. The dominant approaches are Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (US) and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (UK). Both are becoming mainstream treatment modalities for a variety of psychosomatic and psychiatric problems. In the UK, the National Institute for Clinical and Health Excellence recommend MBCT for the treatment of depression. It is thereby becoming part of mainstream mental health care, in part due to its economic viability as a group-based treatment modality less expensive than one-on-

one cognitive behavioural therapy.

The vagueness and imprecision of the term spirituality allows it to carry multiple meanings and significations and operate across different social and interest groups. In capitalist terms, it can function to establish a market niche, such as functioning as a brand-label (Carrette & King, 2005, p. 31) for the search for meaning, values, transcendence, hope and connectedness in advanced capitalist societies. The same might be said of the term mindfulness, often considered a contemporary buzzword; an emerging product or brand name with a lucrative market.

Fo

Social and Personality Psychology Compass

rP

ee

rR ev iew
6

Page 7 of 20

Social and Personality Psychology Compass

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

In contemporary mindfulness studies, the word is used in a wide variety of sometimes-conflicting ways, which may or may not overlap with its uses in Buddhist thought. It is variously used to denote a state of consciousness, a metacognitive decentering, a style of attentional control or emotion regulation, a dispositional trait, a practice of meditation, or an outcome of meditative practice. It is operationalised as the experimental condition in an experiment, or dependent variable. Mindfulness has thereby become incorporate into the psy-complex (Rose, 1985).

Researchers have sought operational definitions and developed a number of psychometric scales which measure mindfulness. This work seeks consensus about what mindfulness is, how we can measure it, and what effects it has on other variables; featuring in positivist psychological investigations adopting a hypothetico-deductive model of experimentation. The general concern is to predict and control behaviour through experiment and measurement in order to produce objective, scientific evidence. This is despite the history of psychology showing that consensus about any given concept is rare: take mind, emotion or self. Instead of an agreed upon consensus of views, we might instead consider a plurality of perspectives, and diverse voices on the question of what mindfulness might be, and crucially how it might be used.

One of the biases of such research is that it tends to produce findings concerning the positive benefits of mindfulness practice, or how mindfulness works as a treatment modality. There is a lack of historical discussion of mindfulness.

Fo

Social and Personality Psychology Compass

rP

ee

rR

ev

iew

Social and Personality Psychology Compass

Page 8 of 20

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

We can focus specifically on the historical roots of attempts to psychologise Buddhism and understand it is as a psychology, perhaps the first psychology. We sometimes find the Buddha described as the first psychologist or even the first cognitive psychologist (one could replace cognitive with ones favourite type of psychologist phenomenological, behaviourist, psychoanalytic).

This is a move with a history. It has its roots in the late nineteenth century, especially in the work of Thomas William and Caroline Rhys-Davids, the first to translate the Pali Canon into a European language. They understood Buddhism as an ethical psychology, thereby helping to transform this indigenous religious tradition into a modern Western discipline.

Mindfulness is an English language word given particular meanings within specific historical, cultural and social contexts. The OED gives defines mindful (adjective) and mindfulness (noun). Our common use of the word mindful means something like to remember to do something, or to take care or heed in doing something. This usage has a long history in Western thought, going back several centuries (at least to the 14th century). But the use of the word mindfulness as inspired by Buddhist thought, and as an English translation of the Pali language word sati, has a much more recent, modern origin. This is a special usage which has come to prominence especially in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

T.W. Rhys-Davids was the first to translate the Pali word sati as mindfulness. In Buddhist Suttas (1881), he translates sati as an injunction to be mindful and thoughtful (pp. 28 29). The adjectival form mindful may be used to

Fo

Social and Personality Psychology Compass

rP

ee

rR

ev

iew

Page 9 of 20

Social and Personality Psychology Compass

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

modify a noun, such as when we say mindful attention as a particular way of paying attention. However, by 1890, in The Questions of King Milinda, Rhys-Davids has settled on sati as mindfulness (p. 52, pp. 58-59). Rhys-Davids points out that the etymological meaning of the word sati is memory and the verb form sarati connotes remembering. But as more recent commentators point out, this is a special type of remembering of what is otherwise only too easily forgotten: the present moment (Analayo, 2003).

Despite the translation of sati as a noun, which implies that mindfulness is an abstract name for a place or a thing, Rhys-Davids definition implies that sati is a verb: that activity of mind, constant presence of mind, wakefulness of heart, which is the foe of carelessness, inadvertence, self-forgetfulness (p. 58). This suggests that sati or mindfulness is an activity or a practice something to do or be rather than a static thing. In translating sati as a noun rather than a verb, Rhys-Davids set the stage for it to be taken as an object of scientific psychology, which requires things (i.e. mental entities) to exist, in order for them to be studied objectively, and also for mindfulness to be considered as a morally or ethically neutral state of mind, distinct from moral/social conduct.

But the critic may propose that mindfulness is a way of being, not doing. Mindfulness is non-doing or letting be; accepting rather than seeking to change experience or the world. But this is a modern, secular understanding of mindfulness, based on an idiosyncratic translation by Thera (1953). Kabat-Zinns (2003) popular definition of mindfulness as an awareness that arises when one intentionally pays attention in the present moment and non-judgementally is indirectly influenced by

Fo

Social and Personality Psychology Compass

rP

ee

rR

ev

iew

Social and Personality Psychology Compass

Page 10 of 20

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

this translation and humanistic psychology (Dryden & Still, 2006). It presumes that mindfulness is an ethically neutral bare attention. But Rhys-Davids understood Buddhist practice as an ethical psychology and that mindfulness could not be separated from morality or questions of what it means to live a good life. Buddhists are to cultivate right mindfulness as a wholesome state of mind, situated within the noble eightfold path, not a kind of mindfulness which non-judgmentally accepts everything which comes into awareness.

While there may be some validity to seeing Buddhism as a psychology, there are also risks. One that it is reduced to an individual therapy concerned purely with helping people to feel better and carry on working and reproducing society i.e. preserving the status quo rather than pointing out a path towards an awakening which has the potential to radically challenge society at its roots. By psychologizing Buddhism, we give the impression that wellbeing, happiness, or compassion are achievable without changing the entirety of how one lives ones life. Happiness may be seen as a right or inherent good. We can get happy simply by meditating on our breath, rather than living an ethically responsive life.

A crucial absence in secular mindfulness courses is the explicit commitment to take ethical training rules (sila) which encourage the practitioner to abstain from: harming living beings; taking what is not given; harmful speech; harmful sensuality and sexual conduct; and intoxicants which cloud the mind. The absence of an explicit ethical component in secular mindfulness courses places them in an ambiguous relationship with contemporary society, ethics and morality.

Fo

Social and Personality Psychology Compass

rP

ee

rR

ev

iew

10

Page 11 of 20

Social and Personality Psychology Compass

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

The psychologisation of Buddhism also places the motivation and responsibility to meditate onto the individual rather than the collective society. Individuals end up needing to remember to meditate and to motivate themselves but so often forget or lose interest rather than being supported and reminded by a community of practitioners.

Towards a Relational Perspective

We often understand mindfulness as an inner state of mind existing within isolated individuals. But this may reinforce our experience of ourselves as bounded beings, separate from each other and our social and natural worlds. This might be an unforeseen consequence of interpreting early Buddhism as seeking an understanding of human experience (Hamilton, 2000). Gergen and Hosking (2006) argue that the concept of experience risks reinstating the individual as the primary source or ontological foundation of being (p. 306). Instead, a constructionist might view the activity of experiencing as an outcome or expression of fundamental relatedness (ibid.). From a relational perspective, the practice of mindfulness is socially shared and contingent; only intelligible within on-going relationships of meaning-making. We can ask whether the meanings of mindfulness change when the relational context changes.

Furthermore, perhaps our capacity to be aware is dependent upon, and displayed within, our relationships with one another within broader social, cultural and historical circumstances. The practice of redirecting our attention inwards, for example, might be relationally contingent and dependent upon previous occurrences

Fo

Social and Personality Psychology Compass

rP

ee

rR

ev

iew

11

Social and Personality Psychology Compass

Page 12 of 20

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

in the outer social world. Even the thoughts we come into mindful relationship with during solitary meditation are social, such that thinking is not straightforwardly a mental process. One may appear to practice meditation alone, but such practice always carries with it the traces of those from whom one has learned. One is never alone (Gergen, 2010, p. 21). From this starting point, we can ask what conditions (e.g. economic and cultural) allow meditation to be practised (or not).

Gergen (2010) argues that Buddhism shares an assumption of relationality with social construction. The Buddhist notion of dependent origination or inter-being suggests that nothing is independent. For example, in breath awareness meditation, when we breathe in, we become aware of the bodily sensations of in-breathing. When we breathe out, we become aware of the bodily sensations of out-breathing. The breathing can be left to itself. The breath itself is a selfless phenomena; neither mine or not mine. The breathing process exists at the intersection between all that is identified as me and all that is not me. The sensations of the breathing at the nostrils, for example, are at the boundary between what we call inside and what we call outside. But this is an artefact of language; really there is no simple separation. I do not own my breath; it is not my property or possession. But by naming it breath I suggest that I know it.

Similarly, the words I am writing now are not simply my own words. While they may never have been written in precisely this order, or given this particular set of meanings, I have not invented them anew. I am using a collectively shared vocabulary which is the product of a cumulative biological, cultural and historical evolution. The meaning of the words I use arises through our complex relationships with one another

Fo

Social and Personality Psychology Compass

rP

ee

rR

ev

iew

12

Page 13 of 20

Social and Personality Psychology Compass

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

over time. Specifically, through their use in a multitude of language games within broader forms of life (Wittgenstein, 1953). My words are contingent on a collective, group or interpersonal context; but this context is not outside of us, but rather constituted through our shared practices. My words are addressed to an other or collection of others and in turn the words themselves are given various meanings by those to whom they are addressed. It is in this sense that the meaning of my words are not entirely within my mind, nor in their outward writing; they exist in a between space that is collectively cultivated or brought into being, moment to moment.

This view of language is different to a mapping, mirror or telementation view of language as communication, common in mindfulness studies. This view would assume that language reflects inner or outer realities. From this perspective, it might be assumed that when I write about mindfulness, I am reflecting its reality as a state

of consciousness.

By contrast, I am assuming that talk about mindfulness only makes sense within relational contexts. In a radical sense, the meaning of mindfulness only exists in the space between us and in our on-going activities and encounters with one another. It has no reality outside of our relationships. Most directly and obviously, it is a word in language. Or in slightly different words, it is a concept within a discourse. It can be used to construct a subject position such as a mindfulness meditator.

To make claims about what is meant by the term mindfulness is to take up the position of a truth-teller or authority in a scientific language game. I imply that I have the authority to speak the truth about mindfulness, based on my qualifications,

Fo

Social and Personality Psychology Compass

rP

ee

rR ev iew
13

Social and Personality Psychology Compass

Page 14 of 20

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

my experience, my background. Or my social class, gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, bodily ability, or culture. This authoritative position is relationally contingent. My ability to be taken seriously (or not), to transparently reflect the reality of mindfulness (or not) is the product of relational practices. My position may be disputed or affirmed. Bolstered or undermined. Authority is a co-construction requiring at least some assent (or subservience) to power.

When we speak of mindfulness in the here and now, we enter into a very particular language game, with or without our immediate awareness, which is largely predicated upon seeing Buddhism as a Psychology. But Cohen (2010) argues that the Buddha was not a Psychologist (p. 98).

Instead of a Psychologist, we might instead see the Buddha as a social reformer or political activist. Such a view might have different implications for our practices at a social or collective level. This socially engaged Buddhism sees individual transformation and social change as a both/and, rather than either/or

Fo

rP

ee

rR

ev

iew

proposition.

The historical roots of this perspective can be found in the life of the historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama (Batchelor, 2010). Current historical and archaeological research attempts to understand who the man Gautama was at a particular period in time, geographical location, and cultural context. We find a man who is both the product of his culture but at the same time in critical relationship to it. He was born at a period of radical political, economic and social turmoil involving a shift from a traditional agrarian society with tribal rulership to a market-based economy involving

Social and Personality Psychology Compass

14

Page 15 of 20

Social and Personality Psychology Compass

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

centralised rulership by Kings. Gautama is born into a privileged ruling class (Brahmin) family and was the son of a tribal leader or headsman. His mother dies in childbirth and his aunt and the wider family raise him. He has a wife, an only son, and we think he may have had a good university education along with his peers, which allowed him to understand the culture he was living in.

At the age of 29 he leaves home and his family for the homeless life, becoming a wandering ascetic, learning various self-mortification and absorption meditation practices. Unconvinced by these practices, he sits under a tree practising meditation until he finds a middle-way between hedonism and asceticism leading towards awakening. The Buddha or awakened one is re-born.

In renouncing society, the Buddha adopted the position of the outsider. He is on the fringes of that society, often teaching on the outskirts of the towns and cities. He was supported by an established tradition of asceticism, which he critiqued. From this position he is able to critically and creatively engage with his host society. For example, he critiqued the Indian caste system which assumes one inherits ones social position as a birthright. Instead, he argued that a person only becomes good through their intentions, actions and their consequences in the world, not through their biological endowment. Anyone could join his order of monastics, not only Brahmins. Slaves and even women were able to become part of his order.

He was also able to critique the common sense Brahminical Vedic idea of an abiding independent soul (atman) animating all life, existing behind all appearances. Instead, conditioned phenomena possess no isolated core, independent of those

Fo

Social and Personality Psychology Compass

rP

ee

rR

ev

iew

15

Social and Personality Psychology Compass

Page 16 of 20

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

conditions. His original idea of dependent origination suggests that phenomena coarise with one another and as such are interdependent.

Specific social conditions were in place, which allowed the Buddha to receive support from an emerging mercantile class, who gave financial support, and donated land for monastic use. He taught in the cities, towns and trade routes, as well as on the outskirts of the major conurbations. This provided locations for rains retreats and for meditation practice in solitude.

One way to understand retreats and meditation socially is that a person may adopt a critical outsider perspective on their host society. One withdraws from some aspects of society in order to potentially re-evaluate it. Socially engaged Buddhists such as Thich Nhat Hanh (Vietnam), Buddhadasa (Sri Lanka) and Ambedkhar (India) have not just accepted the societies they were born into but have made analyses and criticisms of the militarism, religious power, and the hierarchy of caste systems. This work cannot be psychologised away as a self-help tool or technique to help us feel

Fo

rP

ee

rR

ev

iew

better.

For example, The Miracle of Mindfulness (Hanh, 1975) is addressed in part to social activists and workers for the peace movement in Vietnam in the aftermath of the war. The book cannot be separated from the context of this movement and social workers giving aid to refugees. Hanh asks a hypothetical question asked by an activist learning mindfulness meditation: If you spend all day practicing mindfulness, how will there ever be enough time to do all the work that needs to be done to change and to build an alternative society? (p. 8). The question presumes that mindfulness is

Social and Personality Psychology Compass

16

Page 17 of 20

Social and Personality Psychology Compass

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

only a type of meditation. But an activist may practice informal mindfulness in everyday life in order to act more clearly and compassionately in challenging situations. They can both meditate and continue social activism. This form of engaged Buddhism is bound up with social activism and political campaigning. Mindfulness is introduced as a self-care practice for everyone, but particularly for political activists, social/community workers, as well as those spiritual or religious practitioners (of any faith) seeking enlightenment.

Concentration, slowness, collectedness (not dispersal), an ethical concern for non-harming and compassion, and an awareness of interdependence are implied to be useful for everyone, but especially political activists. The peace movement involves being peace. The raison dtre of Hanhs mindfulness is its application to social and political life, as well as ordinary everyday activities in families, households and workplaces. He defines mindfulness as keeping ones consciousness alive to the present reality (p. 11); which may include social conflict, injustice, and war. It is an engaged awareness: not a dispassionate detachment from social events.

Shed the light of interdependence on the whole matter to see that failures cannot be accounted for by your inabilities but rather by the lack of favorable conditions (p. 97). While it is easy to understand and practice meditation as a withdrawal from social and political life, it is not inherent to the practice.

The both/and perspective on individual liberation and social change is not without its problems. It is not as straightforward as mindfulness simply and selfevidently being about non-violence. While its relationship to the peace movement is

Fo

Social and Personality Psychology Compass

rP

ee

rR

ev

iew

17

Social and Personality Psychology Compass

Page 18 of 20

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

important, how mindfulness is understood changes according to its historical and especially political context. How else can we understand the use of mindfulness training in Japanese culture in the training of Samurais and Kamikaze pilots? An understanding of mindfulness as bare attention became popular as an ethically neutral way of paying attention to whatever is happening in consciousness with a sharp discernment and focus. It is partly what allows mindfulness to now be taught to soldiers active in the US military. Mindfulness-Based Mind Fitness Training aims to improve the operational efficiency of warriors in battle, against a background of increasing suicide and self-harming attempts amongst soldiers (Stanley et al., 2011). The association between Eastern consciousness disciplines and martial arts allows for meditation to be adopted amongst unlikely groups such as prison inmates. Even practices such as vipassana can be made compatible with a hegemonic masculinity which stresses mental toughness and endurance as opposed to kindness.

Fo

rP

ee

rR ev

Conclusion

While it is easy to understand mindfulness and associated concepts such as consciousness, attention and awareness as simply inner states of mind arising universally or naturally, it is perhaps more accurate to understand them in part as words in a language which require public criteria for their use. Sharf (1995) critiques the rhetoric of experience in Buddhist religious discourse and suggests that terms such as mindfulness do not gain their meaning through a correspondence relationship with the states of mind they purportedly refer to. Instead, they gain meaning rhetorically in relation to their social contexts of use, which can serve ideological and political

Social and Personality Psychology Compass

iew

18

Page 19 of 20

Social and Personality Psychology Compass

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

functions depending on these contexts. We have seen how meanings of mindfulness may change depending on their uses and social contexts. Critical psychology may allow us to challenge the individualisation of mindfulness whilst also developing alternative more social understandings.

References

Analayo (2003). Satipatthana: The Direct Path to Realization. Birmingham: Windhorse Publications.

Batchelor, S. (2011). Confession of a Buddhist Atheist. London: Random House. Carrette, J., & King, R. (2005). Selling Spirituality: The Silent Takeover of Religion. London: Routledge.

Cohen, E. (2010). From the Bodhi tree, to the analysts couch, then into the MRI scanner: the psychologisation of Buddhism. Annual Review of Critical Psychology, 8, 97 119. Dryden, W. and Still, A. (2006). Historical aspects of mindfulness and self-acceptance in psychotherapy. Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy, 24 (1), 3

Fo

rP

ee

rR

ev

28.

Fromm, E., Suzuki, D.T. & De Martino, R. (Eds.) (1960). Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis. London: Souvenir Press.

Gergen. K. J. (2009). Relational Being. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gergen, K.J., & Hosking, D.M. (2006). If you meet the social construction along the road: a dialogue with Buddhism. In M. Kwee, K.J. Gergen, & F. Koshikawa (Eds.) Horizons in Buddhist Psychology. Chagrin Falls, Ohio: Taos Institute. Hamilton, S. (2000). Early Buddhism. Surrey: Curzon. Heaversedge, J., & Halliwell, E. (2010). The Mindful Manifesto. London: Hay House. James, W. (1902). The Varieties of Religious Experience. London: Penguin. Kabat-Zinn, J. (2003). Mindfulness-based interventions in context: past, present, and future.

Social and Personality Psychology Compass

iew

19

Social and Personality Psychology Compass

Page 20 of 20

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

Clinical Psychology, 10 (2), 144156. Lee, R.L.M. (2003). The re-enchantment of the self: Western spirituality, Asian materialism. Journal of Contemporary Religion, 18 (3), 351 367. McMahan, D.L. (2008). The Making of Buddhist Modernism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rhys Davids, T.W. (1881). Buddhist Suttas. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Rhys Davids, T.W. (1890). The Questions of King Milinda. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Rose, N. (1985). The Psychological Complex. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Sharf, R.H. (1995). Buddhist modernism and the rhetoric of meditative experience. Numen, 42 (3), 228283.

Stanley, E.A, Schaldach, J.M., Kionaga, A., and Jha, A.P. (2011). Mindfulness-based mind fitness training: a case study of a high-stress predeployment military cohort. Cognitive and Behavioral Practice, 18 (4), 566-576. Thera, N. (1953). The Heart of Buddhist Meditation. Colombo, Sri Lanka: Word of the

Buddha Publishing Committee.

Varela, F.J., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (1991). The Embodied Mind. London: MIT Press. Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical Investigations. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Fo

Social and Personality Psychology Compass

rP

ee

rR

ev

iew
20