This week’s Time magazine’s cover story reports that mindfulness practice is becoming a mainstream practice despite its Buddhist origins. People who won’t listen to monks in robes will listen to scientists, the magazine reports. Obviously, it is the monks who should be listened to. They won’t teach mindfulness to Marines so that they can become better killers. Or mindfulness to corporate executives so they can become better at what they do. (The article mentions several large corporations and the Marines as institutions that are now practicing mindfulness to enhance their skills). The whole point of Buddhist mindfulness is to awaken to emptiness, the absence of a static, independent self that can become a better self. All self improvement programs presuppose an independent individual and are therefore based upon a falsehood. And they do nothing but increase the sense of selfhood and thus provide a disservice to the gain-seeking practitioner. Mindfulness is about letting go, not getting better at killing or running a corporate enterprise or becoming a better athlete or a better Google employee. Of course mindfulness reduces stress and provides a sense of greater peace of mind. Of course we perform our tasks better when we are relaxed. But if we practice mindfulness to get those benefits, we guarantee that we will not get the benefit of mindfulness practice. The practice of mindfulness for self-improvement is a practice that takes us further and further away from awakening, a practice that increases delusion, stupidity. The monks know what they are doing. The scientists don’t. Time, you do your readers a disservice by not mentioning that harnessing mindfulness for the wrong purpose takes the practitioner in the wrong direction. Time should have told its readers to get a copy of Mindfulness, Bliss and Beyond by Ajahn Brahm. That would have provided a service.
Zen, Mindfulness, and Ignorance
