Mindfulness -- a terse and pithy follow-up*

Life and work go on, and I continue to despise “mindfulness.”

“Kabat-Zinn has defined mindfulness meditation as ‘the awareness that arises from paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment and non-judgmentally.’”**

How did this practice of bleaching awareness of self and object down to insect sensation devoid of emotion and thought come to be accepted as valuable? It is a weak, ephemeral anesthetic, nothing else.

“By focusing on the breath, the idea is to cultivate attention on the body and mind as it is moment to moment, and so help with pain, both physical and emotional.”

It should be obvious to anyone that “focusing on the breath” is attention to the breath and distraction from everything else. And even that arbitrariness of breath focus is bogus. Real attention is holistic attention: sensation, emotion, and the thought that comes from them.

“It often results in apprehending the constantly changing nature of sensations, even highly unpleasant ones, and thus their impermanence.”

This is a lie. If we attend to a sensation – and mindfulness is typically used to numb physical and emotional pain – we are either experiencing or distancing ourselves from it. In neither case are we apprehending the “constantly changing nature” of our sensations. Pain tells us, devilishly, its chronicity. What fluff.

“It also gives rise to the direct experience that ‘the pain is not me’.”

This bull is reminiscent of the old parenting pablum: “We love you, it’s your behavior we can’t stand.” Was Thomas Gordon, Parent Effectiveness Training, the first psychologist to realize this statement doesn’t fool children? Their behavior is them, and our pain is, essentially, us.

“But mindfulness, Kabat-Zinn figures, must now be harnessed in a bigger way than so far seen, to do nothing less than challenge the way the world is run. This latest mission is why he has flown into London to speak to parliamentarians from 15 countries about how to act more wisely.”

Ayn Rand was certain her ideas on capitalism and individualism were gospel. Arthur Janov thought Primal Therapy was the one cure for neurosis. Eugene Gendlin believed Focusing would bring to the world the quiddity-level of wisdom and philosophical insight that could not be found in any other way. The Behaviorists thought they had the answer, as did the Cognitive psychologists, and now the neuroscientists. And here’s Jon Kabat-Zinn telling the world that awareness of the breath and applied dissociation from the self create sea changes of virtue, health and healing.

I think the world should direct its attention to est. It didn’t fix everything in 1971, but is bound to work this time around.

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* Follow-up to – https://pessimisticshrink.blogspot.com/2014/09/mindfulness-or-look-inside-theres-bunny.html.

** Quotes are from – https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/oct/22/mindfulness-jon-kabat-zinn-depression-trump-grenfell.

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One extra problem attached to mindfulness practice is a sweet one that I’ll take credit for discovering. In that place where people in pain go to be antiseptically, clinically aware of their sensation without judgment, there is no hope. There is, of course, no discouragement. But there is no hope. How long do you want to stay in that state, you hippies?