Part 1:Mindfulness Under Attack, 5 Book reviews
Sept 15, 2019 18:51:13 GMT -5
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Post by Admin on Sept 15, 2019 18:51:13 GMT -5
Mindfulness Under Attack: 5 Book reviews
Part One:
Books under discussion:
Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body, (September 5, 2017) by Daniel Goleman, Richard J. Davidson
Presence: How Mindfulness and Meditation Shape Your Brain, Mind, and Life[, (2017), by Paul Verhaeghen
Mindlessness: The Corruption of Mindfulness in a Culture of Narcissism 1st Edition. (2017) Thomas Joiner
McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality, Ronald Purser (July 2019)
What's Wrong with Mindfulness (And What Isn't): Zen Perspectives (2016), Barry Magid, Robert Rosenbaum (eds.)
Dana Kenneth Lewis
Mindful Veterans Connection
www.mindfulvets.net
Preface & Context:
One of the functions of this website has been to pass along timely information relevant to the themes of mindfulvets.net (aka Mindful Veterans Connection). When I started this website in 2015 I was usually able to keep up with general trends in research of mindfulness, with a focus on aspects relevant to military veterans and active duty. However, since 2018 the volume of publications in all media (print & electronic) has exploded -- both in the number of publications and as well in the range of sub-topics.
Now, searches include doctoral theses, global academic peer-reviewed journals (mostly English Language), meta-analyses (studies of studies), government and private research and specialized databases. To handle it (as a one-person research team {smile} ) I can no longer just query ‘mindfulness’, but must drill down to very specific subsets of the topic. Furthermore, if you add topical treatments of ‘mindfulness’ in all public print, TV, Radio and web media (including videos on Youtube, etc.) it quickly becomes an impossible task. Even as I type this, I got 201,000,000 results for a Google search of the term ‘mindfulness’, and 4,140 results for the keyword phrase ‘mindful veterans’.
I share all this as context for the discussions to follow of five recent books (published since 2016), all of which seem to have been published in reaction (response?) to the so-called “Mindfulness Movement” with its mega-tsunami of books, videos, articles, training, TV & radio treatments relating to Mindfulness. All five books, each in their way, express concerns about the dilution or even destructiveness of what they call ‘authentic mindfulness’. Each book analyzes from different philosophical (and political) points of view, and as I will elaborate, not all of them are written objectively or even dispassionately, with Purser being the Inquisitor and the most savage in his attacks. Joiner based his book on a shallow sampling of Jon Kabat-Zinn's work, but instead used today’s mindfulness movement as a foil for his deeper concerns about narcissism in modern Western culture.
In sum, the antipathetic attacks assert that this thing we’re now calling “Mindfulness” has morphed instead into an illegitimate offspring which they call McMindfulness. Even if this bastard child was born of love and reared with the best of intentions, two of our reviewed authors call it many things, among them: narcissistic, solipsistic, selfish, neoliberal, capitalist, shallow and commercialized – even destructive. They cry that this field called ‘Mindfulness’ -- forty years on -- does more harm than good when detached from its Buddhist roots. To my reading, Purser in particular not only wants to throw out the baby with the bath (he swears he is not), but to my eye, he is set on stomping the baby – with vigor.
But in the same timeframe in which Purser and Joiner wrote their books, It is obvious to anyone who would bother to explore the databases and libraries that the Mindfulness researchers and experts within the field had themselves also begun to raise self-critical concerns about the neuroscience research. In short, more than a few Mindfulness researchers and thought leaders have recently pressed mindfulness researchers, teachers -- and the media who cover them -- to “Mind the Hype”. We discuss this in two different posts on our mindfulvets.net forum and elsewhere on the web:
(mindfulvetsdel.freeforums.net/thread/270/critique-mindfulness-research-backlash-overdue
mindfulvetsdel.freeforums.net/thread/287/another-mcmindfulness-article-feb2018-neoliberals
BACKGROUND:
I first started preparing this essay/review in the fall of 2017 as part of my own ongoing personal study and mindfulness practice, as well as to add content to mindfulvets.net. Given the volume of possible things to review, I elected to read and study books/articles which (in 2017) had begun to pull back from the initial hype and romanticizing of all things Mindful. At a personal level, in a way, when I first read about mindfulness, it was all personal. My engagement with mindfulness practice and study came about during my darkest hours, as a last-ditch effort to survive after years of losing a battle with chronic pain and depression. As a result, my bias will tend to be, at first blush, defensiveness when reading someone’s criticism of what – for me – has been transformative, even life-saving. But with time and help from others, I've learned to set my defensiveness aside and engage more analytically.
As I continued readings, I noticed that publications in 2017 saw increased self-examination by, and of, the Mindfulness Movement purveyors themselves (ref: Daniel Goleman & Richard Davidson, Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body). Within months of reading Goleman & Davidson’s book, I learned of another new book being used by a University of Delaware professor as a textbook, Presence: How Mindfulness and Meditation Shape Your Brain, Mind, and Life, (2017) by Paul Verhaeghen.
Verhaeghen is not, however, a neuroscientist Mindfulness research ‘insider'. He aimed to examine the current research with a critical eye, as well as to summarize specific findings of mindfulness science at this time. Both Goleman /Davidson and Verhaeghen revisit what had been learned so far in the neuroscience, examining what we once thought to be so, and testing past assertions more rigorously.
So, Goleman & Davidson and Verhaegen’s books might be considered as objective yet fair criticism from allies. Joiner and Purser fall into the camp of – at the very least—naysayers and to some degree iconoclasts – with Purser being the condemning voice speaking against the present Mindfulness field. The last book discussed here, of Zen Perspectives, edited by Barry Magid & Robert Rosenbaum in 2016, is a level-headed, thoughtful collection of the opinions of Buddhist teachers and scholars concerning secularized Mindfulness.
Personal Implicit and Explicit Bias – Revisiting The Marks of Existence, number 3: “It’s not about you anyway…”
Reading these five books over the last year or so has brought home to me -- in manifold ways -- how awareness of my own biases is critical to crafting any reasonable, fair critique. Therefore, I briefly wander off the trail here to inject my own story to provide further context for the reviews to follow:
Since 1984 I have been in chronic pain, visited frequently by its’ cousin depression. Only in 2012 did my healing begin, thanks to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Mindfulness (MBSR) courtesy of the Wilmington Delaware VA Hospital Behavioral Health staff. I will tell this story somewhere else but wanted to assert here that it is from this personal background that my academic interest in the science behind MBSR and mindful meditation has evolved. For me, this discussion is not academic, even as it spends a great deal of time in the stacks of Academia. For me, yes, it is personal, but hopefully, I will meet my goal of judging ideas on their merits and internal logic (or lack thereof), and not criticizing just because they have opposite views to mine.
I will continue this in installments over the upcoming weeks.
To be continued…
End Part One, Preface & Context
Review, Part Two
Review, Part Three
Dana Kenneth Lewis
Mindful Veterans Connection
Part One:
Books under discussion:
Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body, (September 5, 2017) by Daniel Goleman, Richard J. Davidson
Presence: How Mindfulness and Meditation Shape Your Brain, Mind, and Life[, (2017), by Paul Verhaeghen
Mindlessness: The Corruption of Mindfulness in a Culture of Narcissism 1st Edition. (2017) Thomas Joiner
McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality, Ronald Purser (July 2019)
What's Wrong with Mindfulness (And What Isn't): Zen Perspectives (2016), Barry Magid, Robert Rosenbaum (eds.)
Dana Kenneth Lewis
Mindful Veterans Connection
www.mindfulvets.net
Preface & Context:
One of the functions of this website has been to pass along timely information relevant to the themes of mindfulvets.net (aka Mindful Veterans Connection). When I started this website in 2015 I was usually able to keep up with general trends in research of mindfulness, with a focus on aspects relevant to military veterans and active duty. However, since 2018 the volume of publications in all media (print & electronic) has exploded -- both in the number of publications and as well in the range of sub-topics.
Now, searches include doctoral theses, global academic peer-reviewed journals (mostly English Language), meta-analyses (studies of studies), government and private research and specialized databases. To handle it (as a one-person research team {smile} ) I can no longer just query ‘mindfulness’, but must drill down to very specific subsets of the topic. Furthermore, if you add topical treatments of ‘mindfulness’ in all public print, TV, Radio and web media (including videos on Youtube, etc.) it quickly becomes an impossible task. Even as I type this, I got 201,000,000 results for a Google search of the term ‘mindfulness’, and 4,140 results for the keyword phrase ‘mindful veterans’.
I share all this as context for the discussions to follow of five recent books (published since 2016), all of which seem to have been published in reaction (response?) to the so-called “Mindfulness Movement” with its mega-tsunami of books, videos, articles, training, TV & radio treatments relating to Mindfulness. All five books, each in their way, express concerns about the dilution or even destructiveness of what they call ‘authentic mindfulness’. Each book analyzes from different philosophical (and political) points of view, and as I will elaborate, not all of them are written objectively or even dispassionately, with Purser being the Inquisitor and the most savage in his attacks. Joiner based his book on a shallow sampling of Jon Kabat-Zinn's work, but instead used today’s mindfulness movement as a foil for his deeper concerns about narcissism in modern Western culture.
In sum, the antipathetic attacks assert that this thing we’re now calling “Mindfulness” has morphed instead into an illegitimate offspring which they call McMindfulness. Even if this bastard child was born of love and reared with the best of intentions, two of our reviewed authors call it many things, among them: narcissistic, solipsistic, selfish, neoliberal, capitalist, shallow and commercialized – even destructive. They cry that this field called ‘Mindfulness’ -- forty years on -- does more harm than good when detached from its Buddhist roots. To my reading, Purser in particular not only wants to throw out the baby with the bath (he swears he is not), but to my eye, he is set on stomping the baby – with vigor.
But in the same timeframe in which Purser and Joiner wrote their books, It is obvious to anyone who would bother to explore the databases and libraries that the Mindfulness researchers and experts within the field had themselves also begun to raise self-critical concerns about the neuroscience research. In short, more than a few Mindfulness researchers and thought leaders have recently pressed mindfulness researchers, teachers -- and the media who cover them -- to “Mind the Hype”. We discuss this in two different posts on our mindfulvets.net forum and elsewhere on the web:
(mindfulvetsdel.freeforums.net/thread/270/critique-mindfulness-research-backlash-overdue
mindfulvetsdel.freeforums.net/thread/287/another-mcmindfulness-article-feb2018-neoliberals
BACKGROUND:
I first started preparing this essay/review in the fall of 2017 as part of my own ongoing personal study and mindfulness practice, as well as to add content to mindfulvets.net. Given the volume of possible things to review, I elected to read and study books/articles which (in 2017) had begun to pull back from the initial hype and romanticizing of all things Mindful. At a personal level, in a way, when I first read about mindfulness, it was all personal. My engagement with mindfulness practice and study came about during my darkest hours, as a last-ditch effort to survive after years of losing a battle with chronic pain and depression. As a result, my bias will tend to be, at first blush, defensiveness when reading someone’s criticism of what – for me – has been transformative, even life-saving. But with time and help from others, I've learned to set my defensiveness aside and engage more analytically.
As I continued readings, I noticed that publications in 2017 saw increased self-examination by, and of, the Mindfulness Movement purveyors themselves (ref: Daniel Goleman & Richard Davidson, Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body). Within months of reading Goleman & Davidson’s book, I learned of another new book being used by a University of Delaware professor as a textbook, Presence: How Mindfulness and Meditation Shape Your Brain, Mind, and Life, (2017) by Paul Verhaeghen.
Verhaeghen is not, however, a neuroscientist Mindfulness research ‘insider'. He aimed to examine the current research with a critical eye, as well as to summarize specific findings of mindfulness science at this time. Both Goleman /Davidson and Verhaeghen revisit what had been learned so far in the neuroscience, examining what we once thought to be so, and testing past assertions more rigorously.
So, Goleman & Davidson and Verhaegen’s books might be considered as objective yet fair criticism from allies. Joiner and Purser fall into the camp of – at the very least—naysayers and to some degree iconoclasts – with Purser being the condemning voice speaking against the present Mindfulness field. The last book discussed here, of Zen Perspectives, edited by Barry Magid & Robert Rosenbaum in 2016, is a level-headed, thoughtful collection of the opinions of Buddhist teachers and scholars concerning secularized Mindfulness.
Personal Implicit and Explicit Bias – Revisiting The Marks of Existence, number 3: “It’s not about you anyway…”
Reading these five books over the last year or so has brought home to me -- in manifold ways -- how awareness of my own biases is critical to crafting any reasonable, fair critique. Therefore, I briefly wander off the trail here to inject my own story to provide further context for the reviews to follow:
Since 1984 I have been in chronic pain, visited frequently by its’ cousin depression. Only in 2012 did my healing begin, thanks to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Mindfulness (MBSR) courtesy of the Wilmington Delaware VA Hospital Behavioral Health staff. I will tell this story somewhere else but wanted to assert here that it is from this personal background that my academic interest in the science behind MBSR and mindful meditation has evolved. For me, this discussion is not academic, even as it spends a great deal of time in the stacks of Academia. For me, yes, it is personal, but hopefully, I will meet my goal of judging ideas on their merits and internal logic (or lack thereof), and not criticizing just because they have opposite views to mine.
I will continue this in installments over the upcoming weeks.
To be continued…
End Part One, Preface & Context
Review, Part Two
Review, Part Three
Dana Kenneth Lewis
Mindful Veterans Connection