Abstract
In a paper titled “Meditation Matters: Replies to the Anti-McMindfulness Bandwagon!”, Rick Repetti aims to refute four common criticisms directed at the Mindfulness community. The present paper offers a response to each of Repetti’s four refutations. The main contentions made in this rebuttal to Repetti are that he: (i) conflates the ideological construct known as Mindfulness with a cognitive ability, called mindfulness (lower case), of paying attention “in a particular way” to what one is thinking, saying, and doing and (ii) claims for mindfulness a materialist “phenomenological self-mirroring” that is, in fact, more consistent with idealism. On the basis of Repetti’s refutations, my chapter argues throughout that Mindfulness advocates have failed to respond adequately to the brunt of the most serious criticisms leveled against them.
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Notes
- 1.
“How Can we Bring Mindfulness to Social Justice Movements?” YouTube. http://tinyurl.com/hyrajjw. Retrieved April 18, 2016. Kabat-Zinn’s overall answer in this conversation once again reveals the transcendental idealism of Mindfulness. He constantly makes overly simplistic affirmations about the world-altering power of, for instance, attending; being present; heightened awareness; uprooting greed, hatred and delusion, and so on. Davis responds with the anti-idealist argument that social injustices are not a matter of mere personal attitude, much less the lack of attention: Their roots dig deeply into the material structures of our social system.
- 2.
See, Goldberg (2015).
- 3.
See, Linkins (2016).
- 4.
See Per Drougge’s contribution in the present volume.
- 5.
By “apocalyptic New Age thought” I mean beliefs about the end times of the Old World and the coming of a New World, augured not by collective social action but by some sort of “shift in consciousness” from, in Repetti’s terms, pervasive mindlessness to widespread mindfulness.
- 6.
See “The Thousand-Year View: An Interview with Jon Kabat-Zinn,” Inquiring Mind, 30(2) Spring, 14–16.
- 7.
Ibid. “Spiritual meditation” stands in the original.
- 8.
Simon Critchley’s blurb for Davies’s book.
- 9.
For example, think of the different ways that “strength” functions in the following discourses: Rosy the Riveter; the American cult of masculinity; Alcoholics Anonymous recovery speak; the Catholic Mass (where weakness is strength); national security rhetoric, and so on. The point is not the obvious one about a term’s requiring context for its sense. It is, rather, the idea that that sense functions within productive subject and social formations.
- 10.
See Butler (2014).
- 11.
Ibid.
- 12.
Repetti’s claim concerning metacognition and “phenomenological self-mirroring” is admittedly a weak, psychologized version of the old spiritualist quest for “things as they are.” Jon Kabat-Zinn, however, offers us the strong version: “Coming to terms with things as they are is my definition of healing.” See, Kabat-Zinn (2016b).
- 13.
They are, namely, like water cascading off a cliff, inherently empty or content-free, hence not requiring judgment or reaction, etc.
- 14.
Inquiring Mind, “Coming to our Senses: A Conversation with Jon Kabat-Zinn, http://tinyurl.com/jszqm2a. Retrieved April 21, 2016.
- 15.
“Mindfulness and the cessation of suffering: An exclusive new interview with mindfulness pioneer Jon Kabat-Zinn,” Lion’s Roar. http://tinyurl.com/hb38sag. Retrieved April 22, 2016.
- 16.
I say “astute” observer because this contempt is often veiled in the passive aggressive niceties of “right speech.” “Right speech” has emerged as a decisive discursive strategy in contemporary Western Buddhism. That is, it has become an apparently indispensable mechanism for normalizing certain voices, ideas, and behaviors, while excluding others. It has, in other words, become a censorious tool of subjugation. As such, it deserves further study. It certainly has burgeoned with the coming of the internet, no doubt due to the potentially unruly democratic nature of online discussions. I know of no Western Buddhist (pace Kabat-Zinn and Repetti, that moniker includes Mindfulness) blog, podcast, Web site, or Twitter account that does not invoke “right speech” either implicitly or explicitly, quite often the latter. The result is that Western Buddhist discourse is bland and predictable. Western Buddhist webmasters have apparently figured out that “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.” (Chomsky 1998). So-called right speech is a crucial element toward this end.
- 17.
For a fuller account of the Lacan’s four discourses, see Wallis (2016).
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Wallis, G. (2016). Criticism Matters: A Response to Rick Repetti. In: Purser, R., Forbes, D., Burke, A. (eds) Handbook of Mindfulness. Mindfulness in Behavioral Health. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44019-4_33
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