"真理"(唐詩 王維/白樂天等等)與"智慧"(哈佛大學校門口題字)//廣場哈佛校門上的字“Enter To Grow In Wisdom”. 我當年在馬路對面看到就哭了。童元方；// 舊約的智慧書諸篇
胡適之先生： 我二十歲時初讀新約，到"耶穌在山上看見大眾前來，他大感動，說' 收成是豐盛的，可惜做工的人太少了。' "---我不覺掉下淚來。那時我想起論語裏，'士不可不弘毅，任重而道遠。"那一段話，和馬太福音此段相似。 的‘一本萬利’，永遠有利息在人間的哲學：林語堂、彭明敏、陳之藩......
政治自我
淨心第一 利他為上
【師徒共情的人間佛教】
今年台灣佛教界有兩大宗門皆跨過一甲子，一是高雄佛光山，二是花蓮慈濟。
一九四九年漢傳佛教隨國民政府遷台，中國大陸尤其浙江、江蘇等各省多位高僧跨海帶來傳統法脈，但也因應新時代而各自在世俗潮流中尋求改革與定位，如佛光山星雲法師為臨濟宗第四十五代傳人，主張八宗兼弘，解行並重；中台禪寺繼承了虛雲老和尚的禪宗臨濟宗，融禪風於園區中，佛法藝術化；法鼓山聖嚴法師則承襲東初老人為臨濟宗第五十七代與曹洞宗靈源和尚後第五十一代兩大法脈之傳人。
一九四○年代，年輕的聖嚴法師曾在上海大聖寺及靜安寺經歷「趕經懺」的小和尚生活，當時出家人生活艱苦，夜以繼日為得施主布施而懺誦營生，對這樣的身份感到矛盾，但長期〈大悲懺〉讓他深刻體會到佛法「淨化」與「悔罪」的力量，融合現代禪修，二○○五年創立中華禪法鼓宗，與法鼓山同年開山；而慈濟，由本土長老尼證嚴法師開山，領受近代新佛教印順導師的教化—印順導師本身不拘泥於傳統宗派，繼承了太虛大師佛教改革，來台後進一步實踐人間佛教理念，一生也未正式成立僧團，重講學與研究，叮嚀弟子證嚴法師「為佛教、為眾生」，「做中學」、「學中覺」。
驀然回首，人類世界不總在危機與惶恐中，因信仰、希望，帶來轉機得以重生。
精采影像與更多細節請參閱《經典雜誌》334期〈人間佛教在台灣 師徒共情慈濟一甲子〉撰文：胡毋意
圖一 |一九六三年，證嚴法師皈依於近代漢傳佛教改革家、實踐人間佛教之印順導師座下，導師六字箴言「為佛教、為眾生」，為慈濟各志業體一甲子來內修外行之準則(攝影/阮義忠)
圖二 |一九八五年「慈濟叮嚀語」出版，印順導師題字(圖/慈濟基金會)
圖三 |一九七七年訪視台東鹿野因傷致殘獨居的謝炳棋(圖/慈濟基金會)
圖四 |「一日不作一日不食」，靜思精舍為維持生計前後做過二十一種手工，包括糊水泥袋、棉紗手套、嬰兒鞋、加工成衣、縫製手提袋、織毛衣等(圖/慈濟基金會)
#慈濟一甲子
#漢傳佛教在台灣
#印順導師人間佛教
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「真正具有革命性的正念應該挑戰西方人那種不顧道德行為就理所當然地享有幸福的觀念。然而，正念項目並沒有要求高管們反思他們的管理決策和公司政策是如何將貪婪、惡意和妄想制度化的，而這些恰恰是佛教正念試圖根除的。
羅納德·E·珀瑟在其精彩著作《麥當勞正念：正念如何成為新的資本主義靈性》（2019）中指出，正念“通過忽視導致個人痛苦的系統性社會問題，正念導師們（至少在美國）剝奪了正念的革命潛力，同時強化了我們以利潤為導向的社會中的個人主義傾向。”
以下摘自本書開篇章節，從中可以看出珀瑟（他是韓國禪宗太極教派的受戒禪師）對此問題的闡述是多麼清晰透徹、引人入勝：
何謂正念革命？
正念已成為主流，並得到了奧普拉·溫弗瑞、歌蒂·韓和魯比·韋克斯等名人的支持。當冥想教練、僧侶和神經科學家與執行長們在達沃斯世界經濟論壇上觥籌交錯時，這場運動的創始人也變得狂熱起來。正念減壓療法（MBSR）的創始人喬恩·卡巴金預言，他將科學與冥想訓練相結合的方法“有可能引發一場全球性的復興”，但他的野心遠不止於戰勝壓力。他宣稱，正念「或許是人類和地球在未來幾百年生存下去的唯一希望」。
我對此持懷疑態度。任何在不試圖改變不公社會的情況下就能獲得成功的事物都算不上革命性的——它只是幫助人們應對困境。然而，它也可能使情況變得更糟。它不是鼓勵採取激進的行動，而是認為痛苦的根源不成比例地存在於我們自身，而非塑造我們生活方式的政治和經濟框架之中。然而，正念的狂熱信徒們卻相信，更加關注當下而不加評判，就擁有改變整個世界的革命性力量。這簡直是過度解讀的魔法思維。
別誤會我的意思。正念練習當然也有其可取之處。大多數正念倡議者都很友善，我曾親自接觸過其中許多人，包括一些運動的領導者，我毫不懷疑他們的出發點是好的。但這並非問題的關鍵。問題在於他們兜售的產品，以及它的包裝方式。正念不過是基礎的專注力訓練。雖然源自於佛教，但它已被剝離了佛教倫理教義，以及其旨在消除對虛假自我執著、同時對一切眾生懷有慈悲之心的解脫目標。
如今，它淪為一種偽裝成自助的自律工具。它非但沒有讓修行者獲得自由，反而幫助他們適應了導致自身問題的種種環境。
一場真正具有革命性的運動會試圖推翻這個功能失調的體系，而正念卻只會強化其破壞性的邏輯。在過去的幾十年裡，新自由主義秩序悄悄建立，為了追求企業財富而加劇了不平等。人們被迫適應這種模式的要求。壓力已被病理化和私有化，管理壓力的重擔也外包給了個人。因此，正念的鼓吹者們紛紛湧現，試圖拯救人們於水火之中。
然而，他們未能解決集體的苦難，也未能推動可能消除苦難的系統性變革，從而剝奪了正念真正的革命潛力，將其簡化為一種平庸之物，讓人們只關注自身。
私人的自由
正念運動的核心訊息是，不滿和痛苦的根源在於我們的頭腦。在卡巴金的著作《回歸本真：透過正念療癒自我與世界》中，“資本家”一詞僅出現過一次，那是在一個關於一位壓力巨大的投資者的軼事中，這位投資者說道：“我們都患有某種注意力缺陷障礙（ADD）。”
正念倡議者或許在不知不覺中，為現狀提供了支持。他們不去探討谷歌、臉書、推特和蘋果等公司如何將注意力貨幣化和操縱，而是將危機歸咎於我們的思維。資本主義制度本身並非問題所在，問題在於個人在動盪不安的經濟環境中缺乏覺察力和韌性。然後，他們向我們兜售解決方案，讓我們成為心滿意足的、有覺察力的資本家。
"A truly revolutionary mindfulness would challenge the Western sense of entitlement to happiness irrespective of ethical conduct. However, mindfulness programs do not ask executives to examine how their managerial decisions and corporate policies have institutionalized greed, ill will and delusion, which Buddhist mindfulness seeks to eradicate. Instead, the practice is being sold to executives as a way to de-stress, improve productivity and focus, and bounce back from eighty-hour work weeks. They may well be 'meditating,' but it works like taking an aspirin for a headache. Once the pain goes away it is business as usual."
Ronald E. Purser’s terrific ‘McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality' (2019), on how mindfulness "by ignoring the systemic social problems which lead individuals to suffer, mindfulness teachers, at least in the United States, strip away the revolutionary potential of mindfulness while reinforcing the individualistic focus of our profit-oriented society."
Here are some salient points from the opening chapter, which give an indication of how lucid, and compelling Purser (who's an ordained Zen Dharma Teacher in the Korean Zen Taego order of Buddhism) is on this:
What Mindfulness Revolution?
Mindfulness is mainstream, endorsed by celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Goldie Hawn and Ruby Wax. While meditation coaches, monks and neuroscientists rub shoulders with CEOs at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the founders of this movement have grown evangelical. Prophesying that its hybrid of science and meditative discipline “has the potential to ignite a universal or global renaissance,” the inventor of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), Jon Kabat-Zinn, has bigger ambitions than conquering stress. Mindfulness, he proclaims, “may actually be the only promise the species and the planet have for making it through the next couple hundred years."
I am skeptical. Anything that offers success in our unjust society without trying to change it is not revolutionary — it just helps people cope. However, it could also be making things worse. Instead of encouraging radical action, it says the causes of suffering are disproportionately inside us, not in the political and economic frameworks that shape how we live. And yet mindfulness zealots believe that paying closer attention to the present moment without passing judgment has the revolutionary power to transform the whole world. It’s magical thinking on steroids.
Don’t get me wrong. There are certainly worthy dimensions to mindfulness practice. Most of the promoters of mindfulness are nice, and having personally met many of them, including the leaders of the movement, I have no doubt that their hearts are in the right place. But that isn’t the issue here. The problem is the product they’re selling, and how it’s been packaged. Mindfulness is nothing more than basic concentration training. Although derived from Buddhism, it’s been stripped of the teachings on ethics that accompanied it, as well as the liberating aim of dissolving attachment to a false sense of self while enacting compassion for all other beings.
What remains is a tool of self-discipline, disguised as self-help. Instead of setting practitioners free, it helps them adjust to the very conditions that caused their problems.
A truly revolutionary movement would seek to overturn this dysfunctional system, but mindfulness only serves to reinforce its destructive logic. The neoliberal order has imposed itself by stealth in the past few decades, widening inequality in pursuit of corporate wealth. People are expected to adapt to what this model demands of them. Stress has been pathologized and privatized, and the burden of managing it outsourced to individuals. Hence the peddlers of mindfulness step in to save the day.
By failing to address collective suffering, and systemic change that might remove it, they rob mindfulness of its real revolutionary potential, reducing it to something banal that keeps people focused on themselves.
A Private Freedom
The fundamental message of the mindfulness movement is that the underlying cause of dissatisfaction and distress is in our heads. The only mention of the word “capitalist” in Kabat-Zinn’s book 'Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness' occurs in an anecdote about a stressed investor who says: “We all suffer a kind of A.D.D. [attention deficit disorder]."
Mindfulness advocates, perhaps unwittingly, are providing support for the status quo. Rather than discussing how attention is monetized and manipulated by corporations such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and Apple, they locate the crisis in our minds. It is not the nature of the capitalist system that is inherently problematic; rather, it is the failure of individuals to be mindful and resilient in a precarious and uncertain economy. Then they sell us solutions that make us contented mindful capitalists.
The political naiveté involved is stunning. The revolution being touted occurs not through protests and collective struggle but in the heads of atomized individuals. “It is not the revolution of the desperate or disenfranchised in society,” notes Chris Goto-Jones, a scholarly critic of the movement’s ideas, “but rather a ‘peaceful revolution’ being led by white, middle class Americans.”
And that’s the crux of the supposed revolution: the world is slowly changed — one mindful individual at a time. This political philosophy is oddly reminiscent of George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism.” With the retreat to the private sphere, mindfulness becomes a religion of the self. The idea of a public sphere is being eroded, and any trickle-down effect of compassion is by chance.
Mindfulness, like positive psychology and the broader happiness industry, has depoliticized and privatized stress. If we are unhappy about being unemployed, losing our health insurance, and seeing our children incur massive debt through college loans, it is our responsibility to learn to be more mindful.
Guided by a therapeutic ethos aimed at enhancing the mental and emotional resilience of individuals, it endorses neoliberal assumptions that everyone is free to choose their responses, manage negative emotions, and “flourish” through various modes of self-care. Framing what they offer in this way, most teachers of mindfulness rule out a curriculum that critically engages with causes of suffering in the structures of power and economic systems of capitalist society.
Mindfulness is sold and marketed as a vehicle for personal gain and gratification. Self-optimization is the name of the game. I want to reduce my stress. I want to enhance my concentration. I want to improve my productivity and performance. One invests in mindfulness as one would invest in a stock hoping to receive a handsome dividend.
Another fellow skeptic, David Forbes, sums this up in his book 'Mindfulness and Its Discontents': ‘Which self wants to be de-stressed and happy? Mine! The Mindfulness Industrial Complex wants to help your self be happy, promote your personal brand — and of course make and take some bucks (yours and mine) along the way. The simple premise is that by practicing mindfulness, by being more mindful, you will be happy, regardless of what thoughts and feelings you have, or your actions in the world.’
The Commodification of Mindfulness
Mindfulness is such a well-known commodity that it has even been used by the fast-food giant KFC to sell chicken pot pies. Developed by a high-powered ad agency, KFC’s “Comfort Zone: A Pot Pie- Based Meditation System” uses a soothing voiceover and mystical images of a rotating Col Sanders sitting in the lotus posture with a pot pie head.
Mindfulness is now said to be a $4 billion industry, propped up by media hype and slick marketing by the movement’s elites. More than 100,000 books for sale on Amazon have a variant of “mindfulness” in their title, touting the benefits of Mindful Parenting, Mindful Eating, Mindful Teaching, Mindful Therapy, Mindful Leadership, Mindful Finance, a Mindful Nation, and Mindful Dog Owners, to name just a few.
The term “McMindfulness” was coined by Miles Neale, a Buddhist teacher and psychotherapist, who described “a feeding frenzy of spiritual practices that provide immediate nutrition but no long-term sustenance.” Although this label is apt, it has deeper connotations. The contemporary mindfulness fad is the entrepreneurial equal of McDonald’s.
A Capitalist Spirituality
This has come about partly because proponents of mindfulness believe that the practice is apolitical, and so the avoidance of moral inquiry and the reluctance to consider a vision of the social good are intertwined. However, the claim that major ethical changes intrinsically follow from “paying attention to the present moment, non-judgmentally” is patently flawed. It is unlikely that the Pentagon would invest in mindfulness if more mindful soldiers refused en masse to go to war.
Privatized mindfulness practice is easily coopted and confined to what Carrette and King describe as an “accommodationist” orientation that seeks to “pacify feelings of anxiety and disquiet at the individual level rather than seeking to challenge the social, political and economic inequalities that cause such distress.” However, a commitment to a privatized and psychologized mindfulness is political. It amounts to what Byung-Chul Han calls “psycho-politics,” in which contemporary capitalism seeks to harness the psyche as a productive force.
A truly revolutionary mindfulness would challenge the Western sense of entitlement to happiness irrespective of ethical conduct. However, mindfulness programs do not ask executives to examine how their managerial decisions and corporate policies have institutionalized greed, ill will and delusion, which Buddhist mindfulness seeks to eradicate. Instead, the practice is being sold to executives as a way to de-stress, improve productivity and focus, and bounce back from working eighty-hour weeks. They may well be “meditating,” but it works like taking an aspirin for a headache. Once the pain goes away, it is business as usual. Even if individuals become nicer people, the corporate agenda of maximizing profits does not change. Trickle-down mindfulness, like trickle-down economics, is a cover for the maintenance of power.
As Byung-Chul Han observes, this reinvents the Puritan work ethic: ‘Now, instead of searching out sins, one hunts down negative thoughts.’
Isn’t a little bit of mindfulness better than none? What’s wrong with an employee listening to a three-minute breathing practice on an app before a stressful meeting? On the surface, not much, but we should also think about the cost. If mindfulness just helps people cope with the toxic conditions that make them stressed in the first place, then perhaps we could aim a bit higher. Why should we allow a regime to usurp mindfulness for nefarious corporate purposes? Should we celebrate the fact that this perversion is helping people to “auto-exploit” themselves? This is the core of the problem.
This book explores how that occurs, and what might be done about it. There is no need for mindfulness to be so complicit in social injustice. It can also be taught in ways that unwind that entanglement. This requires us to see what is actually happening, and commit ourselves to trying to reduce collective suffering. The focus needs to shift from “me” to “we,” liberating mindfulness from neoliberal thinking.
To find out more about the book, please click here: https://ronpurser.com/mcmindfulness
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