who gets mindfulness “right”? an engaged buddhist perspective

An opinion piece I wrote on the cultural politics of mindfulness has been published:

http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2015/03/05/4191695.htm

google, mindfulness, and the decision (or lack thereof) to commit to ethical reflexivity and engagement

Source: http://religiondispatches.org/google-phonics-or-what-is-the-sound-of-a-thousand-tech-workers-meditating/

The following is from this ‘Googe-phonics, or, What is the sound of a thousand tech workers meditating?’

Meng insisted that success in the marketplace is consistent with the pursuit of mindfulness. I objected, and raised the pointed question I had asked only rhetorically a couple of days before. “If mindfulness were to take root both inside and outside corporate culture,” I suggested, “we might move beyond market capitalism altogether and arrive in a world that is beyond Google. The key moment in the Buddha’s life is not just when he left the palace, but when he crossed the river and joined those who were underprivileged. So I’m wondering: What would it look like for you to cross the river?”

In reply, Meng explained that if Google ever faced a choice between the common good and the survival of the company, he would always advocate for the common good. It was a revealing answer: framing this choice in hypothetical terms implies that Google has yet to face it. It’s a choice that will rarely present itself in one consummate moment, however, but instead appears as a series of smaller decisions with cumulative effect.

Where was mindfulness, for example, when Google decided to subvert the privacy settings of iPhone users? Where was mindfulness when the Street View program ‘sniffed’ for open Wi-Fi connections and surreptitiously collected personal data from local residents? Where was mindfulness when the company decided to consolidate its user privacy policies against the better judgment of consumer groups and over thirty U.S. Attorneys General? Tellingly, none of these issues appear in Search Inside Yourself. They are blind spots within a corporate-friendly version of Buddhist philosophy.

I think so too. It is in line with Buddhist understandings to conceive of the commitment ‘for the the common good’ as a decision that is not taken in one consummate moment, but a decision that must be taken and re-taken repeatedly, cumulatively, over and over again. Or as my late teacher S.N. Goenka would say: ‘Start again’ (the bodhisattva vows make the same promise). By bracketing off this decision to maintain ethical reflexivity and engagement – always leaving it till ‘later’ or some hypothetical future – this is precisely the danger of the institutional mindfulness programs developed by the likes of Google and the US military, as they enjoin their staff to give themselves over to ‘the now’. To what ends? In whose interest?