immanence

A Guardian article making the rounds on social media argues that the mindfulness movement has become “the new capitalist spirituality” — “magical thinking on steroids,” which instead of overturning the “neoliberal order,” now “only serves to reinforce its destructive logic.”

This “McMindfulness,” as Ronald Purser calls it, has 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.” So instead of “discussing how attention is monetised and manipulated by corporations such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and Apple,” mindfulness advocates “locate the crisis in our minds.” As a result, any “potential for social or political transformation” is “neutered” with practitioners simply improving their ability to cope with “the toxic conditions that make them stressed in the first place,” while leaving those conditions intact and, in fact, strengthened.

None of this is a new argument — it’s been made repeatedly by scholars of religion, including Buddhists (Purser among them), as well as by social critics like Slavoj Zizek. But I want to consider it further, if only because I dedicate one third of Shadowing the Anthropocene to introducing a complete system of mindfulness practice. How does that form of mindfulness — or bodymindfulness, as Shadowing calls it — differ from the “McMindfulness” Purser and others criticize? I’ll try to explain that here.

The system I propose builds “triadically” on Shinzen Young‘s Buddhist-based system of mindfulness training (which, in turn, is the most approachable yet sophisticated mindfulness training system I’ve come across). The “triadicity” is intended to place the contemplative (paying attention to what’s going on) on a par with the active (paying attention to how one is acting to affect what’s going on) and the “realizational” (paying attention to the results of those actions).

This triadicity is rooted in C. S. Peirce’s metaphysics, which takes all reality to be irreducibly triadic, consisting of “firstness” (things as they are in and of themselves), “secondness” (things as they act on others and react to others), and “thirdness” (things as they mediate and interpret those actions and reactions). Peircian metaphysics is, in turn, at the root of one of the two main branches of semiotics and its many outgrowths, including biosemiotics, zoosemiotics, ecosemiotics, phytosemiotics, microsemiotics, et al. — all of which form a basis for reconceptualizing the relationship between the human and the nonhuman. And the entirety is grounded in a Whiteheadian process-relational metaphysics that sees relational action as central to everything — and that is (as I try to show in the book) deeply resonant with key strands of Buddhist philosophy.

Why introduce another system of mindfulness at all?

For me, it’s about philosophy’s role in understanding and informing our lives — something that’s best done by starting with what’s central to our lives, which is experience. Everything that is living experiences — everything alive is the center of its own experiential world. (Whitehead and Peirce both propose, somewhat hesitantly and inconsistently, that not just everything alive but everything there is experiences. Or that everything is in some sense alive in that it is a relational and semiotic, or at least proto-semiotic, event — an event that gives rise to further events that may be connected in ways that include identity or self-sameness. But let’s leave all that aside.)

If experience is central to existence, then understanding what it means to experience — to notice things, to respond to them, and to realize the results of those responses — is central to improving how we live. Learning to pay better attention to the present moment — which is the core of contemporary mindfulness training — is the best starting point for a philosophy that would improve life. But the point is not just to appreciate that moment more deeply, nor is it just to free ourselves from the neuroses that keep us bound to the past and future (which, in a capitalist society, tends to mean “getting things done” in order to advance ourselves in the ratrace).

The point, rather, is to get a clearer sense of what is going on so that we can act more clearly, more decisively, and more deliberately in advancing the cause of life itself — that is, of whatever we put our mind and heart in the service of. And for those who think that we don’t already put ourselves “in the service of” various causes, consciously or unconsciously, mindfulness training is the best means for showing us that we certainly do — and how we do, and with what (often) devastating results. Only by facing reality can we change reality for the better.

Another element of Peircian “triadics” is that which distinguishes between — and equalizes — aesthetics, ethics, and logic(s). By putting aesthetics (or the perception of firstness) on a par with ethics (deliberative responsiveness to secondness) and (eco-)logics (cultivation of thirdness), Shadowing the Anthropocene tries to ensure that “mindfulness” is not a mere exercise for coping with the world, but rather a fuller engagement with the world.

Ultimately, it’s the deconstructive element of both Buddhist mindfulness practice (not McMindfulness, but the real thing) and of the practice I present that is most important. The goal, for both, is the deconstruction of the actor, the “self,” the subject, and an accompanying deconstruction of the world that is its object, so as to liberate both into the flow of open, cognizant responsiveness.

As Purser argues, the “present moment” may be something of a “myth” (or at least a social construction) among mindfulness advocates, but it’s still the best place to gain a foothold into reality. And reality is still what we’re engaging with and shaping, with every move we make.