Session 2: Buddhism and Pragmatism—Buddhism’s Impact on Social Change

Mindfulness Meditation and Social Change:from Therapy to Wisdom and Ethics

Mark LeonardTHE Buddha lived two and half thousand years ago in NorthernIndia. Around two centuries later, Ashoka, the great Indian Emperor,
shaped his empire around the Buddha’s teachings. In the following
thousand years or so, Buddhism spread across Asia. The Dhamma had aprofound effect as it adapted to different cultures in different times anddifferent traditions evolved. In the last century or so outposts of every
Asian Buddhist tradition have sprung up in the West. Buddhism has now
become a World Religion and is adapting to and shaping the modern
World in new ways.
In 1979, a molecular biologist, Jon Kabat-Zin set up a clinic at
the University of Massachussets Medical School where he taught Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) to people suffering fromchronic pain and the stress of living with chronic illness. Kabat-Zin built
this course out of a combination of Zen meditation, Vipassana from
Theravada Buddhism and yoga but it was taught in secular language tomake it accessible to this new audience.
Mindfulness meditation involves consciously paying attention to sensory experience from moment-to-moment. When the mind wanders andbecomes absorbed in thinking, attention is redirected to sensations. Thisdevelops acceptance of what takes place in subjective experience andawareness of the way the mind becomes distracted. The practice enables
a person to better understand and accept patterns of thoughts, emotions
and feelings rather than react automatically to changing conditions.
During the 1990’s, three clinical psychologists, Jon Teasdale, Zindel
Segal and Mark Williams, became interested in the potential for meditation as a new treatment to prevent depression. MBSR was the right fit as
it was a repeatable programme, taught in secular language and previous32

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ly delivered in a medical environment. They called their course, Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) and so, with this work,
mindfulness meditation gained a scientific foundation. An explosion ofinterest in mindfulness as a therapy, self-help and in the workplace hasfollowed.

To Change Society, We Need to Change Inside
Up until about ten years ago, I worked in waste management and before
then in fisheries. I wished to make a contribution to reducing the rate at
which we are destroying natural resources and create a more sustainable
future. To do this I was working to raise awareness and applying policy
to reduce waste and increase recycling, however, it seemed that doing
things like this was not making much difference.
It dawned on me that the problems we face today are systemic acrosssociety and that people need to change inside before they do things differently. The only way that I could see this happening was to find a way
to teach meditation widely across society. And so, I got involved withthe Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies to raise awareness of the Buddhist tradition and then in 2008, helped to establish its sister charity, theOxford Mindfulness Centre (OMC).
I became the Mindfulness in the Workplace Project Champion at theOMC and then set up a company to teach mindfulness in the workplace.
Others had also been experimenting with mindfulness in the workplace
but this approach was different to most. It was adapted from a therapy
based on scientific understanding as opposed to Buddhist meditation
adapted for the same purpose.
This is important because modern secular society implements
measures based on scientific understanding. MBCT was first approved
for use in the National Health Service in 2004, however, the workplace
is a very different context for mindfulness training than therapy in aclinical environment. The key concerns in the workplace are stress andimproving performance. Mindfulness in the workplace has different
objectives and needs to be taught as training rather than therapy.
The world-view of the clinical psychologist is based on the idea that it
is possible to understand a psychological causal process that leads tomental illness. When the process is understood it then becomes possible
to devise an intervention with a predictable outcome that can be tested
in a clinical trial. It was this world-view that had brought about so muchinterest in mindfulness but it had also created a “value-neutral” intervention out of mindfulness, just like a drug, to prevent depression.

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mindfulness meditation and social change

If mindfulness is merely an intervention to reduce stress, prevent
depression or manage anxiety, it is only dealing with the symptoms of
the problems we face in society today. If mindfulness helps people tofunction better in a society that is creating conditions that cause so much
unhappiness, it does not change the social conditions that create theproblem in the first place.
On the other hand, if mindfulness meditation changes the way people
behave then it may have the potential to change society. At the recent
Mind and Matter, Mindfulness at Work Conference there were a numberof speakers who spoke about mindfulness training in their organisations.
There was a common theme: mindfulness was changing corporateculture. Mindfulness training programmes tailored to workplace arechanging the way things are done.

Toward “More Humane Organisational Culture”
Mindfulness meditation has a number of psychological effects on theindividual. It helps to reduce stress by disengaging attention from thinking and paying attention to moment-to-moment sensory experience.
This enables people to relate to their thoughts and feelings differently,
react less to difficult feelings and regulate their emotions better. This
enables people to respond more thoughtfully in difficult situations andso changes their behaviour.
We react to difficult situations when we feel under threat. This oftencauses us to act defensively or aggressively and this has a negative effecton our relationships with other people. Strong emotions also interferewith our ability to think clearly and take notice of what is happeningaround us. Mindfulness helps us to allow difficult feelings pass before
we react. This helps us to become more aware of what is happening,
think more clearly, make better decisions and respond in ways thatmaintain better relationships with others around us.
Mindfulness enables us to be more aware of strong emotions, how uncomfortable they can be and to see how we react when we experience
them. Mindfulness enables us to dissipate strong emotions before wereact. Then we can be more open and aware of what is going on in ourown experience in relationships to others, think more clearly, learn fromour experience and act more skilfully. With mindfulness, we naturally
act with more understanding, kindness and compassion. This is thefoundation of ethics.
When we feel under threat, our thoughts and actions can all too easily
be driven by an immediate sense of self-interest. When we feel at ease

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we are more open and accepting of others around us. With mindfulness,
we realise that the way we think about ourselves and others changes indifferent situations. We discover that our thinking changes as we learn tomanage our emotions better. We learn to think about things from morethan one perspective and become more accepting of others’ views. We
become more adaptable as the illusion of a permanent sense of self loses
its power over us. This is the foundation of insight.
And this must make good business sense too. Mindfulness in theworkplace will not only improve staff wellbeing and improve performance but will create a more humane organisational culture where people can flourish and better fulfill their potential. Cooperation replacescompetition. Employee engagement improves as values and vision are
shaped by a more humane workplace culture. These changes not only
create better working environments but also have an effect on the way
people act collectively in an organisation to have an effect on corporatesocial responsibility.
It is much easier to act with kindness and to think clearly in a social
context where these behaviours are part of the cultural environment,
which shapes individual experience. We are social beings and mindfulness is as much a social process as it is an individual pursuit. So now
with increasing interest in mindfulness in the workplace and wider society, I believe it is time to consider how mindfulness training can become
an agent for positive change not just in organisations but across society
as a whole.
Mindfulness in the workplace changes organisational culture and theway an organisation acts as a whole. I believe, that the next step needed
to make social change take place is to explore ways of making secularmindfulness meditation an everyday part of community life.
Author Biography
Mark Leonard helped to establish the Oxford Mindfulness Centre and was Championof its ‘Mindfulness in the Workplace’ Project. He went on to establish its workplace-training spin-out, The Mindfulness Exchange, before working with Mindfulness4Change, which applies mindfulness meditation as means for social and organisationalchange. He has led the field in adapting mindfulness, from an evidence-based
approach—designed for therapy—to short courses for the workplace and for the generalpublic. His chapter, Making Mindfulness Meaningful and Accessible, is included in a
new book on Mindfulness in the Workplace: An Evidence-based Approach to Improving
Wellbeing and Maximising Performance, edited by Margaret Chapman-Clarke publishedby Kogan Page, 2016.