Too Early to Tell: The Potential Impact and Challenges-Ethical and Otherwise-Inherent in the Mainstreaming of Dharma in an Increasingly Dystopian World.

It is said that Zhou Enlai, the Chinese Premier, who as a young man was a major force in the Chinese Revolution, when asked late in life by a journalist for his thoughts about the legacy of the French Revolution, replied “Too early to tell.”1, 2, 3 It became a meme of sorts, even if it was based on a misunderstanding. I love the whole notion that it may be too early to tell—about a lot of emergences in our world. But sometimes, we need to act forcefully and with resolve, based on the best projections for what may take place given various lines of broadly accepted scientific evidence (such as the global receding of the glaciers and the melting of the polar ice caps) and its modeling algorithms, even if we cannot be sure of just how bad bad could be, such as in the case of global warming. By the time it plays out in real time, any action is already too late. My late Korean Zen teacher, Seung Sahn Seon Sa, was fond of saying, meaning just that, “The arrow is already downtown.” Whether the overwhelming evidence for global warming is denied by politicians in any given moment out of cynicism, ignorance, or greed is quite another story. So perhaps at this moment in time, it is way too early to tell what the likely fate of humankind will be, given our self-destructive, aggressive, violent, tribal, dualistic, and delusional tendencies as a species, in spite of all the civilizations, diverse cultural flowerings, beauty, understanding, wisdom, and compassion and basic human goodness that humanity has also brought to the planet in the very short arc of human history—say, to be generous, perhaps 400 generations since the last ice age. British historian, Arnold Toynbee, famously said that in the future, the coming of Buddhism to the West would be seen as the signature historical event of the twentieth century. Maybe it is even now, half a century later, way too early to tell. A major koan in the Chan tradition, over fifteen hundred years old: “What is the meaning of Bodhidharma’s coming from the West?”4 One credible answer: “Too early to tell!” Even now. I would say that the same is true of the mainstreaming of mindfulness in the world as both a practice and a way of being. In terms of the work of MBSR (mindfulness-based stress reduction), to say it right off the bat, since it is increasingly questioned by people unfamiliar with it in practice, the mainstreaming of mindfulness in the world has always been anchored in the ethical framework that lies at the very heart of the original teachings of the Buddha.5 Sila, meaning “virtue” or “moral conduct” in the Pali language, is represented by the third, fourth, and fifth factors of the Eightfold Path (the fourth of the Four Noble Truths): wise/right speech, wise/right action, and wise/right livelihood. While MBSR does not, nor should it, explicitly address these classical foundations in a clinical context with patients, the Four Noble Truths have always been the soil in which the cultivation of mindfulness via MBSR and other mindfulness-based programs (MBPs) is rooted, and out of which, it grows through ongoing practice. More on this to follow, in terms of the both Hippocratic Oath and the Bodhisattva Vow. Parenthetically, MBSR was also designed from the beginning as a vehicle of right livelihood for the people who would be drawn to become MBSR instructors.6 Now that mindfulness already has a multidecade track record in the mainstream of medicine, health care, as well as increasingly in other societal avenues, however, nascent at this particular time, from the law to education to government, to criminal justice, to sports, perhaps the major challenge for all of us who practice the dharma in one form or another and care deeply about suffering and the end of suffering and the root causes of suffering is to contribute optimally and skillfully to the ongoing development, refinement, articulation, and embodied authenticity of dharma wisdom in all the various domains within which it is taking root, whether within the mainstream or within more Buddhist-oriented streams. After all, the mainstreaming of dharma through mindfulness is prima facie a positive and healing occurrence and a tremendous opportunity for addressing some of the most fundamental sources of pain and suffering in our world at this moment in time. That would include the Orwellian distortions of truth we are now seeing on a daily basis in the news, and the perpetuation of dystopian “governance” by seemingly elevating greed, hatred, and delusion to new heights, with all its attendant consequences for the fragility of democratic institutions. My guess and profound hope is that as planetary citizens and devoted mindfulness practitioners, we all have necessary, even critical roles to play in what unfolds from here, however, small or insignificant we might think our contribution might be when we begin, especially in light of the mega-geopolitical forces playing out in our time through terrorism, war, cynicism, and death around the world, and the historical roots that feed such forces within the human family and how easily these are invoked and played upon by demagogues. The evidence of the flowering of mindfulness in this era (see Fig. ​Fig.11 as one indicator) is widespread. It can be gleaned from the depth and breadth of research articles in the journal Mindfulness and increasingly throughout the top tier scientific and medical literature, in the documenting and curating of this exponential flowering in the Mindfulness Research Monthly, and in the various series of edited volumes in Mindfulness and Behavioral Health being put out by Springer, including the latest volume, devoted to Mindfulness and Ethics (Purser et al. 2018). The very fact that a major scientific publisher thinks the subject of mindfulness and ethics is relevant enough to invest its resources to bring this topic into this conventional form of mainstream academic discourse is significant, as is the fact that there are so many different credible voices and perspectives being expressed from vastly different backgrounds. Nirbhay Singh is to be congratulated on his leadership in generating these vehicles for reporting ongoing research and offering a range of opinion pieces and perspectives on the field, and even more for helping to develop the field itself and the ongoing discourse and inquiry that are evolving through his launching of the journal Mindfulness, and of the Mindfulness in Behavioral Health Series through Springer. Academic volumes may not change the world all that much, but they sometimes put their finger on the pulse of emergent possibilities in science and medicine that can augur transformative changes in planetary culture. Open in a separate window Fig. 1 Number of publications on mindfulness by year