Mindfulness Isn’t Working. Here’s Why.
By: Joe Hunt
Tags: Self, Life Lessons, Mindfulness, Mental Health, Self Improvement

In the 21st century, mindfulness meditation, a practice that was for millennia reserved for members of a particular tradition and lone spiritual wanderers, has been standardized, digitized, and distributed to the masses.

That’s just super, isn’t it?

Yep.

Even more than that.

It could be one of the greatest things to happen in recent years, potentially even the whole course of human history, right?

Yep.

But…

There’s a weird thing that happens when it comes to critically discussing practices like meditation, and in particular mindfulness.

Even though they may offer some benefit, it’s as if, because they involve qualities like being nonjudgemental and acceptance, they’re somehow entitled to a free pass from being looked at critically and rationally.

Master, why do we meditate outside bare naked in the middle of winter?

Because that’s how things are. Accept it.

For Ronald Purser, author of McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality, this is surprisingly convenient in the times we live in.

In a time when asking too many questions might disrupt the status quo, then dropping out of the “thinking mind” and into “being mode” seems all too appropriate.

In a time when stress and stress-related diseases are rife but so is pollution, poverty, inequality, financial insecurity, war, and the rest of it, then avoiding “over-intellectualizing” and “trying to change things” and having a narrative that explains hows the cause of stress is inside our own heads, and all we need to do is get better at “accepting it”, is way too convenient.

For millennia, meditation was mostly something practiced by small groups of people living outside of society.

Its very purpose was as a tool for questioning who we are and what life is, to wake up our inner wisdom in the face of domineering hierarchical structures, cultural ideals, and any kind of strict dogma or imposed way of living.

It had nothing to do with improving performance and trying to adapt to or thrive within a sick or faulty system.

Today, however, more and more of us are introduced to meditation as part of a society, culture, and set of ideas that are already well established.

Ahem, capitalism.

Far from the radical counterculture practice that emerged some 2000 years ago, mindfulness is seen as nothing more than a list of health benefits that come at the cost of a monthly subscription fee.

In fact, Purser argues that mindfulness has become yet another tool in the futile and ultimately capitalist-benefiting game of maintaining, monitoring, and continually working on the project of the self.

This raises two questions. The first is the one I opened this article with.

Okay, that may make some sense. But still, if mindfulness makes people feel better, then what’s the big deal?

To this, Purser has a lot to say. To try to simplify one of his points, let’s consider his example of recycling.

There’s no denying that recycling is good for the environment. But is continuing to recycle actually the best thing for the environment?

Looking at it another way, doesn’t it actually support a practice that is harming the environment?

In the same way, Purser argues that meditating or practicing mindfulness to reduce stress can help people feel better. But he asks is it really the best thing for them?

Does it really get to the root of the issue, or does it merely support, and direct attention away from, the overarching issue of a stress, or plastic, producing system?

The second question it raises is:

Well, if it isn’t the right way to go about things, then what is Mr. Big Shot?

To this end, Purser has a lot less to say.

Not because he can’t answer it. But because the solution isn’t separate from the understanding of where mindfulness is going wrong.

After all, understanding where things may be going wrong, instead of merely jumping ahead to find the solution or rush to download the next big meditation app, is pretty much the most mindful thing anyone can do today.

Self-acceptance vs Self-improvement

Alongside talk therapy, massage, and medicine, mindfulness has taken its place as another therapeutic tool that can be put to work in healing ourselves.

Mindfulness can help you destress. Sleep better. Improve your focus. And gain a tonne of other benefits that are good for your health and wellbeing.

The problem is, rather than being the ultimate purpose of the practice, originally, such benefits are merely side effects that happen along the road.

Modern mindfulness hails such benefits as its main selling points. And in doing so, it can reinforce the mindset of grasping and striving to change and improve ourselves that it’s originally designed to illuminate and offer an alternative to.

This is also a familiar paradox of meditation, often talked about as the self-acceptance vs self-improvement paradox.

In essence, the paradox says that meditation can lead to change and improvement in ourselves, but only through giving up the effort and need to try and change and improve ourselves.

When we approach mindfulness with the change and improvement mindset, we can end up trying to use the practice to make ourselves feel better, to get rid of or improve a certain mood, and to lose ourselves in relaxing and pleasant states and sensations.

Whats’ more, when we come to the practice expecting such change, there’s already resistance and judgment of your experience. There’s a “bad” or “negative” or unwanted feeling or state that needs to be eradicated or changed.

Alternatively, we can take the self-acceptance approach.

This isn’t about resignation or giving up. It’s not about taking it easy on yourself, avoiding difficult feelings, and using mindfulness as a way to zone out and relax.

It’s about becoming aware of unhelpful patterns we can get stuck into of fixing, resisting, judging, analyzing, escaping, and otherwise trying to make our experience into something it’s not.

It also, therefore, requires the recognition that mindfulness, despite the claims, is not about trying to make ourselves feel better or destress. That can happen, but it’s not what the practice is about.

Mindfulness is not a therapeutic method. It does not follow a problem-solution model. Its purpose is not intended to “fix”, “cure”, “heal”, or even “improve” yourself. These ideas are fundamentally contradictory to the principle of “acceptance” and “non-judgment” (which we’ll look at later) because they’re based on the faulty assumption that you are somehow broken or flawed or need improvement in the first place.

Of course, this doesn’t mean no practice or action is necessary. But it’s practice and action that is not aimed toward a specific goal or purpose outside of being in your immediate experience.

The city is our monastery. Erm… no

It’s long been possible to meditate in any way and anywhere you want.

But traditionally, Buddhist monks would have three things to support them: a teacher, an ethical framework, and a community, which most often came with a quiet place to live and practice.

Today, you don’t need any of these things to practice mindfulness.

Just download an app, choose between 100s of short courses, stick on a guided meditation, and, with your noise-canceling headphones at the ready, you can begin meditating while riding the metro on your way to work.

As you can see, these modern conditions that many of us meditate in are worlds away from the conditions of a monk living inside a monastery.

But the point isn’t that you need to live in perfect and serene conditions in the middle of the countryside in order to meditate.

The point is that even when you know what mindfulness is about and your intentions are in the right place, it’s easy for the practice to become a way to simply take a breather and retreat from the chaos that’s going on around you.

And it’s no surprise. Despite feeling “normal” or “natural” to many of us, modern digital life is far from neutral. Taking five minutes to practice mindfulness is often the only time we give to ourselves to pause in our day.

The trouble is that there’s a whole industry that has long been built to capitalize on the demand for moments of stress-reducing respite. A market in which mindfulness apps now play a leading and growing role.

The irony is that, rather than actually making us more connected with ourselves and others and in touch with “the present moment”, mindfulness apps can make us less connected to ourselves, what’s going on around us, and the environment we live in.

By taking moments to tune out of our environment and “drop-in” to practice, while listening to soothing guidance that has no direct relation to our current experience, mindfulness apps can’t help but engender a disconnection with our immediate experience and reinforce the barrier between ourselves, our conditions, and our environment.

Mindfulness apps provide a temporary moment of calm, a sort of experiential escape hatch, that allow us to find and nourish our happy place — a place that’s safe and separate from what’s out there, the chaos that is the rest of our day and life.

Buddhist monks haven’t meditated for millennia away from the distractions of desires, relationships, and commerce solely because it’s a nice thing to do, it feels good, and it helps them focus.

They’ve done it out of the knowledge and recognition that what we are is not some isolated creature that’s separated from the conditions around us. The two are one and the same.

An analogy that’s often used to demonstrate this is the pot of water.

Say we’re stressed out and anxious.

This would be like the pot of water has been stirred up by the wind and is agitated, swaying, and making waves.

Just as you wouldn’t expect to be able to see a clear reflection of yourself in the surface of the water, when we’re stressed and anxious, by their very nature, we aren’t able to see clearly and consider the best way to escape our stress and anxiety, if we can even see a way at all.

Of course, this is exactly what we come to see through practice. But there’s no merit in striving like mad to see your reflection in a pot of water that’s boiling, murky, and full of all sorts of moss and muck, and then beating yourself up because you can’t stay awake or focus clearly for two minutes.

The water needs time to settle on its own.

Which can be done by moving to a monastery, or more likely, taking a good hard look at the conditions you live in, what’s going on in your life, and making some changes.

This is why the most “mindful” thing that one person can do for themselves can look completely different from that of someone else.

It’s your personal experience combined with your unique conditions, and no matter how many guided meditations from leading experts you listen to or how big your meditation streak, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re paying any attention to what’s happening in your own pot.

(Don’t get me wrong, meditation apps and guided practices have their time and place. But they’re not simply a 21st-century alternative or a more convenient equivalent to traditional mindfulness practice. They aren’t neutral).

The lack of good judgment about non-judgment

This whole article could be dismissed as a case of not practicing enough non-judgment.

So goes the generally accepted definition of mindfulness by the founder of MBSR, John Kabat-Zinn:

“the awareness that arises from paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment and non-judgmentally”.

When it comes to being “non-judgemental”, it has nothing to do with avoiding critical discourse on the grounds that opinions are bias, you might piss a few people off, and, in the grand scheme, everything is already perfect anyway.

This could be seen as a form of “idiot compassion”, a term used by Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Idiot compassion is a way of appearing nice and accepting without having to rock the boat, and therefore, not having to feel any discomfort or face any consequences for ourselves.

As one of his students, Buddhist nun and author Pema Chodron, explains.

“[Idiot compassion] refers to something we all do a lot of and call it compassion. In some ways, it’s what’s called enabling. It’s the general tendency to give people what they want because you can’t bear to see them suffering”

So often, being “non-judgemental” is used to meet our own ends. We want to feel better, and we don’t want to be seen as judgemental, so we try not to be too critical or harsh on other people and ourselves by practicing “non-judgment”.

But judgment is definitely not something we want to get rid of from our lives. And the reality is, we couldn’t no matter how hard we try.

When it comes to practicing mindfulness, judgment is often thought of as a negative behavior that has to do with seeing people as better or worse than us, and rating things as good or bad. And, therefore, it’s an unmindful behavior we should stop doing immediately.

In this way, we may strive to become the ideal mindful person who doesn't discriminate against anyone or anything. Everyone is included, no experience is avoided.

So, if little Johnny wants to scream for an hour in the middle of the supermarket, then maybe that’s just what he needs. If for a few weeks or months I feel like drowning ourselves in a few tubs of ice cream at the end of each day, then who am I to judge?

Instead of actually practicing non-judgment, we lose our critical faculties and take the role of the ultimate overriding high court mindfulness judge.

Non-judgement is an unfortunate and unhelpful misnomer of modern mindfulness. As you can kind of get a hint of by the “non” part, non-judgment is not about taking action or actually adopting some kind of new behavior or quality.

Non-judgment is just another way of describing what we’re practicing when we have the intention to let all experience come and go, instead of trying to make it fit the way we think it should be or would like it to be.

It has absolutely zero to do with describing a way of taking action in the world (much like the word “mindful”). It’s to do with how we relate to our own experience.

But as you can imagine, the two are inseparable. And so by looking at how we approach judgment in practice, we can also get a glimpse of how it might show up in other aspects of our lives.

Let’s compare two ways of approaching non-judgment in meditation:

You sit down to meditate. Ten seconds in and you’re feeling tension in your shoulders. It hurts, but it isn’t unbearable. So you try and be with it without judging it. But after a while, it’s not getting any better. So you try breathing deeper. No change. You try observing it more patiently. No change. You even try pretending it doesn’t really hurt and being kinder and gentler to it. No change.

Round two.

You sit down to meditate. Ten seconds in and you’re feeling tension in your shoulders. You try and be with it without judging it. You notice it's quite painful, and that you’re tensing up around it. Other parts of your body are also tense because it’s pissing you off. You notice the pain is changing, sometimes getting stronger, sometimes weaker. You notice your posture is slumping and adjust. You notice how the sensation is still there, and the thoughts about how you wish it would go away. After a while, sensations are still there, but they’re not as much of a problem as when you started.

As you can see, the fundamental principle behind not judging has nothing to do with denying the fact that some things in life just suck.

In this case, you’re not trying to change the fact that there’s some unpleasant sensation in your shoulders. Rather, you’re coming to see if there’s another way you can be with the discomfort, as opposed to fighting them and wishing it would go away, and if not, seeing what else you can do about it.

Pain exists. Some things in life are difficult.

The point of mindfulness isn’t to become a super holy mindful person who doesn’t think critically and embraces every experience while paying extreme attention to it. That’s living a fantasy world built on the “non-judgemental” idea that it’s possible to live without discomfort and completely avoid difficult and unwanted experiences.

The point of mindfulness is to see that we don’t need to grasp or push away feelings based on knee-jerk reactions of “likes” and “dislikes”.

Non-judgement is non-judgment when you and your needs and your wants and your likes and dislikes are not at the center of everything. This doesn’t mean you lack critical discussion, reflection, or any kind of discerning thought. It simply means being open to the idea that what you consider to be your “self” may actually be a lot bigger than you thought.