I remember an exercise he gave to a group of students early on. He had us write down the Buddhadharma in three words. I scribbled something like: \u201cBuddha, Dharma, Sangha.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not bad, I suppose, but still on the surface of things.<\/p>\n
Dr. Sponberg\u00a0suggested,\u00a0\u201cJust. Let. Go.\u201d<\/p>\n
Often, when teaching a new idea or practice, it helps to try to boil it down to its essentials. Getting to the pith of things is very important and being able to do so in a way that reaches and sticks with others is a sign of genius.<\/p>\n
- \n
- Jesus: \u201clove God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength,\u00a0and love your neighbor as yourself.\u201d<\/li>\n
- The heart of Judaism, from Hillel the Elder: \u201cThat which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary; go and learn.\u201d<\/li>\n
- Buddha\u2019s teachings from Assaji Thero to Sariputta: \u201cThe Buddha teaches that all things arise and fall away based on causes and conditions.\u201d<\/li>\n
- Nichiren\u2019s distillation of Buddhadharma: \u201cNamu My\u014dh\u014d Renge Ky\u014d.<\/i>\u201c<\/li>\n
- Kant\u2019s categorical imperative: \u201cAct in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.\u201d<\/li>\n
- Mindfulness, according to Jon Kabat-Zinn: \u201cthe awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally to the unfolding of experience moment to moment.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
This honing down is a natural process in the communication of important ideas.<\/p>\n
It also opens the door to misinterpretation and misuse.<\/strong> So once this\u00a0pith<\/em> is communicated and understood, the idea needs to be refleshed<\/em>.<\/p>\n
This has long been part of my own work, taking an undergraduate education in practical ethics into my graduate studies of Buddhist philosophy<\/a> \u2013 and eventually to meditation\/mindfulness. Years ahead of me, however, is Dr. Miles Neale, who in 2010\u00a0coined the term McMindfulness<\/a> to refer to, \u201cMeditation for the masses, drive-through style, stripped of its essential ingredients, prepackaged and neatly stocked on the shelves of the commercial self-help supermarkets.\u201d<\/p>\n
He continued, in that Lion\u2019s Roar<\/em> interview with Danny Fisher, \u201cYou see the Buddha didn\u2019t just teach mindfulness, and Patanjali didn\u2019t just teach postures. These great, enlightened sages taught the power tools within a psychological context, sandwiched neatly like the cream of an Oreo between ethics and wisdom.\u201d<\/p>\n
Recent posts on this oreo can be found in my Ethics in Mindfulness: A key piece in the puzzle<\/a>, and Amod Lele\u2019s \u201cDon\u2019t Exclude ethics from Philosophy<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Ipsut](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/83\/2017\/06\/Ipsut-Falls-Mount-Rainier.jpg\")
Ipsut Falls \u2013 Mount Rainier National Park (Copyright 2017, author)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n However, Neale stressed several times that this doesn\u2019t make mindfulness (even the stripped down version) something to worry about: \u201cLet me be frank: the more mindfulness practiced by anyone, anywhere, the better off we all are. The recent findings at Cambridge University are really just further confirmation of a large body of research on the efficacy of mindfulness that has spanned nearly four decades. At this point, it\u2019s a no-brainer: mindfulness works to reduce negative symptoms and increase wellbeing, period.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, like any of the above statements, the full meaning and power of practice comes in filling out the context of the teaching \u2013 something that comes from going beyond the pith. As Neale noted, \u201cIt turns out that the so-called \u201cgood life\u201d of having everything you\u2019ve ever dreamed, comes from leading a \u201cgood life\u201d in relation to others, treating others as we would want to be treated. The wisdom traditions recommend that the ground upon which meditation and yoga are practiced be a morally sound life.\u201d<\/p>\n
This week, Neale offered a new short article on this topic, bringing in Contemplative Science. As he writes<\/a>,\u00a0\u201cWhile Buddhism is commonly classified as a world religion, it is equally considered a practical philosophy, an ethical way of life, and one of mankind\u2019s first coherent psychologies. For this reason, many Western researchers now refer to a subset of the Buddhist teachings<\/a> as a contemplative science.\u201d From this he points us to the four noble truths<\/a> and the 8-fold and 3-fold paths found in early Buddhism.<\/p>\n
These are the flesh, the necessary components for\u00a0life\u00a0<\/em>with mindfulness.<\/p>\n
Neale\u2019s thought here is perceptive as both a critic\u00a0and a teacher<\/em> of mindfulness. He presents the kind of criticism that lifts up the conversation as a challenge to practitioners and teachers to be at least cognizant of their ethical and philosophical position or perspective. Rather than shutting down or dismissing mindfulness, he shows an understanding and appreciation of the practice, but then goes further. He shows that he understands and appreciates human beings \u2013 actual people suffering in today\u2019s actual world \u2013 who might benefit even from the most stripped down, fleshless forms of mindfulness out there.<\/p>\n
Further, he pushes us all to reconsider our secular\/religious duality, wherein topics such as ethics and philosophy are often pushed to the religious side and are thus \u201cout of bounds\u201d for non-explicitly-Buddhist teachers and classes.\u00a0If we can pull Buddhism (alongside other Asian philosophies) out of the \u201creligious\u201d pigeon-hole it is commonly placed in today, then we can fully incorporate the ethical and philosophical context in mindfulness courses.<\/p>\n
This will need to be done with sensitivity to the origins, though, which is something I could expect from a scholar like Neale \u2013 but might not be so sure about coming from mindfulness teachers with little or no training in the historical foundations of the practice.<\/p>\n
I dare call this Mindfulness criticism 2.0. The term is odd to me because I don\u2019t do tech, so all the \u201c2.0\u201d stuff is foreign to me; and, more importantly, because Neale has been pushing this line since at least 2010,\u00a0before<\/em> the 2013-current burst of mindfulness criticism. So it\u2019s so old that it\u2019s new; the new new, the old new, the\u2026<\/p>\n
Support independent coverage of Buddhism by joining a\u00a0community of fellow learners\/practitioners at\u00a0Patreon<\/a>.
\n\u2018Like\u2019 American Buddhist Perspectives on\u00a0facebook<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"My earliest academic Buddhist teacher, Alan Sponberg, had the apt Dharma name\u00a0Saramati, \u201cone who gets to the pith of things.\u201d I remember an exercise he gave to a group of students early on. He had us write down the Buddhadharma in three words. I scribbled something like: \u201cBuddha, Dharma, Sangha.\u201d Not bad, I suppose, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":118,"featured_media":6816,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,189,5,602],"tags":[535,102],"class_list":["post-6815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-buddhism","category-buddhism-today","category-buddhist-ethics","category-mindfulness","tag-buddhism-today","tag-mindfulness"],"yoast_head":"\n
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