The Guardian Asks Thich Nhat Hanh, “Is Mindfulness Being Corrupted by Business and Finance?”

With the subject being much-discussed (especially following the protest at Wisdom 2.0), The Guardian asks Thich Nhat Hanh this week if mindfulness is “being corrupted by business and finance?” There’s more to the article, but one statement from the revered Buddhist teacher is worth highlighting:

If you know how to practice mindfulness you can generate peace and joy right here, right now. And you’ll appreciate that and it will change you. In the beginning, you believe that if you cannot become number one, you cannot be happy, but if you practice mindfulness you will readily release that kind of idea. We need not fear that mindfulness might become only a means and not an end because in mindfulness the means and the end are the same thing. There is no way to happiness; happiness is the way…If you consider mindfulness as a means of having a lot of money, then you have not touched its true purpose…It may look like the practise of mindfulness but inside there’s no peace, no joy, no happiness produced. It’s just an imitation. If you don’t feel the energy of brotherhood, of sisterhood, radiating from your work, that is not mindfulness…If you’re happy, you cannot be a victim of your happiness. But if you’re successful, you can be a victim of your success.

Read the rest here.