Response to NYT OP-ED 12/2016

Among the many reasons I am passionate about mindfulness is that it allows for doubt and skepticism.  I read Ruth Whippman’s  Op-Ed piece with appreciation for her wit, writing style and careful analysis of some of the potential pitfalls should mindfulness be viewed as an individual practice that insulates us from the larger societal context.  Teaching mindfulness to inner city school children in no way exonerates us from the responsibility to tackle educational inequality; and offering mindfulness to office workers is not a license to shortchange them when it comes to health care benefits and paid vacations.  I believe it is the current trendiness of mindfulness that fosters the mistaken premises upon which Ms. Whippman bases her argument.  In MBSR trainings, teachers are taught the underpinnings of mindfulness as well as the practices and didactics. 


I would take exception to some of the assumptions in the op-ed piece.   1)”…in order to maximize our happiness, we should refuse to succumb to domestic auto pilot..”    Stating this as the expressed purpose of mindfulness totally misses the point.  The invitation to live mindfully never promises to maximize happiness; it empowers one to respond intentionally to whatever is arising, be it happiness, grief, confusion, anxiety, the entire array of human emotions. “..Refusing to succumb” to long entrenched reactivity or auto-pilot conjures up a kind of harsh, white knuckled self -discipline that would likely lead to more suffering. The fact is that mindfulness encourages self compassion.    2) “..Mindfulness is supposed to be a defense against the pressures of modern life..”  On the contrary, in my experience, people who practice mindfulness regularly, tend not to defend AGAINST modern life, but train to open to and WELCOME whatever life happens to be presenting in the moment.  Yes- even burnt on spaghetti Os!  3) “…the key to contentment lies in living fully mentally in the present..”  In re-learning the innate skill of mindfulness (we are born with it and have it purely as children who are always in the moment) we experience the present moment not only mentally, but through physical sensations and emotions as well.  Through practice we learn to be aware of our thoughts, but also the feelings and sensations that accompany them, moving out of the purely conceptual or cognitive experience, and into the entirety of our experiences, mind, body and heart.  4) “…we should constantly be policing our thoughts..” Mindfulness teaches us to be aware of the thoughts, not policing or judging, but acknowledging and allowing the thoughts and noticing when they drift to the past, future or abstract with a kind and gentle curiosity.  5) “…more rewarding for those whose lives contain more privileged moments than grinding,humiliating or exhausting ones. “  In my experience teaching MBSR, the irony is that the demographics of income, race, ethnicity dissolve when the discussion of the experience of pain- physical or emotional- is told from the perspective of what is perceived in the body and the heart.  We learn the secret of the universality of humanness: when we forgo the stories we tell ourselves, we discover that your pain is the same as my pain, your joy is the same as my joy.  6)..”Our happiness does not come so much from our experiences themselves, but from the stories we tell ourselves that make them matter.. “  Here mindfulness would replace the word “happiness” with “suffering.”   When we are able to open to our experiences, letting go of the stories or judgement the brain wants to assign them, we can learn to appreciate the richness of every twist and turn and unfolding in our lives.


As I am often eager to share what I’ve learned with everyone I know,  the concept of “moralizing smugness” that is referred to in the article, is one with which I grapple.  I can best describe the gifts of living a mindful life from my own humble experience.    The joy and the sense I have of doing what I was meant to do, after teaching a cycle is indescribable.    By practicing mindfulness -( and it truly is a practice;  I certainly have escaped on occasion to those “Don Draper” moments!!) I have come to know I can meet whatever is arising -be it the joy or the grief- without resisting, numbing or reacting on auto-pilot. I have learned that my pain serves a purpose, in drawing me in just a bit closer to those seated in the circle, with whom I have the honor of sharing this path.