July 2020 - Hermit Spirit

Mindfulness meditation’s blind spots, unconscious agendas, and hidden downsides, Part 4

December 24, 2020July 28, 2020 by Hermit Spirit

A key tool deployed in mindfulness is detachment in observation, in the effort to maintain objectivity of awareness. But it’s a double-edged sword with an unacknowledged cost, and masks a deeper motivation. Similarly, breaking down experience into bits and pieces to elicit the perception there is “no abiding self” obscures one’s vision in another way.

Go to: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

The alluring image of detachment

Much of the scientific or modern appeal of insight meditation comes from its detached methodology of observation, which mimics the modern scientific approach of attempting to remain as objective as possible. In these times of alienation and disillusioned idealism, not only is mindfulness the most scientific of meditation methods, but it is also attractive for the images of detachment it projects.

When one has been frustrated in their idealism or isolated in their alienation by our gigantic, technological, and impersonal culture, to have a method offered whereby one can work with these feelings in a different, more constructive or alluring way can be very appealing. In the process of meditative detachment, one can be removed from direct relationship with life processes that may be painful and not be as deeply affected by them. The equanimity that goes hand in hand with detachment can serve as a psychological buffer to provide a soothing balm for the inevitable dislocations of life in today’s world.

More fundamentally, though, masked by the practice of detachment is what amounts to an unspoken fear or distaste of emotional involvement in life. This hidden aversion is an unseen blind spot in mindfulness that originates in the underlying Buddhist philosophy of the “three marks of existence” (mentioned in Parts 2 and 3), one of which is unsatisfactoriness or suffering (dukkha). This is enough of a preoccupation in Buddhist psychology that an ultimate long-term goal of the entire practice becomes oriented toward not just reasonably minimizing psychologically rooted suffering but the Sisyphean task of avoiding it entirely.

Mindfulness meditation’s blind spots, unconscious agendas, and hidden downsides, Part 3

October 4, 2021July 5, 2020 by Hermit Spirit

The reductionistic approach of mindfulness where experience and perception are broken down into ever-finer subcomponents is a key feature of the practice. The scientific flavor of this accounts for much of its appeal. But the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, especially in the psychological arena, which leads to the downside of reductionism in meditation — a blindness to gestalts.

Go to: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

What has turned out to interest me most about mindfulness is how the underlying principles of the practice, along with the techniques that guide what is paid attention to, promote unnoticed agendas that become unconsciously buried.

This outcome is not simply incidental. These unconscious agendas, as well as oversights and forms of denial based on unacknowledged judgments and biases, are, surprisingly, part of the very structure of the practice itself. Because of that, these factors influence not only what one experiences and how it is interpreted, but just as importantly what one does not notice or see.

I hope the exploration here about how this could come to be interests you too, and helps in promoting an attitude of real inquiry — of looking beyond recommendations that sound good on the face of things, but may be overly simplistic or idealistic, and to always ask why.

Here, then, are a number of points about mindfulness as a practice I feel are consistently overlooked, even though a few of them may be given nominal consideration in passing from time to time, but which seldom seem to be addressed at any real length.

Mindfulness meditation’s blind spots, unconscious agendas, and hidden downsides, Part 2

September 17, 2023July 5, 2020 by Hermit Spirit

Years ago, I felt drawn to mindfulness meditation but was strangely put off by it at the same time. On the surface, it seemed straightforward and transparent, but there were hints that not all was as it seemed. About that, though, insiders were mum. After outlining these issues, we take a reconnaissance flight over the terrain covered by mindfulness to get the view from 30,000 feet and set the stage for a more zoomed-in look to follow.

Go to: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Note: The critique here comprising parts 2 through 6 of this post series was originally written 30 years ago (with present-day additions and edits to repurpose it for the blog), and addresses the traditional version of mindfulness prominent then in the West known as vipassana. While this form of the discipline is still going strong, the currents of mindfulness today that have gone mainstream, while very similar, are a bit different in certain ways. One result has been to loosen up how the meditation practice is carried out.

Therefore, I leave it up to the reader to decide whether every single one of the criticisms made here applies with equal force to any given strand of today’s wider mindfulness movement they may know of. I hope the things we’ll be looking at prove useful in keeping your eyes open when exploring any kind of meditation in any of its potential forms.

Introduction: Stairway to heaven?

At one time in the past, I had for a while been drawn to and yet also was somewhat repulsed by — at the same time — the particularly exhaustive yet seemingly so ultimately simple practice that mindfulness meditation comprises. I was drawn toward practicing but eventually ended up abandoning the endeavor because there were a number of key things about the whole enterprise that kept “bugging” me.

On the surface, it appeared to be straightforward, transparent, scientific, methodical, repeatable, and unburdened by needless gibberish or nonsense compared to other approaches to meditation I had encountered or read about. There was no cultish demand to pledge one’s devotion to a guru. No superstitious mumbo jumbo, supernatural deities, or faith in unseen realms required.

It was based on one’s own direct firsthand observation of the inner panorama. There were no inscrutable or quixotic Zen koans or parables. No arbitrary meaningless mantras to hold echoing in the mind, ringing some internal Pavlovian bell like a carrot in front of a donkey, or swinging in the mind’s eye like a hypnotist’s pendulum to lull one into stuporous trance.

Instead, it advertised clean crystal clarity, spacious awareness, fundamental insight into being itself. And, ultimately, connection and oneness with one’s own underlying true nature, identical to and contiguous with that underlying existence itself. Look here, in this way, according to this procedure, it said, and you will see.