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Mindful America: The Mutual Transformation of Buddhist Meditation and American Culture 1st Edition
by Jeff Wilson (Author)
4.3 out of 5 stars 24 ratings
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Thirty years ago, "mindfulness" was a Buddhist principle mostly obscure to the west. Today, it is a popular cure-all for Americans' daily problems. A massive and lucrative industry promotes mindfulness in every aspect of life, however mundane or unlikely: Americans of various faiths (or none at all) practice mindful eating, mindful sex, mindful parenting, mindfulness in the office, mindful sports, mindfulness-based stress relief and addiction recovery, and hire mindful divorce lawyers. Mindfulness is touted by members of Congress, CEOs, and Silicon Valley tech gurus, and is even being taught in public schools, hospitals, and the military.
Focusing on such processes as the marketing, medicalization, and professionalization of meditation, Jeff Wilsonreveals how Buddhism shed its countercultural image and was assimilated into mainstream American culture. The rise of mindfulness in America, Wilson argues, is a perfect example of how Buddhism enters new cultures and is domesticated: in each case, the new cultures take from Buddhism what they believe will relieve their specific distresses and concerns, and in the process create new forms of Buddhism adapted to their needs. Wilson also tackles the economics of the mindfulness movement, examining commercial programs, therapeutic services, and products such as books, films, CDs, and even smartphone applications.
Mindful America is the first in-depth study of this phenomenon--invaluable for understanding how mindfulness came to be applied to such a vast array of non-religious concerns and how it can be reconciled with traditional Buddhism in America.
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"The definitive catalogue of the ways 'mindfulness' is being used by Americans."--Journal of the American Academy of Religion
"Feature[s] a superb bibliography of contemporary English-language writings on mindfulness...Recommended."--CHOICE
"This book [is] fascinating, eye-opening...I hope that the makers of the mindfulness movement will read [this] and consider its implications for their work and for Buddhism in America. I hardly need add that all scholars of contemporary Buddhism and of American history should do the same."--H-NET
"[A] compelling study."--Journal of Religion
"But true to his word, Wilson never indulges in speculation about whether or not mindfulness delivers on its professed benefits. His unsparing account instead amounts to a spirited cross-examination of everything 'mindful' in America."--Tricycle Magazine
"Despite its intended scholarly audience, this is an accessible and remarkably jargon-free study. Wilson is clearly not a reluctant writer, and his prose is clear without being reductive or dry. The readability, and thus possibility of a larger, non-academic audience, is due in large part to the fantastic organization of his argument. He makes his case clearly and forcefully, without treading into repetition."--Winnipeg Free Press
"Mindful America could not be more timely: mindfulness is widespread, at its height of its influence, and significant both in terms of the history of American religion and of Buddhism. This book is well researched, thoughtfully conceived, provocative, intelligently theorized, and accessible to both scholarly and lay audiences. Any serious consideration of mindfulness in the West must address the issues Wilson brings up in this important book." --David L. McMahan, author of Buddhism in the Modern World
"This is a much-needed guide to the mindfulness movement that has moved onto central stage in American Buddhism over the course of the last two decades. Jeff Wilson demystifies the current mindfulness vogue by setting it in historical perspective and providing insightful analyses of the way in which an Asian Buddhist religious practice and value has been spiritualized, medicalized, psychologized, and secularized as it has been reshaped to address the needs of middle class Americans. General readers, practitioners, teachers, authors, and promoters alike will value Wilson's insights into the way in which mindfulness as a technique to address suffering has come to mean many different things for many different people. Wilson again shows himself to be the leading interpreter of the American Buddhist scene." --Richard Seager, Bates and Benjamin Professor of Religious Studies, Hamilton College
"In this well-honed study, Jeff Wilson explores the mindfulness movement in the context of modern American religion and culture. As he does so, we are invited to reflect upon the multi-faceted phenomena of religious transformation, appropriation, and commodification of old world meditation techniques and new world realities. An engaging and enlightening read." --Jan Willis, author of Dreaming Me: Black, Baptist and Buddhist-One Woman's Spiritual Journey
"Mindful America is a superb study by Jeff Wilson, scholar of American religion, that situates the practice of mindfulness within the lineage of American religious movements. What makes this movement unique, of course, is the central focus on the traditionally Buddhist practice of mindfulness... The study has both breadth and depth―appropriately encompassing of the broad expanse of mindfulness practice yet specific enough to avoid reckless generalization that neglects the nuance and subtlety of mindfulness in America today. No stone is left unturned as Wilson seeks to understand mindfulness in the broadest possible contexts―in light of the aforementioned American cultural tropes―alongside some of its benevolent and dastardly particulars: from mindfulness for suicidality to mindfulness for sex. In the end, it represents an ideal example of the study of religion in America." --U.S. Studies Online
"In Mindful America, Wilson explores the origin of the mindfulness movement. The book offers one of the first critical descriptions of the movement, which is focused on more that the movement's practices... Mindful America does a very good job in exploring the mindfulness movement." --Metapsychology
About the Author
Jeff Wilson is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and East Asian Studies at Renison University College (University of Waterloo). He is the author of Mourning the Unborn Dead: A Buddhist Ritual Comes to America (2009) and Dixie Dharma: Inside a Buddhist Temple in the American South (2012).
Product details
Publisher : Oxford University Press; 1st edition (August 1, 2014)
Language : English
Hardcover : 280 pages
#9,189 in Meditation (Books)Customer Reviews:
4.3 out of 5 stars 24 ratings
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4.3 out of 5 stars
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SkepticMeditations
4.0 out of 5 stars How has Asian religion been adapted for mainstream America?Reviewed in the United States on April 10, 2015
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Mindful America is an exploration of the mindfulness phenomena, concerned with large-scale trends that can be observed within the movement, and the forces behind these trends.
Wilson argues that mindfulness over the last three decades has gone from an obscure Asian religious technique to a widely touted panacea and a serious money making industry. Today, mindfulness is touted as a cutting edge technique said to produce everything from financial success to mind blowing orgasms.
This 260 page book is well-researched and easy to read for the lay person. I'd give this book three stars for writing style but four stars for the author's leading-edge research in this wildly popular phenomena, the mindfulness movement in America.
Wilson’s treatment of his subject is often predictable and formulaic. Sometimes his critiques of the movement's advocates get repetitive chapter to chapter. Nevertheless, he weaves hundreds of interesting facts, quotations, and sources from the mindfulness movement and addresses six questions.
Mindful America explores six questions under these chapter titles (I provide a few quotes from the chapters):
Chapter 1 Mediating Mindfulness: How Does Mindfulness Reach America?
In this classic presentation [of the Satipatthana Sutta] mindfulness is taught to the monks, not the general Buddhist community, and it is clearly associated with traditional transcendent monastic concerns, such as nirvana. Mindfulness meditation is to be pursued as a way to disengage from clinging to the everyday world of suffering and turn toward a rigorous discipline, resulting in breakage of the cycle of rebirth. p21
Chapter 2 Mystifying Mindfulness: How is Mindfulness Made Available for Appropriation?
For foreign religious practices to be successfully appropriated by mainstream American society, they need to be rendered spiritual and personal to best fit into the prevailing trends in religious orientation...Hinduism is appropriated as yoga, Islam as Sufi poetry, Daoism as tai-chi, Japanese folk healing as reiki, and Buddhism as mindfulness.
The historic authority over these practices of Asians, Middle Easterners, and other groups coded as non-white in American society must be dissolved so that white Americans can claim authority over them, an authority that issues from the fact that these are now self-evidently universal, spiritual, or medical practices available to all comers, which new constituencies have a right to use, and to sell, as they wish. p61-62
Chapter 3 Medicalizing Mindfulness: How is Mindfulness Modified to Fit a Scientific and Therapeutic Culture?
Buddhist monks were supposed to preach, chant, and performed blessings. Too much meditation was believed to cause mental illness. And, anyway, the proper Buddhist methods for dealing with psychological issues, sickness, and other health impairments were exorcism and chanting, not mindfulness. p76
Buddhist practice has been removed from the realm of religion and professionalized to become the property of psychologists, doctors, scientists, and diet counselors, to be engaged in by clients rather than believers, who are not expected to take refuge, read scriptures, believe in karma or rebirth, or to become Buddhist. p103
Chapter 4 Mainstreaming Mindfulness: How is Mindfulness Adapted to Middle Class Needs?
At the heart of OneTaste is Orgasmic Meditation (OM), a form of mindful clitoral stimulation that OneTaste devotees practice daily, either in a group setting or at one of the OneTaste centers, or at home if they have taken OneTaste workshops. As the OneTaste website states, “Practitioners experience benefits similar to other mindfulness practices such as sitting in meditation, as well as the well-known benefits associated with orgasm”. p122
[In] the Satipatthana and Mahasatipatthana Suttas...the Buddha tells the reader to think of one’s own body as a rotting, oozing corpse eaten by worms and disintegrating into its component parts. Mindful-eating authors never quote these passages. p118
Chapter 5 Marketing Mindfulness: How is Mindfulness Turned into a Commercial Product?
Here's nine of the many commercial mindful "products" discussed in the book:
Mindful Horsemanship: Daily Inspirations for Better Communications with Your Horse (sport)
Tennis Fitness for the Love of It: A Mindful Approach (sport)
OneTaste: female orgasm through the practice of Orgasmic Meditation (sex)
The Heart of Buddhist Meditation (religion)
The Mindful Brain (science)
Mindful Therapy (therapy)
Mindful Knitting (hobby)
Mindful Mints (breath freshener)
MindfulMayo Dressing and Sandwich Spread (food)
Chapter 6 Moralizing Mindfulness: How is Mindfulness Related to Values and Worldviews?
In mindfulness movement writings the present moment becomes both savior and heaven: the vehicle for salvation and salvation itself. As Thich Nhat Hanh asserts in You are Here: Discovering the Magic of the Present Moment: “The only moment in which you can be truly alive is the present moment. The present moment is the destination, the point to arrive at”. p174
...Mindful civil religion does not call for mandatory participation in mindful activities, radical changes to the economic structure, aggressive or combative politcial struggle, or class warfare. Rather, for many it is apparent that mindful capitalism will be sufficient, as will mindful politics, mindful consumption, mindful work, and so on. p183
We might call this secular religion, one devoid of the supernatural and the afterlife yet operating as a deep well of values, life orientation, and utopian vision. p185
Those who do attach morals to or derive values from their mindfulness practice are often people with a connection to a religious tradition, especially Buddhism. p185
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Mark J. Knickelbine
4.0 out of 5 stars A Fascinating Look at the Evolution of Buddhism in AmericaReviewed in the United States on December 18, 2014
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The first full look at the impact of Buddhism and the mindfulness movement on American culture makes for a fascinating and important read. Wilson tells the story of how both Asians and Westerners contributed to the evolution of Buddhism from a supernatural religion based in monasticism to a secular movement based on the personal benefits of meditation. As he relates, Buddhism has always been enmeshed in the economic and cultural dynamics of every society in which it existed; the "selling of mindfulness" in American market capitalism is an extension of that process. Wilson loves to detail some of the lurid ways mindfulness has been used to promote better sex, a better golf swing, better performance in the board room and on the battle field, etc. He sometimes overgeneralizes from these juicy tidbits, and paints the entire mindfulness movement with salacious characteristics as a result. Wilson also focuses on commercial marketing of mindfulness without observing the many free and low-cost resources available to those who wish to practice. And his conclusion that American mindfulness is a form of metaphysical religion akin to Christian Science was hard for me to swallow. But this book is indispensable for anyone who wants to know how the practices and ethics of Buddhism are changing American culture, and how Buddhism is being transformed in return. Plus it's fun to read!
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Nick Y.
2.0 out of 5 stars Not Bad! Some good points. Disappointing overall.Reviewed in the United States on March 31, 2015
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PROs:
- Claims to be an objective study;
- Plenty of facts and observations;
- Mentions many books that can orient one's research;
- Addresses an important social phenomenon;
- Quotes diligently various significant authors;
- The first two chapters are most informative.
CONs:
- Although the author claims to be objective (p.11: "In this book, I do not attempt to push a hard sell for any particular viewpoint on any particular part of the mindfulness movement, or the movement as a whole"), the overall tone is a slightly sarcastic one, and clearly but subtly leaning against the social value of mindfulness.
- Many inconsistencies. Very often it is hard to understand what Wilson is trying to say. I understand the need to be objective, and I certainly appreciate it, but clarity seems to suffer at the expense of the so-called "objectivity."
- Misunderstanding of mindfulness itself. For example, on page 118, Wilson quotes the Satipatthana, and openly demonstrates a misunderstanding of the quote: "In this body there are head-hairs, body-hairs, nails, teeth, skin, flesh, sinews, bones, bone-marrow, kidneys, hearts, liver, diaphragm, etc... In this way he abides contemplating the body as a body internally, externally, and both internally and externally... And he abides independent, not clinging to anything in the world." Wilson interprets this quote as follows: "This traditional source for mindfulness practice advocates viewing the body as impure, full of guts and disgusting substances, and recommends detachment from - not love for and acceptance of - the body." Wilson clearly misses the point of the quote he himself mentions, which, rather than expressing aversion towards the body promotes equanimity. BIG difference.
- Overall, I found myself confronted with two alternating scenarios:
1. Ambiguity when the author tries to be "objective";
2. Gentle sarcasm when the author expresses his own opinions.
- One of Wilson's main point can be roughly expressed as follows: The mindfulness movement is a sneaky phenomenon that, although originates in Buddhism, seeks to deny its origins for marketing purposes.
It is a good book to read for the serious student of Mindfulness, the student who is planning on reading all the books there are on the subject, but it is certainly a waste of time if you are new to the subject. Most of the ideas could have been expressed in less than half the amount of words used.
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WH
3.0 out of 5 stars Readable but by no means a classic.Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 29, 2015
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A slightly strange book in that its written by an academic really for academic consumption but will of course I suspect be ended up read mostly by practitioners of mindfulness themselves... so the readership will probably be keen practitioners, the author more ambivalent towards mindfulness.
On the plus side, this is a readable work with good chapters on how mindfulness reached America/the west from Asia and towards the end an excellent chapter on Morals and Values - including politics. It does sag however in the middle somewhat and tends towards a repetitive tone with 4 chapters looking respectively at Mystifying, Mecalising, Mainstreaming and Marketing Mindfulness - The language is big on the word 'appropriation' i.e. how mindfulness has been 'appropriated' in America... and mystified - when most would say 'demystified'. Of the three main streams of American mindfulness the author mentions - Jon Kabat-Zinn, Thich Nat Hanh and neo-Theravada (Vipassana, IMS, Sprit Rock etc) - The latter is largely ignored (perhaps because it might undermine his general thesis) and the most time is spent on MBSR with an emphasis on 'consumer mindfulness'. So one might argue that much of this book is taken up with the lighter end of the mindfulness spectrum - which I sense is probably intentional given the authors semi-critical stance.
On the whole I would have preferred more scope and less repetition but a worthy effort nonetheless on a subject that has not been greatly written about yet in academia or religious studies field.
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