‘What it means to be truly human’: The postsecular hack of mindfulness

Introduction

While meditation is often considered at the heart of Buddhism, ‘it is also deemed the element most detachable from the tradition itself’ (McMahan, 2008: 185). Indeed, though representing one of the most ancient forms of religious practice, meditation appears to be undergoing a late modern revival. Following the groundwork laid by the global expansion of yoga, the current popularity of the Buddhist-derived mindfulness movement in particular is now widely seen as a quintessential expression of this contemplative turn associated with the easternisation of the West (Arat, 2016; Campbell, 2007; Ergas, 2014: 58).

The last few decades have witnessed an exponential rise in scholarly publications on the subject of mindfulness (Black, 2012; Ergas, 2014; Kabat-Zinn, 2003; Wilson, 2014). The vast bulk of this literature focuses on the efficacy of mindfulness in relation to physical and mental health, as well as more general states of well-being. These endeavours which seek to deepen our understanding of the physiology and psychology of mindfulness remain highly fruitful and significant. Yet it is becoming increasingly evident that our horizons now need to be widened towards a more sociological assessment of the contemporary landscape of mindfulness. With that in mind, this article aims to go beyond matters of efficacy alone by focusing more specifically on the socio-cultural significance of the discursive construction of the term as it operates in contemporary society.

Discourse analysis in the study of religion is founded upon a social constructionist orientation to knowledge. Put briefly, this ‘standard social scientific model’ rests on the philosophical assumption that multiple versions of the world are possible and legitimate; that texts are open to multiple readings; and that language is non-representational (Barkow et. al., 1995: 122). It is certainly the case that in light of the continued predicament of the postmodern condition, symbols – religious or otherwise – have become increasingly liquid in their current use (Bauman, 2000). Nevertheless, a certain ‘discourse of the day’, one that rests on the assumption that mindfulness marks a fully secularised form of meditation, still defines our standard classification of its field of practice at present (Von Stuckrad, 2010: 156–157).

As this article seeks to argue in more detail however, this picture now appears to be sociologically lazy and highlights the need for a move beyond strictly positivist measures of mindfulness practice. Thus, unlike Barker’s (2014) discourse-analytic study of the medicalisation of mindfulness, the focus of this article lies more specifically on the role of the sacred within the discourse of mindfulness. In the end, this allows one to reveal the hidden ontology underpinning the surface of the language of mindfulness, and thereby gain deeper insights into the wider structural framework in which the secular and the religious are played out in contemporary society.

Given its Buddhist heritage, studies of meditation are traditionally couched within the sociology of religion. As critics have rightly pointed out however, the majority of discursive studies within the study of religion deal less with micro-level analyses as such, than with meta-concerns to do with the category of religion as a whole (Fairclough, 1992; Hjelm, 2011; Moberg, 2013). This, they argue, calls for a greater focus on the application of discourse analyses to lived religion on the ground, including the dialectical relationship between specific contextual constructions of associated terms and practices on the one hand, and wider questions dealing with secularisation on the other. The present study thereby aims to offer a forensic examination of the hidden discursive logic through which the notion of mindfulness in particular is constructed and made meaningful throughout its many permutations today.

As Bakhtin (1986) reminds us, discourse is always multi-voiced in that ‘all words and utterances echo other words and utterances derived from the historical, cultural and genetic heritage of a community and from the ways these words and utterances have been previously interpreted’ (Jaworski and Coupland, 1999: 7). Today, highly abstract notions of being, presence, and consciousness are expressed through a whole new harmony in which mindfulness occupies the dominant tone, and it is this constitution that forms the core focus of this analysis.

As the principal carrier of meaning, the study of discourse can thus involve the analysis of any aspect of its constitution, including syntax, phonology, pragmatics and the semantics of language (Fasold, 1990: 65). Focusing on the latter semantic aspect in particular allows for a step beyond the formal functions of language towards a greater understanding of its wider contexts of use, that is, the ‘language above the sentence or above the clause’ (Stubbs, 1983: 1). Following Fairclough’s (1992) lead, discourse matters not solely because it carries meaning in particular, but because it constructs social identities, relationships and systems of belief and knowledge more generally.

One of the greatest methodological challenges associated with such forms of discourse analysis relates to the issue of sampling (Jaworski and Coupland, 1999). After all, it is often difficult to justify attending to only particular stretches and characteristics of texts and not to others, especially given the fact that mindfulness applications are currently found in a wide variety of platforms. These include the original mindfulness-based stress reduction (Kabat-Zinn, 1982; 1990), mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (Segal et al., 2002), the recent integration of mindfulness in dialectical behaviour, acceptance, and commitment therapies (Hayes et al., 1999; Linehan, 1993), as well as a multitude of more niche everyday applications of mindfulness such as in relation to diet, work, exercise, and relationships.

Despite the fact that the mindfulness movement continues to function without an overarching body of institutional oversight however, the operative use of the term retains a surprising degree of coherence across its many permutations, and as yet, continues to eschew factionalisms that are typical of similar global movements (Vishvapani, 2012). Discourse analysis may thus be limited in offering generalisations about its distribution per se. Nevertheless, throughout its many field-specific applications, the term signifies a surprisingly coherent object of analysis. The present analysis is thus capable of offering important insights into the processes through which mindfulness continues to gain currency today.

To clarify, this article does not concern itself with the efficacy of mindfulness, or whether or not its use today truly adheres to modern or traditional Buddhist concerns. Regarding the latter, it does not focus on debates concerning the authenticity of the term based on the extent to which it constitutes its original Pali form as sati (Samuel, 2015; Sharf, 2015; Sun, 2014). Nor does it shed light on the practice of mindfulness as it is currently lived, consumed, or experienced by adherents on the ground. Instead, it deals solely with the fundamental emic discourse through which contemporary mindfulness is expressed and made meaningful according to the Kabat-Zinn tradition.

Moreover, the present analysis is less concerned with the presence or absence of religion in our secular age as such (Habermas, 2006), than the conditions of belief that currently dictate our structures of what is believable and what is not (Taylor, 2007: 13). By deconstructing the speech genre through which the present notion of mindfulness is conceived, this study highlights the fact that the semantics of mindfulness contain more qualities that are traditionally associated with the religious than suggested by its near universal baptism as a purely secular pursuit. In contrast to the standard limitations imposed on the immanent frame, contemporary mindfulness thus points towards a significant modification of the secular imagination itself.

The following analysis begins with a critical account of the prevalent secular conception of mindfulness that remains dominant today. This is followed by a closer examination of the rhetorical strategy pursued by its principal modern architect, Jon Kabat-Zinn, including a detailed account of the ways in which the experience of mindfulness is conceived within its discursive milieu. In the final section, the unique logic underpinning this discursive field is identified in terms of the postsecular hack of mindfulness.

Mindfulness as secular

Mindfulness practice represents a form of Buddhist vipassana meditation that aims to consciously anchor the mind in the present moment. Starting with a basic breathing technique, it gradually develops into intentional awareness of one’s bodily sensations, emotions and ultimately thoughts, all in an effort to calm the mind and raise awareness of the present.

Current consensus holds that this latest incarnation of meditation in late-modern societies represents a further development in the classical trajectory of secularisation, or to be more precise, the functional differentiation and freeing of societal practices from religious control and meaning (Casanova, 1994). According to this view, the practice of meditation is historically anchored in its Southeast Asian heartland where it originally formed part and parcel of an all-encompassing worldview. Fast-forward a couple of millennia along the exponential path of globalisation and meditation becomes detached from its traditional setting, crosses continents, and emerges as one of the most popular practices adopted in the modern spiritual milieu. In the formative stages of this shift, meditation retained the sense of an alternative, unambiguously counter-cultural, and adamantly sacred form of engagement. Yet compared with its original setting, it came to operate within a much more free-floating and ultimately privatised field of practice. Taking this trajectory to its seemingly logical conclusion, meditation is now seen to have been compressed into its ultimate functional form of pure secular stillness and its associated benefits of calming the mind, relieving stress, and attaining an overall state of health and well-being.

This secular operationalisation of mindfulness can now be traced throughout its many public advocacy groups. Indeed, these often go the extra mile in denying any religious association of its practice, as explicitly stated in the following mission statement by a leading UK-based centre for mindfulness:

Mindfulness-based approaches are an integration of ancient Buddhist practices and philosophy of mindfulness, with current psychological understanding and knowledge, they are taught in an entirely secular way, and have no religious context at all. (Centre for Mindfulness Research and Practice, Bangor University, 2012)

Regardless of one’s position vis-à-vis this classical reading of secularisation, the true sociological significance of this overall trajectory of meditation cannot be emphasised strongly enough. After all, it is worth reminding ourselves how impossible it seemed only a few decades ago that something as esoteric, non-rational, and religious as the practice of meditation could one day become so harmoniously embedded within mainstream western society (Mindful Nation UK, 2015).

However, despite the fact that the above conception of the secularisation of meditation may appear relatively unproblematic, a closer look at the discursive formation of mindfulness indicates that this reflects an oversimplification of the categories of religion and the secular. More specifically, I claim that an overriding obsession with the presence or indeed absence of religion continues to overshadow relatively more pivotal transformations concerning the secular itself.

As Lee (1992) reminds us, it is language above all else that classifies. Thus in many respects, this strategic classification of mindfulness from its very inception arguably serves as one of the leading explanations for its unrivalled growth compared with other yogic approaches to meditation. In order to better understand the unique trajectory of this discursive shift, the following section first turns to a more detailed examination of the role played by the principal architect of mindfulness as conceived in the western world today.

Founding inspiration

According to his own public profile, Jon Kabat-Zinn claims to have pursued a disciplined daily practice of meditation since the age of 22 (1966). He claims that in 1979, his practice culminated in ‘a vision’ during a vipassana retreat that inspired him to translate the traditional Buddhist idea of mindfulness into a secular form of practice (Kabat-Zinn, 2011: 287). Thus, the mindfulness based stress-reduction clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical School was born.

The historic discursive foundation of the secularisation of mindfulness can be traced back to Kabat-Zinn’s first publication on the subject in 1982 in General Hospital Psychiatry, a leading US-based medical journal. As set out in its opening statement, the principal aim of this article is to present:

[The] theoretical underpinnings and reports on the structure and outcome of an outpatient service in an academic medical center piloted to explore the clinical effectiveness of meditation as a self-regulatory coping strategy for long-term chronic patients for whom the traditional medical treatments have been less than successful. (Kabat-Zinn, 1982: 33)

Firmly situated within the clinical nomenclature of a medical journal, this study reflects the unambiguously functional operationalisation of mindfulness as a form of treatment, and its apparent efficacy as a regulatory method for a specific group of patients. This strategic classification of mindfulness along formal medical concerns has been at the forefront of Kabat-Zinn’s project from the start, and it was this strategy that led him to label his first clinical experiment in terms of stress reduction and relaxation over and above mindfulness as such. As expressed in his own words:

The intention and approach behind MBSR [mindfulness-based-stress-reduction] were never meant to exploit, fragment, or decontextualize the dharma, but rather to recontextualize it within the frameworks of science, medicine (including psychiatry and psychology), and healthcare so that it would be maximally useful to people who could not hear it or enter into it through the more traditional dharma gates, whether they were doctors or medical patients, hospital administrators, or insurance companies. (Kabat-Zinn, 2011: 288)

Thus, as Kabat-Zinn admits himself, he ‘bent over backward’ to structure mindfulness in a way that avoided the risk of it being associated with ‘Buddhism’, ‘New Age’, ‘Eastern Mysticism’ or ‘just sounding plain flakey’ (2011: 282). Yet at the same time, from the very moment of its inception, there has been an attempt not to fetishize mindfulness and the Buddhist notion of dharma as such, but to strategically translate the former into terms without any explicit referent to the religious, such that it could be made more palatable to a secular audience.

In other words, in contrast to classical readings of secularisation, one cannot take the rhetorical strategy at play here at face value. The following admission by the founder himself underlines the limitations of such standard assumptions more forcefully:

MBSR was developed as one of a possibly infinite number of skilful means for bringing the dharma into mainstream settings. It has never been about MBSR for its own sake. It has always been about the M. And the M is a very big M. (Kabat-Zinn, 2011: 281)

This attempt to offer ‘the wisdom and the heart of Buddhist meditation without the Buddhism’ (Kabat-Zinn, 2010) thus rests on a discursive strategy that is neither spiritual nor religious, yet firmly grounded in the assumption that mindfulness marks a category in and of itself that is capable of carrying its intended outcome independently of the actual discursive form it may take in practice. The real question then becomes, what is truly meant by this ‘M’, and how is it conceived more specifically in emic discourse?

Experience of mindfulness

At its most generic, mindfulness is simply defined as the quality or state of being conscious or aware of something. The nomenclature within the discursive field of the mindfulness movement however is much more specific about what is actually entailed by this ‘something’. The ‘Kabat-Zinn tradition’ thus takes as its blueprint an operational account of mindfulness as bare attention based on ‘paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgementally’ (Seager, 2012: 212; Kabat-Zinn, 1994: 4). Expressed differently elsewhere, the practice of mindfulness is referred to as ‘intentional deployment of attention for the purpose of raising embodied awareness, equanimity, clarity, and compassion’ (Kabat-Zinn, 1994: 4). In other words, compared with its more generic usage, not only does this construction of mindfulness contain purpose, but it stipulates a very specific kind of purpose.

At its core, the semantics of mindfulness as currently understood are calibrated on the following key foundation: Mindfulness as a universal state of being, as opposed to a particular quality of the mind that may be associated with its practice as such. Mindfulness does not merely designate a proxy for self-awareness or self-focused attention per se, but rather a unique form of consciousness in and of itself. This constitution of mindfulness highlights a crucial assumption that is often overlooked in present discussions. Kabat-Zinn for instance claims that ‘we are all mindful, to one degree or another, moment by moment’ (2003: 145-146). Moreover, regardless of the different techniques through which mindfulness may be attained, practitioners are nevertheless said to tap into a shared common state of nature (Baer, 2011: 250-251). Mindfulness is therefore conceived less as a sub-category of the mind as such, than a state of being more aware, present, and holistically unified than one is typically accustomed to in one’s everyday consciousness. In short, a sui generis category that is irreducible to either lower or higher concepts or levels of order whilst being inherently available to all (McCutcheon, 1997).

It is this very sui generic formulation of mindfulness as an inherent quality of the human condition that underscores Kabat-Zinn’s remark that it is essentially ‘self-revealing’ (2011: 298). Moreover, it is this very assumption of it lying at the core of one’s being that makes it logically possible to ‘experience Dharma even without labelling it as such’ (Kabat-Zinn, 2011: 298). Far from rational explication, mindfulness practice therefore constitutes a negative heuristic of stripping away the barriers of mental thought to instigate an embodied sense of self-realisation.

Last but not least, both implicitly and explicitly, it is this conception of mindfulness as sui generis that underpins its claim of offering a much more all-encompassing state of health and well-being than a simple cure for particular forms of disease. The vast and growing medical literature on mindfulness continues to trade on and reinforce the argument that it is intrinsically associated with a greater number of positive psychological and behavioural outcomes than any other form of active conscious practice (Brown et. al., 2007: 273). In the final analysis, it is this formulation of mindfulness as beyond the medical itself that allows it to tap into ‘what it means to be truly human’ (Kabat-Zinn, 2012).

Seen in this light, the discourse of mindfulness closely mirrors William James’ classic characterisation of a religious experience in all but name (1936). To reiterate, firstly it is held to designate a transient quality hence requiring regular and deliberate everyday practice; secondly, the logic that underpins its practice denotes a passive as opposed to an active mode of action, i.e. it is self-revealing and marks a state beyond mere attention or concentration. Thirdly, mindfulness is claimed to be ineffable in that it cannot be fully grasped through the linguistic means of reason; and finally, it is noetic insofar as its self-revelatory power is not confined to physiological outcomes alone, but also allows for the emergence of more universal forms of insight, knowledge, and realisation.

As previously stipulated, this is not to argue that the state of mindfulness as presently understood signifies states of consciousness that are mystical in nature. Nonetheless, while the discourse of mindfulness involves neither an appropriation of the supernatural nor a renunciation of the world, it marks a nomenclature that is catholic in the true sense of the word – universal, applicable to all, and promising total salvation. Despite being firmly lodged within a secular and privatised field of practice, mindfulness can therefore no longer be said to be immanent to itself alone (Bellah, 2011; Deleuze and Guattari, 1994; Moore, 1995).

The postsecular hack of mindfulness

Looking back, it is worth reminding ourselves of the long history through which vipassana meditation emerged from the Theravada traditions of Burma, Thailand, and Sri Lanka, and later became a de facto modern meditation tradition in its own right (McMahan, 2008: 186). Throughout this process of the modernisation and protestantisation of Buddhism, the subject of sati already formed major concerns within its wider tradition. These included factional diatribes over the dangers of ‘bare attention’ to the dharma; debates over correct technique, application, and everyday conduct; as well as whether a lay meditator could rightfully be labelled a monk or not (Gombrich and Obeyesekere, 1988; McMahan, 2008; Sharf, 2015).

As set out at the start of this argument however, what continues to be overlooked within such debates is the sociological insight into the evolution of the secular itself, and the ways in which the secular is constituted in the interplay of contemporary social conditions and signifying practices today. As Smith makes clear, both advocates and opponents of secularisation theory often ‘bark … up the wrong tree precisely because they fixate on expressions of belief rather than conditions of belief’ (2014: 20, original italics). Mindfulness thereby offers a unique opening in regard to the very conditions of belief in our secular age, by signalling the emergence of a new modality of its very building block – the secular. In the final analysis, this process can suitably be identified as the postsecular hack of mindfulness.

The ‘hack’ of this process does not refer to the banal and hackneyed use of the ‘postsecular’ label, but rather to the strategic modification that is inherent within the discursive code of secular mindfulness. On the one hand, the surface language of mindfulness operates in complete discursive isolation from the religious and the transcendent. Beneath the surface of this construction however, the very conception of secular ‘being’ and immanence rests fundamentally on a distinctly sui generis ontology. In gaining this hidden and effectively unauthorised access to the transcendent, mindfulness thus signals the emergence of a new modality of the secular – a postsecular that carves out its very own claim towards a transcendent whole.

As Knott rightly points out, the sacred rarely respects the boundary between religion and the secular (2011). However, while anything can be sacralised à la Durkheim (1976), not every sacred rests on an ontology, as evidenced by mindfulness. The sacralisation of the secular through mindfulness thus remains distinct in that it designates a universally self-sufficient ontology that has bearing on each and every aspect of subjects’ lives. That is to say, not solely a secular imaginary, but one that is distinctly sui generis and all-embracing.

Functional differentiation through processes of secularisation is often predicated along vertical as opposed to horizontal lines whereby religion becomes increasingly bound to specific spheres of the social landscape. The postsecular hack of mindfulness however, highlights a more layered approach to the secular, whereby the surface language of secularity conceals a deep ontology of a sacred. This in the end is not merely the mark of a further separation of practice from belief in Western appropriations of meditation, but a much more radical evolution of how the secular now constitutes itself (Arat, 2016).

Echoing Caputo, the ‘post’ in the postsecular quality of mindfulness here should therefore be read less as a fundamental break from the secular than a novel development in its epistemic capacity (2001). After all, any ‘“post-” depends quite a lot on the secularity it succeeds’ (Miller, 2014: 164). This then marks a transfiguration of the secular which provides its own ‘sacramental imagination’ and the ‘conviction that the finite can mediate the infinite’ (Godzieba, 2014: 206). While positioning itself explicitly within the immanent frame, secular mindfulness thus offers its very own path towards transcendent salvation.

Conclusion

As Spickard makes clear, any discourse analytic approach to sociological analysis invites us to critically examine the grounds on which we base our findings. We are thus required to ask whether any given theoretical perspective describes some actual development in the contemporary religious landscape out there, or constitutes rather simply a novel way of talking about existing developments on the ground (Spickard, 2006). In light of this warning, the present analysis of the contemporary mindfulness movement calls us to take account of both forces.

On the one hand, this article has sought to offer a critical examination of the widely held assumption that the contemporary popularisation of meditation represents a continuation of the traditional trajectory of secularisation. The framework of tackling the evolution of meditation in the western world purely along the lines of increased secularisation or decreased religion however has been shown to be sociologically misleading. Instead, the discursive study of contemporary mindfulness has illustrated that its seemingly pure and secular construction nevertheless remains grounded in a mode of legitimisation that is significantly more religious and transcendent in character than typically assumed.

This in turn highlights significant disciplinary implications for the sociology of religion, and indeed the sociological discipline as a whole. Sociological epistemology effectively rests on the assertion that there can be no objective and independent status of religion per se, due to the fact that ‘there is no data for religion’ (Smith, 1982: xi; see also Asad, 1993; Chidester, 1996; Fitzgerald, 2000; McCutcheon, 1997). It is this base assumption that dictates the gold standard in the scientific study of religion as resting on methodological agnosticism (Berger and Luckmann, 1967; Smart, 1973). This in the end leads to the phenomenological stance of epoché, or holding back of all personal judgement in one’s dealings with the truth, reality, and value of religious claims, through the bracketing out of such religious phenomena as God, spirit, or cosmic unity from the sociological enterprise.

Mindfulness however faces no such qualms and appears to have overcome such limitations through its unique postsecular hack. Given the protective cloak of its strategic secular imagination, the so-called essence of its subject matter – mindfulness – is thus operationalised and allowed free rein. In other words, unlike standard heuristics applied in the study of religion, the scientific discourse of mindfulness brackets the ontology of the latter firmly into its research design as opposed to bracketing it out completely. The non-overlapping magisteria of the scientific and the religious thereby appear much more deeply intertwined than permitted through standard conceptions of the secular.

Sociologists of religion pride themselves on their ability to distinguish between emic and etic definitions of religion. However, in light of the assessment of mindfulness as outlined above, it seems that the sociological aptitude for detecting such nuances with reference to the religious and the spiritual now equally needs to be extended to notions of the secular. This then calls for a greater postsecular focus not only on the so-called return of religion to the public sphere, nor a further unpacking of how cohorts of non-religion are constituted on the ground, but a much more fundamental recalibration of how the secular itself functions today and continues to evolve in contemporary society (Beaumont and Baker, 2011; Harrington, 2007; Lee, 2015). If the sociology of religion in particular is to take calls for greater critical reflexivity seriously, then it must become more open, flexible, and inclusive in the forms of belief, practice, and identity which it considers to fall under its remit. Rather than continuing to police such pursuits within existing barometers of religious concerns, we may thus be called upon to examine all speech genres and social practices pertaining to modes of transcendence as valuable fields of enquiry.