western buddhism

Mindful America: The Mutual Transformation of Buddhist Meditation and American Culture
Je Wilson
https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199827817.001.0001
Published: 2014 Online ISBN: 9780199376926 Print ISBN: 9780199827817
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CHAPTER
2 Mystifying Mindfulness: How Is Mindfulness Made

Available for Appropriation? 
Je Wilson
https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199827817.003.0003 Pages 43–74

Published: June 2014
Abstract
Practices that seem too foreign or strange are less likely to succeed in the American religious
landscape. Therefore, processes of mysti cation are necessary to obscure or render innocuous the less
familiar or palatable elements of Buddhist mindfulness. A number of common strategies can be
discerned in works on mindfulness. First, the Buddhist nature of mindfulness is downplayed, often by
asserting that mindfulness is only accidentally related to Buddhism or that all religions contain
mindfulness. Second, the Buddhist cosmological framework within which mindfulness was
traditionally practiced is minimized or reinterpreted in a nonthreatening, metaphoric manner. Third,
imaginative lineages are constructed that sanction changes in mindfulness and empower new,
American teachers. In the process, control of mindfulness shifts from primarily Asian to white
American communities, and from monastic to lay teacher, with further implications for how
mindfulness is contextualized and taught.
Keywords: appropriation, Buddhism, laypeople, mindfulness, monks, mystification

Subject: Religion and Education, Buddhism
Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online
Mystify: to involve in obscurity; to obscure the meaning or character of—Oxford English

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Dictionary
It was natural for veteran mindfulness teacher Andrew Weiss to draw on his long personal history with
Buddhism when he set out to write a meditation manual. Ordained in both Thich Nhat Hanh’s Order of
Interbeing and the White Plum lineage of American Soto Zen, he had also studied in the Theravada and
Korean Son Buddhist traditions. Weiss co-founded a Buddhist meditation group in the Boston area and
taught mindfulness meditation regularly to the general public. Not surprisingly then, his book Beginning
Mindfulness: Learning the Way of Awareness, a Ten-Week Course (2004) used such Buddhist elements as the
ve lay precepts, Tibetan teachings on tonglen meditation, and the Sattipathana Sutta’s teaching on the
fourfold foundations of mindfulness. These and other Buddhist tools were discussed at length to provide a
systematic program for personal mindfulness practice—Beginning Mindfulness is nothing if not a
thoroughly Buddhist book.
Yet, Weiss worried that his book might turn o potential readers who had qualms about Buddhism.
Therefore, starting on the second page of his introduction, he set about alleviating the fears that he
imagined non-Buddhist readers might have. First, he downplayed Buddhism’s status as a religion: “The
teachings of the Buddha, in their earliest and original form, are remarkably free of doctrine. While they
embrace the same fundamental truths that are present in all the world’s great religions, they o er no

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religious creed for people to believe in...The Buddha is not a god or a being to be worshipped.” Next, he
stressed that mindfulness practice would not interfere with any reader’s own pre-commitments, religious
or otherwise: “You do not have to become a Buddhist to practice mindfulness in a nonsectarian context. You
p. 44 can be a Christian, a Jew, a Hindu, or an agnostic and still practice the Buddha’s teachings on
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mindfulness without any con ict.” He illustrated this by referring to his own Jewish roots, claiming that
mindfulness teachings actually enhanced his Jewish identity, as he asserted: “I nd that I can practice them
without having to abandon my ancestral spiritual roots, without giving up one iota of who I am. If anything,
as I practice mindfulness, my sense of who I am and my connection to my spiritual roots become clearer and
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clearer.”
Though Weiss’s approach to mindfulness was explicitly Buddhist, his agenda, apparently, was not. In
Weiss’s understanding, practicing mindfulness was not the same as practicing Buddhism—they were two
di erent things that could be disaggregated from each other. Ultimately, it was more important to Weiss
that Americans read his book and begin meditating than it was that they read it and become practitioners of
Buddhism like himself. With this as his goal, mindfulness’s Buddhist origins might even be a hindrance, and
so he headed o potential resistance by downplaying the possibility that Buddhism presented a threat.
By the time Weiss wrote Beginning Mindfulness, his assertions about mindfulness’s easy accessibility to
Jews, Christians, and agnostics were noncontroversial. They were echoed by countless other books and
articles written by Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike. Nonetheless, when we swap in other practices from
di erent religious traditions, it becomes clear how remarkable Weiss’s assertions actually were. For
instance, eyebrows would likely be raised if an American author wrote a book about beginning rosary
practice, stressing that Christianity merely embraces the teachings found in any given religious tradition,
that the early Catholic teachings are free of doctrine, that the Virgin Mary is not an object of religious
devotion, that saying the rosary does not con ict with Hindu or agnostic belief, and that it had made him a
better Jew. Something about Buddhism made it available for appropriation and radical recontextualization,
an availability not shared by most other religious practices in America.
This chapter examines the strategies and possible motives whereby Americans alter, diminish, obscure,
eliminate, or simply ignore the historic connection between Buddhism and mindfulness, and considers
some of the various implications of such practices. I call this process mysti cation, by which I mean that
mindfulness’s roots in Buddhism are made less overt in order to further various agendas. These tactics have
helped to make Buddhist-derived mindfulness extremely popular in the West, increasing the audiences who
can potentially bene t from mindfulness practice, as well as increasing the pool of Buddhists and non-
p. 45 Buddhists who can bene t nancially and otherwise from teaching about mindfulness. The results are
signi cant changes in how Buddhism is understood and represented, what mindfulness is held to be, and
who is empowered to speak about and for Buddhism and its practices.
Reinterpretation of Buddhist Cosmology
Mindfulness in its original context existed in a complex, self-reinforcing web of Buddhist cosmological,
devotional, philosophical, psychological, ecclesiastical, and soteriological concepts and practices. For
instance, the Satipatthana Sutta references concepts such as Buddhahood, monkhood, nirvana, the four
noble truths, and transmigration through the round of rebirths. These in turn relate to nearly every aspect
of premodern Buddhist worldviews. In such views, people exist temporarily as human beings during their
present lifetimes. But human existence was just one among many possibilities: each living being
experienced life after life after life (and death after death after death) in a beginningless, endless cycle of

change and su ering. Intentional moral and immoral actions activated the force of karma, which led to
good or bad fortune, and determined whether one was reborn as a deity in one of the heavenly realms, a
demigod, a human, a perpetually hungry ghost, an animal, or a being in one of the many purgatorial “hell”
realms of torture and punishment.
Wherever one was born, it was only temporary, as each life would come to an end and be followed by
another in a new situation, ad in nitum. The only possibility for escape from such ceaseless movement
through the mortal world of su ering was achievement of nirvana, reached by following the di cult
teachings of the Buddha and best sought through the monastic institution. Nirvanic release was achieved
through strenuous e orts, including overcoming our mistaken sense of a core, essential selfhood, and
gaining the ability to see through and resist the temptations of the demonic god Mara who frequently
plagued meditators. For those still far from nirvana, devotional activity directed toward the Buddha and
monastics helped to accumulate spiritual merit, and hosts of serpent people, spirits, cannibalistic ghouls,
chimeric monsters, and other supernatural beings populated the world, some as protectors of righteous
Buddhists and others as potential threats that could be warded o through Buddhist practices. This panoply
of practices played out against the backdrop of thousands upon thousands of world systems throughout the
universe, each lled with beings living, struggling, and dying because of their failure to ful ll the Buddhist
p. 46 path. Buddhist mindfulness was a way to con rm these beliefs about the self and the world, and provided
access to rebirth in the highest heavenly realms should one fail in the quest to achieve total release in the
present lifetime.
All of this presents a potential problem for those who wish to promote mindfulness activity in the United
States. American culture and religion have multiple roots, but for the large majority Buddhist concepts are
unfamiliar, if not bizarre or even threatening. Although the United States has diversi ed and
multiculturalism has become a cherished value for signi cant portions of the populace, xenophobia is a
strong historic trend in American society, expressed variously as fear of foreign cultures, distrust of non-
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Christian religions, and prejudice toward nonwhite racial groups. Christian and Jewish teachings have sown
distaste for religious systems that include gures other than the biblical God, especially those that include
statues or images that can be interpreted as idols. American culture promotes a strong sense of personal
self, with religious teachings about an eternal soul and psychological reinforcement of healthy egoism.
Western notions of time tend to be linear and teleological, and reincarnation-type beliefs—though on the
increase—are not mainstream. At the same time, there is also backlash in many quarters against religion in
general as authoritarian, backward, and delusional. In some cases this drives a retreat into personal
spirituality, while for others it results in either hostility or simple indi erence to religious concepts,
practices, institutions, and ways of thinking.
Given these general patterns in American culture, a Buddhism that holds to more conservative views toward
Buddhist cosmology and related ideas is unlikely to attract signi cant converts—indeed, it may face
opposition from both competing religious groups and secularists. Thus many feel it is imperative that
Buddhism be reinterpreted or presented in ways that are not too challenging to preexisting American norms
and mores. If Buddhism can be reduced to a narrow set of ideas and practices, or those preferred practices
can be shorn of connection to Buddhism altogether, all the better for those who wish to promote
mindfulness. Not surprisingly, then, in the contemporary American mindfulness movement, most or all of
the fundamental context for Buddhist mindfulness practice tends to be reinterpreted, minimized, or left
out.
One common tactic for reducing the di culty posed by Buddhist concepts is to render them in
psychological, metaphoric, or symbolic terms. Buddhist cosmology is a particularly common target for such
strategies. For example, hungry ghosts play an important role in Buddhism. They are one of the six forms in
which a person can be reborn after he or she dies. These beings are depicted as simultaneously emaciated
p. 47 and possessing distended, empty stomachs. Their necks are narrow, such that they have great di culty

swallowing food and water to feed their incessant hunger. Normally invisible, they haunt the human world,
gathering near people in the hopes of choking down an errant morsel. Food that does manage to reach their
stomachs often turns into ames, further increasing their su ering. Buddhist commentaries stress that
rebirth as a hungry ghost is one of the direst possible states—only life in the hellish realms of punishment is
worse. Buddhists are warned not to commit karmic o enses, especially those involving excessive craving
and attachment, lest they fall into the body of a hungry ghost after death, and dedication of merit to the
ghosts in order to relieve their su ering is a common ritual of Zen in Asia and most other forms of
Buddhism.
In the mindfulness movement, hungry ghosts are reinterpreted. From frightful, pathetic supernatural
entities that crowd about us unseen and slavering, they become metaphoric images of our own mental
states of desire and need. They are especially common tropes in such applications as mindful addiction
recovery and mindful eating. For example, in Cool Water: Alcoholism, Mindfulness, and Ordinary Recovery
(1997), William Alexander claims “I had become a ‘hungry ghost’—the mythic creature with an enormous
belly and pinprick mouth, cursed with an insatiable thirst. The thirst was too great. There was not enough
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liquor or valium to slake it.” For Alexander, his addictive craving was so intense that he poetically described
himself as a hungry ghost—he did not mean to imply that he was actually a restless spirit, or that such
creatures existed in any literal sense. They are “mythic” creatures, not scienti c realities. Likewise, in Eat,
Drink, and Be Mindful (2008), Susan Albers described the concept of the hungry ghost, but wanted to make
sure her audience didn’t mistake her. “The ghosts are a metaphor. They represent people’s inability to make
themselves feel better by ful lling their physical urges and desires...We are all very much like hungry
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ghosts.” She then provided an exercise for self-re ection, titled “Your hungry ghosts (or feelings).” All of
the popular mindfulness movement authors who talk about the hungry ghost realm locate it only in the
present, in one’s own mind, rather than in a supernatural posthumous state. They don’t suggest that
readers must be wary lest they be actually reborn as such creatures, or that they should engage in rituals to
dedicate merit to them.
It is not only the hungry ghost realm that can be interpreted in this psychological manner. In her article
“The Middle Way of Stress,” Judy Lief rebrands the six realms of existence in the Buddhist tradition as “Six
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Patterns of Stress.” The god realm becomes “the stress of perfectionism,” the jealous god realm becomes
p. 48 “the stress of the rat race,” the human realm becomes “the stress of insecurity,” the animal realm
becomes “the stress of habit,” the hungry ghost realm becomes “the stress of never having enough,” and
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the hell realm becomes “the stress of eternal warfare.” In each case, the realm is not an actual place or
metaphysical state of existence, but a psychological state fueled by particular fears and attachments. To deal
with these stresses, one should be mindful, because “a primary mind-training tool is mindfulness practice,
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through which you learn to settle your mind and to tame its wildness.”
The demon-god Mara also receives similar treatment. Mara is a fearsome opponent of the Buddha, who
alternately tempts and attacks him in the traditional stories. He stalks Buddhist monks and nuns, disrupting
their attempts to reach nirvana and sometimes possessing their very bodies. All of the realms of samsara,
from the heavens to the hells, are said to be under his control, and all the beings within them. Yet when
writers of the mindfulness movement speak of Mara, he becomes downright banal. “Mara is the
personi cation of things that get in the way of Right Understanding,” explains Ronna Kabatznick in The Zen
of Eating: Ancient Answers to Modern Weight Problems (1998). “Mara is the force that takes you out of the
present by enticing you with something else, like a fantasy of the future (e.g., an urge for a bag of potato
chips) or a longing from the past (e.g., the mu ns you had last week). Mara comes in many forms: fear,
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anger, resistance, or as general unwillingness to look at what’s true.” The Buddha’s arch-nemesis is
converted from a deadly form of evil into one’s own negative emotions. Mara’s minions fare even worse:
“When Mara strikes, you feel like you’re being attacked by a ruthless army. The expression the armies of
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Mara depicts this image. First you are attacked by desire. All you can think about is french fries.” From an

overwhelming horde of roaring monsters and devils, Mara’s army is rhetorically transformed into fried
potatoes.
Removal of Monastic Context
As discussed in the previous chapter, mindfulness in Asian Buddhist history was a monastic practice,
preserved, taught by, and typically practiced by ordained monks and nuns. Not surprisingly, the modern
revivers of vipassana practice and the practitioners of mindfulness who rst publicized it to the West were
Buddhist monks. They were the ones who had custodianship of the Pali or other ancient scriptural sources
and direct access to teachers with many years of practice to provide instruction. They did not have family or
p. 49 business concerns to pull them away from time devoted to meditation, and culturally it had always been
assumed that meditation was a practice primarily for the ordained sangha. Laypeople participated in
Buddhism through devotional activities and support of the monks; meditation was quite rare among the
general Buddhist populace prior to the 20th century, and though of increasing interest, is still not the
dominant mode of religious practice among laypeople in Asia.
What we see with the mindfulness movement in America is the gradual transfer of authority from monks to
laypeople. This does not mean that no monks are involved in promoting mindfulness; major mindfulness
advocates include Thich Nhat Hanh, Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, and others. But whereas English-
language promotion of mindfulness was dominated by monks for most of the 20th century, today lay voices
far outnumber monastic ones. As this phenomenon has grown, there has been an accompanying shift in the
way that mindfulness is framed, often losing its connection to Buddhist concepts, morality, renunciation,
and eventually Buddhism itself.
The movement away from monastic authority over mindfulness progressed through several overlapping
phases, which can be clearly seen in the evolving history outlined in Chapter 1. First there were monks in
Asia—including Asians and ordained Westerners—who taught both ordained and lay students. Some of
these monks, such as Nyanaponika Thera and Walpola Rahula, began to write and publish English-language
books on mindfulness for the general public, not just monastic consumption. These works began to attract
Western students who traveled to Asia and either ordained or practiced within a semi-monastic communal
retreat setting, where they had to adhere to Buddhist precepts.
Eventually, these students returned to the West, where most of them eventually took up lay life once more.
But though they had ceased to operate as monks or nuns, they did not forego the role of teacher. Rather,
they created many of the rst important mindfulness-based Buddhist communities in America and
elsewhere. Examples abound, such as Ruth Denison and Jack Korn eld. A new role model emerged: the
deeply trained Western lay teacher, who had acquired experience through traditional modes of practice but
now o ered mindfulness in a new setting (America), to a new audience (lay Americans on retreat), and with
a new allure (the ability to relate culturally and socially as fellow Americans with children, mortgages, and
jobs, and to deliver the teachings in impeccable native English). These were teachers who were neither truly
monk nor lay, as they had experience with both sides of the equation and could marshal insight based on
p. 50 both roles. Their teaching charisma was fundamentally based not on their having passed through the
ritual of ordination or their adherence to monastic discipline, but on their ability to provide concrete
instruction in mindfulness that could be followed by other laypeople. In other words, they possessed not a
symbolic charisma rooted in their traditional role, but a pragmatic charisma established through the
practical application of their message.
From these returned lay teachers came the next evolution. These teachers now taught American laypeople
who never traveled to Asia, and who infrequently or never interacted with full monastic Buddhism. Though
the instruction was explicitly Buddhist, and most often delivered in a retreat setting or regular practice

group, much of the Buddhist cosmology was downplayed. This happened in part because Westerners were
not always convinced of it in light of modern science and Western cultural ideas. John Coleman spoke for
many when he admitted being “disheartened to think that so many who live by the Buddhist faith seemed, if
I understood his teachings at all, to miss the point. His message, surely, was that the truth lies within the
self, that the aim of those who live by his word must be genuine enlightenment by transcending all the gaudy
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nonsense of ritual and sophisticated forms of worship.” Here Coleman attempts to be faithful to the
Buddha precisely by disclaiming aspects of Buddhism that he rejects—this isn’t a denial of Buddhist
practice but a sifting in order to present an improved Buddhism.
Another reason for the relative lack of Buddhist cosmological notions and devotional practice was because
the focus was always on the practical details of mindfulness meditation itself, and therefore the lion’s share
of time was taken up with delivering instructions for practice. It should also be noted that silent retreats
were one of the most common modes of mindfulness dissemination in the 1970s and 80s, and in a situation
where no one is talking, naturally little overtly Buddhist content is dispensed. A second generation of lay
teachers swiftly began to emerge who had mainly or only practiced Buddhism in America, had personal
exposure to only limited selections of Buddhist tradition, and were taught either by a mixture of missionary
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monks and lay Americans, or only by other Americans. Jon Kabat-Zinn is one among many examples of
this type.
As the mindfulness movement grew in popularity, it added new monastic voices, but not at nearly the same
rate as those of new lay spokespersons and advocates. Ordination was not widely available in the United
States, but this did not present a particularly important problem. Americans were coming to believe that
ordination was not necessary for mindfulness training, nor was expensive travel to Asia. Indeed, if
mindfulness could be practiced in one’s native language and country and without fully giving up one’s
p. 51 normal life, there seemed to be few incentives for pursing ordination. For some, monks ceased to be
honored role models. Instead, the monastic institution came in for criticism, as Americans imagined it as
stultifying, backward, foreign, or extraneous. Observe how author Janet Taylor removes authority from
anyone except the empowered individual American self—especially foreign monks in robes—in the opening
paragraphs of her book Buddhism for Non-Buddhists: A Practical Guide to Ease Su ering and Be Happy (2012):
This is American Buddhism. This isn’t about wearing strange robes. This isn’t about speaking in a
di erent language...This is about how you show up in your life right now. In this moment. This is
about you being who you were born to be. We may have 98% of the same DNA with each other, but
we are each as unique as a snow ake...This is about learning to experience you, and the world
around you in a radically di erent way. American Buddhism is not about being Buddhist. It’s about
using the practices of Mindfulness, Meditation, and Visualization to ease su ering and be
happy...The Buddha was this man who emphasized that he was just a regular guy, not a god or
anything special, except that he was “awake”. He encouraged anyone hearing his teachings to not
believe him just because he said it. Question these teachings! Try them out! See if they work for
you!...The Buddha taught that EVERYONE has the potential to awaken, to be fully present and to
live abundantly in each moment...We all have this incredible potential for happiness, because there
is innate goodness within each and every person...If you nd a thought, a practice, or an action that
adds value to your life, keep doing it. If not, toss it aside. Buddhism is the opposite of many other
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“isms”, because you are enthusiastically encouraged to think for yourself.
Such reorientations arrogate further authority to the lay teachers and repeat culturally familiar scripts
originally derived from the Protestant–Catholic antagonism that contributed to the intense privatization,
spiritualization, and anti-institutionalism of much of modern American religion. Others maintain their
rhetorical respect for the ordained sangha but rarely pay it more than lip service, further demonstrating the
traditional context’s irrelevancy. Through practices such as these, lay teaching and lay practice became

normalized, with monasticism the exotic, exceptional context for mindfulness.
With the abandonment of monasticism eventually came the diminishment of the retreat model. Retreats are
p. 52 still being held, to be sure—in fact, nearly every day of the year there is a Buddhist mindfulness retreat
going on somewhere in America—and the expanding number of retreat centers serve as engines helping to
drive the mindfulness movement. But the center of gravity has shifted away from the frequent, multiday
retreat model for most mindfulness practitioners. The rst generation of lay teachers trained in retreat
contexts in Burma, Thailand, India, and other parts of Asia. They imported this model to the United States
and have perpetuated it, but today most mindfulness discussion is about how to practice mindfulness while
performing the regular tasks of one’s lay life. Lay lifestyles are not merely grudgingly accepted as not
necessarily in con ict with the pursuit of mindfulness; rather, lay life is increasingly valorized as the proper
or best place to carry out mindfulness practice. This is a signi cant change from the earlier point of view.
Even monks who were relatively enthusiastic about the possibility of Western lay participation in
mindfulness practice, such as Nyanaponika Thera, recognized that retreat was necessary as a regular
practice. For example, in The Heart of Buddhist Meditation, Nyanaponika asserts: “Using just the conditions
of life it nds, Satipatthana does not require complete seclusion or monastic life, though in some who
undertake the practice, the desire and the need for these may grow. Occasional periods of seclusion,
however, are helpful for initiating methodical and strict practice, and for stepping up the progress in it.
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Western society, too, should provide opportunities for such periodical seclusion in suitable environment.”
He goes on to a rm that more advanced mindfulness is basically out of the reach of laypeople involved in
normal lifestyles: “Such a detailed application of Mindfulness involves a considerable slowing-down of
one’s movements which can be maintained only in periods of strict practice, and not, or only rarely, during
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every-day life.”
Newer advocates of mindfulness, especially lay promoters who have never trained with Buddhist monks,
rarely make such pronouncements. The balance of power to de ne proper practice in the mindfulness
movement seems to shift further from formally trained lay teachers to authors who can make mindfulness
appear accessible to the widest audiences, with the minimal expenditure of e ort. Ordinary, non-teaching
lay practitioners are further empowered in this process, with individual Americans who rarely or never
darken the doors of formal mindfulness groups or retreat centers developing into the numerical majority
and becoming the model for average practitioners. It is no longer necessary even to have a Buddhist or
meditation instructor—with the proliferation of books, blogs, and articles on mindfulness, practice can be
p. 53 taken up without personal interaction with other practitioners. From ten-day or longer retreats, the
growing edge of mindfulness has become bite-size portions that can be inserted into otherwise normal
routines. New books appear to capitalize on such trends, such as Meditation in a New York Minute: Super Calm
for the Super Busy (2006), Mindfulness to Go: How to Meditate While You’re on the Move (2011), and 5-Minute
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Mindfulness: Simple Daily Shortcuts to Transform Your Life (2011).
Instead of an arduous, lifelong process attempted in a renunciatory, monastic religious context, the original
context for mindfulness practice is obscured. Rather, mindfulness is promoted as providing instant bene ts
that can be gained after a single trial attempt at meditation practice. One of the most noteworthy evolutions
in the language surrounding mindfulness is how the quotidian comes to be the measure of mindfulness’s
value. Authors appear to fear the possible foreign connotations of mindfulness and thus go to lengths to
stress that mindfulness practice is normal, easy, and conducted in everyday life. This also appears to be an
in uence from the self-help genre, the form in which much of contemporary mindfulness discourse takes
place (as opposed to religious instruction as a literary sub-genre). The keywords for mindfulness in America
have become ordinary, simple, easy, gentle, and everyday. This is re ected in the titles of books, such as It’s
Easier Than You Think: The Buddhist Way to Happiness (1995), Buddhism Plain and Simple: The Practice of Being
Aware, Right Now, Every Day (1999), The Mindfulness Solution: Everyday Practices for Everyday Problems (2010),
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and Just One Thing: Developing a Buddha Brain One Simple Practice at a Time (2011). Just One Thing serves as a
good example of the trend in mindfulness framing. It is divided into ve sections: Be Good to Yourself;
Enjoy Life; Build Strengths; Engage the World; and Be at Peace. Chapters include titles such as Fill the Hole
in Your Heart; Love Your Inner Child; and Dream Big Dreams. In these sorts of books, mindfulness is not
monastic, not renunciatory, not demanding, not complex. It is readily accessible by anyone, anywhere, in a
spiritual idiom easily recognizable to every American, and barely distinguishable from any number of other
self-help programs.
Removal of Buddhist Context
Throughout premodern Asian Buddhist history mindfulness instruction was always accompanied by
teachings about proper behavior and morality. In fact, morality (sila) was held to be the necessary
p. 54 foundation for any sort of fruitful meditation practice. This is where Mahasi Sayadaw always began his
instruction in vipassana: “Preparatory Stage: If you sincerely desire to develop contemplation and attain
insight in this your present life, you must give up worldly thoughts and actions during training. This course
of action is for the puri cation of conduct, the essential preliminary step toward proper development of
contemplation. You must also observe the rules of discipline prescribed for laymen (or for monks, as the
case may be), for they are important in gaining insight. For layfolk, these rules comprise the eight precepts
that Buddhist devotees observe on holidays (uposatha) and during periods of meditation. An additional rule
is not to speak with contempt, in jest, or malice to or about any of the Noble Ones who have attained states
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of Sanctity.” This “essential” adherence to morality is one reason why mindfulness was primarily a
monastic endeavor: in most cases, only ordained members of the sangha who followed the hundreds of
monastic rules and were relatively less involved in the chaotic, tempting world of everyday life could
realistically hope to achieve the mental stability required for advanced meditation practice. Mindfulness in
turn provided a powerful crutch to the practice of correct Buddhist morality, as it facilitated the observation
of dangerous mental patterns, fostered awareness of one’s actions and their impacts, and because of the
simple fact that while quietly meditating one was by de nition not o somewhere indulging in karmically
unwise activities.
Monastic promoters of mindfulness continue to advocate Buddhist morality, as did many of the rst
generations of Westerners who returned from training in Asia (and we should note that most of these early
lay teachers are still alive and continue to o er instruction). For instance, Joseph Goldstein’s The Experience
of Insight is a book of mindfulness instruction, based on actual talks he regularly gave while teaching
Americans on retreat. His very rst lecture delivered on the rst evening of instruction states emphatically:
“An indispensable beginning for meditation practice is following certain moral precepts. It is a way of
maintaining the basic purity of body, speech, and mind. The ve precepts that should be taken are: not
killing, which means refraining from knowingly taking any life, not even swatting a mosquito or stepping
on an ant; not stealing, which means not taking anything which is not given; refraining from sexual
misconduct, which in the context of the retreat means observing celibacy; not lying or speaking falsely or
harshly; and not taking intoxicants, which again in the context of the meditation course means not taking
alcohol or drugs. Following these precepts will provide a strong base for the development of concentration,
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and will make the growth of insight possible.” These are not just basic moral ideas—these are speci cally
p. 55 the ve traditional Buddhist lay precepts. For Goldstein, and most other teachers of his generation,
mindfulness could not be easily divorced from Buddhist morality.
But over time the explicit connection of mindfulness practice to Buddhist morality has become attenuated
for signi cant portions of the subsequent movement. This is related in part to the absence of teachings on
karma and rebirth, which undergird the Buddhist concepts of morality but are contested by many
Westerners. Removing mindfulness’s connection to explicit teachings on morality allows non-Buddhists to
engage more directly in the practice, and puts the focus of attention squarely on awareness practices

themselves, without the possible distraction of other elements of Buddhism. Mindfulness in many works
comes to be presented in a basically amoral manner, denuded of context and thus available for application
to simple tasks: to eat mindfully, have mindful sex, use mindfulness to deal with depression, or play the
guitar in a mindful manner is simply to carry out such activities with greater attention. Frequently there is
no implication that such behavior leads to good karma, better rebirth, social improvement, or has anything
to do with ethics per se.
Downplaying or removing Buddhist moral teachings from the presentation of mindfulness is only one way
in which mindfulness’s Buddhist wellsprings are mysti ed. Often, authors directly challenge or minimize
such connections. One of the oldest such practices is to insist that practitioners need not be Buddhist in
order to engage in mindfulness or bene t from meditation. The exact manifestations of this attitude have
changed over time. In the beginning, various mindfulness promoters a rmed that personal Buddhist
adherence was not necessary, but they nonetheless expected that non-Buddhists would carry out
mindfulness in a Buddhist context. In other words, the individual practitioner didn’t have to believe in
Buddhism, as Buddhist techniques would be e ective through their practice, regardless of personal belief or
non-belief—but the practitioner would still certainly be going through the motions of Buddhism, in a
Buddhist setting, with Buddhist instructors. Marie Beuzeville Byles’s Journey into Burmese Silence
demonstrates this. “It goes without saying that I am convinced from my own experience that the practice of
vipassana meditation, coupled with training in the other steps of the Buddha’s Eightfold Path, provides a
practical way for nding deliverance from su ering here and now. I am also convinced that this way to zest,
calm, peace and happiness, is open to anyone who is prepared to undertake the training and pay the price
22
demanded. Embracing Buddhism or any other religion is not, however, part of the price.” Byles expected
p. 56 Westeners to journey into Buddhism, and follow the eightfold path while practicing inside a Buddhist
container for the purpose of mindfulness training, but felt they did not have to confess Buddhist beliefs
within their own hearts. They could remain Christian, or agnostic, so long as they played the part of
Buddhist. Without that role-playing, mindfulness simply wouldn’t be e ective.
The next stage along the scale is to paint mindfulness as generically Asian without making much explicit
reference to Buddhism speci cally as a tradition. Writers who use this approach speak of mindfulness as
coming to us from indistinct Eastern societies, Asian traditions, or even just unnamed ancient cultures.
Susan Albers, author of several books on mindful eating, provides a case in point. In Eating Mindfully: How to
End Mindless Eating and Enjoy a Balanced Relationship with Food (2003), Albers’s rst chapter begins: “The
four foundations of mindfulness are an important aspect of Buddha’s teachings. As a young adult, Buddha
23
discovered that mastering mindful eating was essential to his spiritual growth.” She goes on to describe
this traditional list in detail, telling the reader that it was derived from the Satipatthana Sutta. But a few years
later, she decided to target a more speci c audience of university students, many of whom presumably had
no particular interest in religion. Thus in Mindful Eating 101: A Guide to Healthy Eating in College and Beyond
(2006), she modi es her approach, simply telling readers that “Ancient civilizations knew how important it
24
is to have a clear and present mind.” Mindfulness’s speci cally Buddhist beginnings are hidden by this
newer, fuzzier language. The Buddha quotes that open various sections of Eating Mindfully are absent from
Mindful Eating 101.
Other authors try to bridge the gap between mindfulness practice and its perception among non-Buddhists
by suggesting that mindfulness can be found in various religions, and therefore isn’t essentially Buddhist.
For example, in Bounce: Living the Resilient Life (2010), Robert Wicks begins his chapter “Solitude, Silence,
and Mindfulness: Centering Yourself in a Driven World” by describing the range of places that one can nd
mindfulness: “Many of the world’s religions and ancient philosophies extol the bene ts of solitude and
25
mindfulness.” He moves quickly into examples from various sources, including Catholic and Jewish
writers. He asserts clearly that “Whether a person is without a proclaimed religion or is a Buddhist, Muslim,

Jew, Christian, or Hindu, or has another religious or spiritual identity is not of primary concern. The point in
speaking about silence and solitude, or mindfulness meditation, is that there is a bene t—especially for
26
those of us who seek to be resilient.” All very good. But having framed mindfulness as multi-religious, he
p. 57 proceeds to quote only Buddhists—including Clark Strand, Andrew Harvey, Achaan Chah, Pema
Chodron, David Brazier, Jack Korn eld, Shunryu Suzuki, Andrew Weiss, and Bhante Henepola Gunaratana—
for his actual discussion of how to perform mindfulness. It’s clear to anyone paying attention that
Buddhism is in fact his source for mindfulness instruction. Here we see the mysti cation of Buddhist
mindfulness by gesturing rst toward all sorts of non-Buddhist phenomena, so that readers presumably are
distracted from the fact that what is actually being taught is Buddhism.
Likewise, the co-authors of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Mindfulness are upfront about their own personal
training in Buddhist mindfulness, but they attempt to persuade their largely non-Buddhist readership that
no one needs to believe in or practice Buddhism to do mindfulness. The inside cover ap reassures readers
27
that “While mindfulness meditation draws on Buddhism, it isn’t Buddhism.” On page 1 they state “You
can practice mindfulness no matter your faith tradition. While it draws from Buddhist teachings,
28
mindfulness techniques are separate and apart from religion.” On pages 16–21 they try to o er examples
of mindfulness-like practices in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism. They then move on to an
extended section on Buddhist mindfulness, but preface it with a special insert box that claims “You may
have hesitated to explore mindfulness or anything that sounds Eastern. But mindfulness is not narcissistic,
29
not a cult, not out of touch, not anti-Christian.” Finally, on the penultimate page of the book, the authors’
anxiety over Buddhism’s relationship to mindfulness breaks through in a noticeably defensive fashion:
We started out this book telling you that you don’t have to be a Buddhist to practice mindfulness.
And then we’ve talked about Buddhism throughout the book! What’s up with that?...People in some
religious traditions would have you see this book and Buddhist teachings as a cult or as a turning
away from God and Jesus. But this comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of the practices of
mindfulness and meditation. You do not worship the Buddha when you practice mindfulness; you
explore your inner landscape, which includes your mind and your soul. Your mind and your soul
are gifts from God or Allah or Spirit—why wouldn’t you want to explore them and open your heart
30
to them as fully as you can?
A yet further form of this tactic is to downplay the origins of mindfulness in any religious tradition at all.
This is often the preferred method by those who seek to exert scienti c, medical, or therapeutic authority
p. 58 over mindfulness practice, phenomena that are explored in depth in Chapter 3. A prime example is Daniel
J. Seigel, co-director of the UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center. He published two di erent books on
mindfulness in 2010: Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation and The Mindful Therapist: A
Clinician’s Guide to Mindsight and Neural Integration. In the rst book, Seigel writes: “People sometimes hear
the word mindfulness and think ‘religion.’ But the reality is that focusing our attention in this way is a
biological process that promotes health—a form of brain hygiene—not religion. Various religions may
encourage this health-promoting practice, but learning the skill of mindful awareness is simply a way of
31
cultivating what we have de ned as the integration of consciousness.” His spin is slightly di erent, and
goes even further, in The Mindful Therapist: “We’ve seen that while mindfulness is practiced throughout the
world, East and West, ancient and modern, it is a human skill that religions use—not itself a religious
practice. While some educational programs appropriately shy away from bringing uninvited religion into a
secular setting, it is in fact the case that research has now demonstrated that mindful awareness practices,
such as mindfulness meditation, are actually ways of strengthening the healthy functioning of the body, the
32
brain, the mind, and interpersonal relationships.” So mindfulness isn’t just not a religion, it is something
that doesn’t originate in religion and that religions have no rights over—they just happen to use it. These
sorts of tactics raise intriguing questions about the ultimate fate of Buddhism in a society devoted in many

ways to secular and commercial values. Seigel is trained in vipassana meditation, and though he never
frames them as Buddhist, his writings are peppered with keywords important to that Buddhist tradition,
such as lovingkindness, compassion, and the concept that everything changes. There is no doubt that he is
aware that mindfulness has come to us primarily from the Buddhist tradition. In that case, is his failure to
admit that connection in Mindsight and other books a sort of cultural plagiarism? Or is it a skillful use of
Buddhist means to bring relief of su ering to populations that would not otherwise partake in the bene ts
mindfulness practice can bestow?
Seigel brings us close to the ultimate form of mysti cation: simply leaving out all reference to Buddhism,
religion, or spirituality altogether. Many examples of this approach can be found. Readers of How to Be
Happier Day by Day: A Year of Mindful Actions (1994) by Alan Epstein would be excused for not realizing that
some of the ideas they are reading about are related to Buddhist practice, since the author never once brings
33
p. 59 up the connection. Actress Goldie Hawn’s best-selling 10 Mindful Minutes: Giving Our Children—and
Ourselves—the Social and Emotional Skills to Reduce Stress and Anxiety for Healthier, Happier Lives (2011) is a
passionate plea for incorporating mindfulness into the public school system and other educational settings.
She never once mentions religion.
It is easy to understand why some authors might wish to omit Buddhism from their teachings on
mindfulness. Epstein is trying to sell a fairly generic self-help book, and limiting his audience to Buddhists
and Buddhist sympathizers could reduce sales. Hawn is trying to insert a religiously derived meditation
practice into the secular school system, which is already an intense battleground over the place of religion
due to the governing policy of separation of church and state. The quote from Seigel’s book given earlier
illustrates that some people have balked at mindfulness in schools. Schoolteachers are not supposed to lead
their students in prayer, and if leading them in Buddhist meditation raised ags, then Hawn’s desire to help
students with their study habits might fall victim to competing religious or anti-religious agendas.
This approach of hiding Buddhism’s presence when bringing meditation into non-religious settings seems
to be working for the moment, as there is not yet substantial resistance to mindfulness based on church–
state issues. Such resistance may show signs of emerging, however, and interestingly it is sometimes
former practitioners of mindfulness who refuse to allow mindfulness movement advocates to get away with
promoting it as secular. For instance, Marcia Montenegro is the founder of Christian Answers for the New
Age, an evangelical missionary organization. A former practitioner of Buddhism and other alternative
religions, she converted to Christianity in 1990. In a January 2012 article posted to her website, Montenegro
directly takes on Goldie Hawn and her MindUP™ program for misleading the public about mindfulness’s
connection to Buddhism:
Although presented as spiritually neutral, the origins and goals of mindfulness belie that stance.
Many are not aware that the true goal of Buddhism, nirvana, is not some kind of Buddhist heaven,
but is actually the state one reaches when one has shed all attachments and illusions, thus freeing
oneself from desire and rebirth. Nirvana means “to extinguish” and is the state of cessation of
desire and illusion, and therefore of su ering. What is this state like? Buddhism o ers no clear
answer...Children are the most vulnerable and are totally unable to critique or assess such ideas;
p. 60 for that reason, they make the best targets. Parents need to monitor and mind carefully what is
going on in their child’s classroom. They need to ask questions about all activities. Parents can
talk to the teacher or principal and ask to opt their child out based on religious views. Even if the
school denies that mindfulness is religious, the parent can state that it con icts with his or her
faith. There is much data online that would help make a parent’s case that mindfulness is
34
religious.
Montenegro is not the only person to express concerns over mindfulness’s Buddhist connections. According
to the Akron Beacon, in April 2013 Warstler Elementary School stopped its mindfulness program for

schoolchildren “after some parents and community members raised concerns the technique was linked too
35
closely to Eastern religions like Buddhism.” The superintendent explained in an interview, “As we kept
digging and researching, we found the roots to it. We have to be careful as a public school that we don’t
36
cross over church and state.” In this case, at least, caution won out over the claims from promoters that
mindfulness is purely non-religious. In the growth of the mindfulness movement, Buddhist advocates
contend that mindfulness is non-religious, while Christian opponents describe totally denatured
meditation as nonetheless indelibly religious. The question must be asked: Is mindfulness, by the time it is
being presented by people without Buddhist teaching credentials in a purely secular manner, in fact still
Buddhist? Is it religious or not?
The answer appears to lie in the agenda of the particular commentator, with no easy resolution that can
satisfy all. The simple truth is that terms like religion, spirituality, Buddhism, and secular are judgments of
qualities and value, not inherent categories existing somehow prior to their application by individual
observers. Their application always carries meaning, and they are deployed in di erent ways, for di erent
reasons, at di erent times by di erent interested parties. For our purposes here, we should note the
deliberate strategies that di erent mindfulness advocates employ to make Buddhism more appealing by
removing its Buddhistness. These are indeed purposeful, calculated moves, as an editorial in Shambhala Sun
makes clear. Part house organ for the Shambhala movement started by Chogyam Trungpa, part ecumenical
Buddhist-cum-spirituality journal with a strong emphasis on meditation practices, Shambhala Sun is one of
the primary Buddhist periodicals in the West. In March 2013, editor-in-chief Melvin McLeod explained how
Jon Kabat-Zinn visited the magazine’s editorial o ce seven years prior and inspired the editors to promote
Buddhism in a secular manner, based on mindfulness. As McLeod discussed, “Mindfulness is not inherently
p. 61 religious. It is about expressing the best of who we are as human beings. It does not depend on any belief
or philosophy...That day, Jon talked with us about the basic principles of Mindfulness-Based Stress
Reduction (MBSR) and the broader mindfulness movement of which he is considered the founder. There
were three, all beautifully conceived to remove barriers and make meditative practice as accepted, universal,
and helpful as possible. Mindfulness was present as: secular (available to all, regardless of belief); evidence
based (validated by personal experience and sound science); and bene cial to our lives right now (to our
37
health, happiness, families, society, etc.).”
The editors were impressed and embarked on what they called their Mindfulness Initiative. “We began
extensive coverage of the mindfulness movement in the Shambhala Sun, spearheaded by senior writer Barry
Boyce. [Consultation with others] resulted in the creation of a new nonpro t, the Foundation for a Mindful
Society. Today, in partnership with the Hemera Foundation, the FMS is the publisher of Mindful.org and of
the new bimonthly magazine, Mindful, whose rst issue appears in February with Barry Boyce as editor-in-
38
chief.” Thus the Buddhist magazine Shambhala Sun was transformed to make it a vehicle for mindfulness,
and a new magazine Mindful was created to advance crypto-Buddhist mindfulness in society at large.
Mindfulness could thereby be disseminated in two parallel modes: Buddhist for those who wanted such
avoring, and non-Buddhist for those who didn’t. From the evidence of books such as Seigel’s, Epstein’s,
and Hawn’s, this newer form of mindfulness is already thriving.
The Whitening of Mindfulness
For foreign religious practices to be successfully appropriated by mainstream American society, they need
to be rendered spiritual and personal to best t into prevailing trends in religious orientation. Those that
can undergo such a process most fully are likely to become widespread, while those that are resistant to
such recontextualizations will remain relatively niche interests of the alternative few. Hinduism is
appropriated as yoga, Islam as Su poetry, Daoism as tai-chi, Japanese folk healing as reiki, and Buddhism
as mindfulness. Religiously derived practices must be framed so as to suggest the primacy of individual
experience, rather than authoritarian structure. This is to say, the historic authority over these practices of

Asians, Middle Easterners, and other groups coded as nonwhite 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
p. 62 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. This necessitates a process of detachment from
Asian and/or premodern belief systems and ethnic identities, traces of which we can see in the preceding
sections. In other words, practices such as mindfulness must be rendered as “white,” that is, deracialized,
39
blank, pure, available, and superior to the ethnic or tradition-bound. They can retain only the whi of
exoticness in order to add avor to our lives.
Examples of this de-racialization (arguably, actually a re-racialization), spiritualization, and

individualization can be found throughout the mindfulness movement. Steve Hagen’s Buddhism Plain and
Simple provides a particularly clear instance, but his rhetoric di ers little from that of countless other
books. In his introduction, he states his view on Buddhism: “When the Buddha was asked to sum up his
teaching in a single word, he said, ‘awareness’. This is a book about awareness. Not awareness of something
in particular, but awareness itself—being awake, alert, in touch with what is actually happening. It’s about
examining and exploring the most basic questions of life. It’s about relying on the immediate experience of
40
this present moment. It’s not about belief, doctrine, formula, or tradition. It’s about freedom of mind.”
Hagen removes all aspects of Buddhism that he dislikes by boiling the entire 2,500-year-old tradition down
to a single word: awareness. With this axiom, he is now able to discard anything that he feels interferes with
awareness. Buddhism, it turns out, isn’t about all the messy stu of belief and doctrine; it is about personal
freedom, a quintessentially American value.
Hagen continues: “The Buddha learned to see directly into the nature of experience. As a result of his
teaching and his life, a new religion arose and spread throughout the world. In the process, like all religions,
Buddhism accumulated (and generated) a variety of beliefs, rituals, ceremonies, and practices. As it spread
from country to country, it acquired a wide variety of cultural trappings: special clothes and hats, statues,
incense, gongs, bells, whistles—even peculiar architectural forms, icons, and symbols. This book leaves all
that behind. Rituals, ceremonies, prayers, and special out ts are inevitable, but they do not—they cannot—
express the heart of what the Buddha taught. In fact, all too often, such things get in the way. They veil the
41
simple wisdom of the Buddha’s words, and distract us from it.” Here Hagen is essentially replicating the
Protestant critique of Catholic “priestcraft,” inherited from Western tradition and now transposed to a new
religious situation. Echoing the titles of two classic works for the mindfulness movement—The Heart of
Buddhist Meditation and What the Buddha Taught—he distinguishes between what matters (mindful
p. 63 awareness) and what opposes it (the practices of perhaps 99 percent of living Buddhists). The latter are
mere cultural trappings.
Hagen continues: “This is a major problem, and not just for those of us raised in the West. It is not easy to
know where Buddhism ends and Asian culture begins, or to distinguish the original and authentic teachings
42
of the Buddha from what was added later by people with less acute insight.” Hagen implies here that his
insight is superior to that of generations of Asian Buddhists and that with it he can mold Buddhism into
what it was supposed to be. In doing so, he alters Buddhism into a form suited for non-Asian Americans
coming to Buddhism as individual adults, an alteration that is allegedly a return to the proper, pre-
corrupted form intended by the Buddha: “Buddhism is not about these beliefs and practices. The
observations and insights of the Buddha are plain, practical, and eminently down-to-earth. They deal
exclusively with here and now, not with theory, speculation, or belief in some far-o time or place. Because
these teachings remain focused on this moment—even as you read this—they remain relevant and of
profound value, to every culture and every person who investigates them seriously. It is to these
43
uncluttered, original insights and observations that this book returns.” Being based solely in awareness,
the Buddha’s real teachings are available to every culture, such as America, and all persons, such as whites.
Many Asian Buddhists would agree with Hagen, of course, that Buddhism is accessible for everyone—but

perhaps not with the tinge of white ethnic chauvinism that pervades these quotes.
Here we nd a replication of a common pattern in the white American encounter with Asian religious
cultures. In her book Virtual Orientalism: Asian Religions and American Popular Culture, Jane Naomi Iwamura
has argued that the most pernicious forms of this pattern amount to “a modernized cultural patriarchy in
which Anglo-Americans reimagine themselves as protectors, innovators, and guardians of Asian religions
44
and culture and wrest the authority to de ne these traditions from others.” In the case of the mindfulness
movement, it may be objected that Asians and Asian Americans are also important advocates for
mindfulness in America. This is so, and their contributions should not be overlooked or minimized. But
although there are important Asian monks, such as Thich Nhat Hanh, and Asian American laypersons, such
as Chade-Meng Tan, who have signi cant followings, the overwhelming whiteness of the mindfulness
movement in the United States is a fact that needs to be observed, because it impacts how mindfulness is
p. 64 Americanized and what daily behaviors it is (and isn’t) applied to.
Predominantly white Buddhist media do include some Asian meditation masters, in part to take advantage
of their celebrity Buddhist cachet, but the vast majority of information about mindfulness is disseminated
by white people, in media venues controlled by white people, for the primary consumption of white people.
Mindfulness articles and books are primarily illustrated by pictures of smiling, happy white folks. One place
to examine the racial dynamics of the dominant streams in the American mindfulness movement is the new
publication Mindful, whose origins were discussed earlier in this chapter. Although Mindful launched as a
regular periodical in 2013, it was preceded by a one-shot publication of the same name in January 2011
packaged along with that month’s Shambhala Sun, apparently a trial run to gauge potential reader interest
and work out the kinks in the production of a new magazine. The 2011 Mindful cover is graced by a smiling
white woman of approximately early middle age, wearing casual clothing and sitting cross-legged in the
grass (the next several issues likewise depict attractive, seated white people smiling into the camera). The
inside cover has an advertisement for mindful investing, as a white hand carefully stacks pebbles. Page 1 has
the table of contents, with its list of exclusively white writers. On page 3, editor-in-chief Barry Boyce’s
pleasant, mustachioed white face hovers over an editorial that introduces Mindful without ever once
mentioning Buddhism or Asia. To the left of the editorial is the publication masthead, populated entirely by
white people.
Not counting a paid advertisement from the Mind & Life Institute that includes small photographs of
Tibetan monks, the rst discernable people of color appear on page 7, in a stock photograph showing a
multiracial classroom, o ered as an accompaniment to a brief article on how mindfulness is being taught to
help inner-city school teachers. Pages 34–35 of Mindful provide a spread of reader-submitted photographs
with brief descriptions entitled “Look Who’s Practicing Mindfulness and Awareness.” Who is doing so?
White people, mostly. Ten of the photographs show white people, with explanations of how mindfulness
has helped each of them in very practical ways. A single photograph shows an interracial family, with an
Asian father, a white mother, and two children. No other nonwhite people appear in this issue of Mindful.
Pages 36–39 provide book reviews of various mindfulness works, all by white authors. The word
“Buddhism” is completely absent from the magazine; “Buddhist” appears twice, in the subtitles of books
advertised by Wisdom Publications on the back cover; “Zen” appears once, in a story told by a writer; and
p. 65 the “Insight Meditation Society” is referenced a single time in an interview with Jon Kabat-Zinn.
Otherwise Buddhism makes no overt appearance, although in fact Mindful is shot through with Buddhist
material, such as a sidebar on page 19 that urges readers to use the Theravada-derived metta
(lovingkindness) meditation, without actually identifying its source in Buddhism.
Mindful is hardly alone in this sort of phenomenon. A randomly selected issue of Insight Journal (Winter
2010) yields only white contributors, with the only nonwhite faces those of statues, drawings, or paintings
of Buddhas and monks. A random catalog from DharmaCrafts: The Catalog of Meditation Supplies (Summer
2008) depicts only white models sitting, standing, and smiling among an array of Asian Buddha statues and

expensive meditation cushions. Issues of Tricycle, Shambhala Sun, Buddhadharma, Inquiring Mind, and other
important publications are always dominated by white authors and white faces. When nonwhites appear in
such publications, they often fall within a narrow range of presentations that do not challenge the white
majority of the mindfulness movement. For instance, there are occasional articles describing how black
people also are getting into mindfulness—especially in prison and inner-city schools—thus proving how
mindfulness is indeed for everyone. This is the situation in the rst o cial issue of Mindful (April 2013): it
features an article about mindfulness in Baltimore, where a trio of Latino and African American teachers is
depicted bringing mindfulness to the tough urban jungle, as illustrated by pictures of multiracial (mostly
45
African American) student classes doing yoga and listening to their teachers. Nonwhites are otherwise
absent from the magazine, except as local color in a few photographs of Asia accompanying a travel diary by
46
Indian-British author Pico Iyer, and in occasional advertisements. These publications also sometimes
include interviews with black celebrities favored by white liberal intellectuals, such as bell hooks and Alice
Walker. And they include interviews with or practice-oriented articles by Asian and Asian American
meditation teachers, such as the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh. Race itself is rarely tackled, and
consciousness-raising articles, such as those in the Winter 2011 issue of Buddhadharma, though laudable,
simultaneously help to cement white control over the image of mindfulness: with titles like “Why Is
American Buddhism so White?” and “Yes, We’re Buddhist Too!,” people of color are very clearly positioned
47
p. 66 at the margins of the movement.
Constructing a Lineage
One way to make mindfulness seem more American is to create histories that detail its long presence in the
United States, and to assert that mindfulness isn’t foreign at all. This can be seen in such works as New
World Mindfulness: From the Founding Fathers, Emerson, and Thoreau to Your Personal Practice (2012), by
Donald McCown and Marc Micozzi. They begin their rst chapter by proclaiming, “There is nothing new
about meditative and contemplative practice, and nothing exclusively Asian, Buddhist, or otherwise
48
exotic...In a profound sense, mindfulness belongs to us.” The “us” is Americans speci cally, and
apparently white people in particular, because they are the Americans who receive sustained treatment in
the book. The authors contextualize mindfulness as attention, allegedly a timeless force that is not a speci c
cultural product of Asian Buddhist societies. They then demonstrate how this timeless mindfulness was
already present in such 19th century spiritual heroes as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau—
not because they practiced mindfulness (they didn’t), but because they were sensitive types who read Asian
texts in translation and had a penchant for long, quiet sits contemplating life and nature. McCown and
Micozzi rehearse a selective version of the bringing of Buddhism to America, focusing on white people and
the individual Asian missionaries who taught them (the numerically larger Buddhism of Asian American
communities is mentioned but not examined). They also spice this with observations about other
awareness-type practices beyond Buddhism, and make the classic move of trying to draw parallels between
Buddhist mindfulness and various contemplative prayer forms in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
One of the interesting aspects of this type of mysti cation is that it tries to have it both ways: thus
mindfulness is simultaneously noncultural (it can be found anywhere and is not exclusively Asian) and it is a
part of our own historic culture (i.e., it is American). Therefore when Americans engage in mindfulness
practice, they are simply following long-established traditions that they have a full right to. This fully
appropriates not only the practice of mindfulness but its history as well, domesticating it as a truly
American religion. In some ways, this process mirrors that of the formation of Chan (Zen) Buddhism, which
manufactured a (historically inaccurate) native Chinese lineage and imagined an Indian precedent that
49
teleologically led to the Chinese sectarian school of Chan. In so doing the Chan founders seized the
authority over Buddhism for themselves, wrote their forms and groups into the history of Buddhism, and

p. 67 produced a compelling narrative that could be used for both external propaganda and internal group
cohesion. Buddhism ceased to be Indian and became Chinese instead; or, it had been incidentally Indian, but
now it was Chinese, and its Indian roots were important only insofar as India had nurtured the dharma until
it could take fullest ower in China, as Chan. In similar fashion, Americans turn cultural touchstones such
as Emerson, Thoreau, and William James into patriarchs of an imagined lineage of American mindfulness,
making mindfulness nonthreatening and asserting their full rights to the tradition.
Mindfulness for People of Color
Despite the undeniable white dominance of representations of mindfulness in America, there are in fact
signi cant numbers of people of color also involved in practicing meditation. Few will be surprised that
mindfulness is a popular—though infrequently central or numerically dominant—practice in many Asian
American Buddhist communities. But there are also many practitioners of African American, Latino, and/or
Native American descent, as well as Asian Americans from historically non-Buddhist heritage (such as
Filipino Americans), or from communities that have not o ered lay mindfulness practice as part of their
Buddhist activities. Many of these practitioners have little choice but to seek mindfulness instruction in
majority- or virtually all-white environments. Another category of persons of color in America are Asian
missionary monks, of course, though their situations tend to be somewhat di erent from those of people of
color who rst encounter mindfulness in the United States.
People of color from African American, Caribbean, Latino, Aboriginal, Asian American, mixed, and other
backgrounds often share little in terms of heritage between these groups, and naturally within each group
there is tremendous variety. But what they do all share is the experience of not being fully white in the
mainstream American construction of racial identity. So though we do nd many di erent individual
approaches to mindfulness within the overall population of people of color, we can also discern some
common patterns that emerge from similar experiences and social locations.
Some of the same tactics of appropriation and mysti cation as we nd in the dominant discourse also
appear in the writings of racial and ethnic minority mindfulness proponents. Many insist that one can nd
mindfulness-like practices in non-Asian cultures, for instance, or that mindfulness practice is not a barrier
p. 68 to those who also wish to subscribe to non-Buddhist religions. The cultures and religions referred to in
the case of people of color, however, are often not those of the Euro-American majority culture, but instead
those of one’s own minority heritage. For example, AfroCuban-American Zen priest Hilda Gutiérrez
Baldoquín recalls her Cuban grandmother teaching her to pray for protection, peace, happiness, and well-
50
being. “My grandmother was my rst Dharma teacher,” she asserts. Similarly, Eduardo Duran combines
Buddhism with his Native American heritage in his essay “Buddhism in the Land of the Redface,” where he
writes: “My years of daily meditation and mindfulness in the vipassana Buddhist tradition have been
augmented by Aboriginal ceremonial practice. Through the integration of intense ceremonial practice and
vipassana practice, I have discovered what our great great grandpa the Buddha taught: The Dharma was
already here in the so-called West long before we had that name for it. The ceremonial practices of the many
tribal groups that were here have, as a core quality, the ability to bring strong levels of concentration to the
51
participants.” Because the dharma was already here in the form of Aboriginal awareness practices,
practicing Asian-derived mindfulness is actually a way of remaining true to one’s Native heritage,
according to these interpretations.
The lineages conjured by people of color are often more personal than those of white mindfulness
practitioners, based in one’s own family or in-group heritage. Baldoquín traces her exposure to the dharma
back through her own (non-Buddhist) grandmother; Duran emphasizes that mindfulness has been right
here on his own native soil, and uses kinship tropes to knit the Buddha into his own family. This contrasts
with the more abstract lineages based on cultural heroes such as that found in New World Mindfulness: the

white authors do not profess themselves to be actually genetically related to the American founding fathers,
Emerson, Thoreau, or the other gures they draw upon.
When distant cultural gures are referenced, they are likely to be ones that relate to the struggles of people
of color, such as in Viveka Chen’s essay, “Finding True Freedom.” She states: “The revolutionary spirit of
the Third Noble Truth is akin to the messages of civil rights leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who urge
us to wake up and rise up from life-robbing oppression. The Buddha was a freedom ghter who launched a
52
spiritual movement empowering people to end mental, physical, and spiritual enslavement.” As with
white Americans, many people of color emphasize the notions of “liberation” and “freedom” in connection
with mindfulness. In the minority accounts, there is the added attention to freedom from outside attack due
p. 69 to nonwhite status. As Chen asserts, “Even in oppressive conditions, freedom can be had by freeing the
53
mind.” Baldoquín further ampli es this understanding: “Teachings of liberation heard clearly in a culture
driven by ignorance, fear, anger, and hate is like the breaking of chains after centuries of subjugation. This
is the gift the Buddha Shakyamuni gave us...It is our birthright to be free and it’s our responsibility to wake
54
up to that freedom.” As with some of the white commentators, the appropriations of mindfulness
sometimes mix a little oddly (is mindfulness a gift or a birthright?), but the point is always unmistakable:
people of color have a right to practice mindfulness, and, like white people, to apply it to the needs in their
lives.
Those needs take on an extra dimension when racial and ethnic discrimination a ect mindfulness
practitioners. Charles Johnson explains how mindfulness o ers a solution to negative aspects of the African
American experience:
If we wish to understand the special meaning that the Buddhadharma has for blacks in America—
and why in the 21st century it may be the next step in our spiritual evolution toward what Martin
Luther King Jr. called the “beloved community”—we need look no farther than the teaching of
mindfulness, which is the root and fruit of all Buddhist practice...It reveals the object as it is before
it has been plastered over with conceptual paint, overlaid with interpretations. To practice
mindfulness is thus a matter not so much of doing but of undoing: not thinking, not judging, not
associating, not planning, not imagining, not wishing. For black Americans in the post–Civil
Rights period, this systematic undoing of the cultural indoctrination, the “conceptual paint” we
have received from a very decadent, violent, materialistic, and Eurocentric society, is crucial for
55
our liberation, personally and as a people.
So mindfulness is a cure for internalized oppression and can be used to help ful ll the dreams of King and
other black ancestors who struggled to achieve a brighter day for their communities. African American
Buddhist nun Sister Chan Chau Nghiem experienced such a healing while on retreat with Thich Nhat Hanh:
“Up came a very deep, old hurt feeling of feeling rejected, discriminated against, unloved because of my skin
color. It was very painful. But I had never embraced this pain with my mindfulness before. It had just been
lying there, stuck in my consciousness. Now it could circulate freely, massaged by mindful breathing. I held
my pain—this feeling that I had missed out on something important as a little girl—with tenderness and
p. 70 love and allowed the hot tears to ow down my cheeks...[I] released this heavy burden of ignorance,
separation, and pain. In its place I felt a lightness, a deeper con dence in myself, in the practice of
56
mindfulness and in a very real connectedness with my ancestors.”
But because people of color so often encounter mindfulness in white environments, further complications
can arise. For some, these white-dominated practice groups feel uncomfortable, even threatening. In an
article in Inquiring Mind, Charlie Johnson relates the story of a panic attack he had while on a month-long
vipassana retreat where he was one of the only persons of color. After someone left him an anonymous note
about the disturbance his snoring was causing, he experienced ashbacks of an attempted lynching he
endured years earlier. Terri ed that white retreatants might break in and attack him, he looked for ways to

block his door. Eventually he went to the meditation hall, where he could throw chairs at any attackers. At
57
rst light he hastily got in his car and drove home. Marlene Jones, an African American mindfulness
teacher, explains that “In my own community experience I have felt marginalized, invisible, and
conspicuous all at the same time...I ended up feeling the same sense of isolation and alienation that I
58
experience in mainstream society.”
One way of dealing with such experiences has been the creation of people of color sanghas and retreats.
These are groups/activities designated for people of color only, so that the fears, silencing, or simple
feelings of cultural lack of t occasioned by practicing mindfulness in white-dominated spaces will be
removed. This stream within the mindfulness movement began to appear in the late 1990s, with Spirit Rock
Meditation Center as one of the pioneering communities looking for ways to make mindfulness more
accessible to people of color, create spaces where people of color felt comfortable to practice mindfulness,
and promote leadership of people of color.
Are such developments further forms of mysti cation? In some ways, they do move Buddhism further away
from its Asian predecessors, as these communities make sense only in a framework of American white
supremacist culture. They repeat many of the same practices found in the mainstream white mindfulness
movement: promotion of lay teachers, mindfulness in non-renunciatory settings, mindful awareness in
ordinary life, creation of indigenous lineages, application to nontraditional foci and for nontraditional ends,
and so on. So they do reinforce some of the same evolutions. At the same time, they are mainly a reaction to
white society and/or mindfulness communities and seem less concerned about hiding the Asian roots of
mindfulness practice. Indeed, for some, mindfulness’s roots in nonwhite religion and culture are precisely
p. 71 what make it attractive and suitable for people of color. This puts a check on some of the strongest
impulses toward mysti cation that occur in certain sections of the mindfulness movement.
Gender Implications of Mindfulnessʼs Evolution
The mysti cation of mindfulness in America has mixed impact on racial minorities: when it removes Asian
authority or overly whitens Buddhism, some people of color experience it as deleterious, but when it results
in greater access to those who would be left out of Asian monastic mindfulness traditions, it presumably
appears to be more bene cial. For women, meanwhile, the reduction or severing of mindfulness’s Asian
59
Buddhist roots has often been experienced as liberating.
Asian Buddhist history has a mixed record in relationship to women, but overall it is no mischaracterization
to say that Buddhism has produced, perpetuated, and promoted ideas and practices that relegated women to
second-class status in Buddhist societies. Lack of interest in women’s religious opportunities or leadership
contributed to the extinction of the fully ordained nun’s order in Theravada Buddhism, the lack of full
ordination for women in Himalayan Vajrayana Buddhism, and the neglect of the women’s order in East
Asian Mahayana. Women monastics were always subject to rules not imposed on men, including the need to
submit to the authority of monks. Quasi-ordained eight- and ten-precept nuns in Southeast Asia were
typically treated as servants of the fully ordained monks, and until the modern era were rarely given
instruction in mindfulness practice. The Satipatthana Sutta and the other main mindfulness sources of the
Pali Canon are notably male: delivered by a male Buddha to male monastics and preserved through history
primarily by the monks’ order.
The alterations that loosen mindfulness’s attachment to traditional Buddhism often make meditation
practice more accessible to women and increase the potential for female authority over mindfulness. Like
many of the changes that take place in the modern global mindfulness movement, the greater access for
women began in Asia. The Asian experiences of women such as Marie Beuzeville Byles, Dipa Ma, Sharon
Salzburg, Ruth Denison, and others point to this relative opening of the dharma. At the same time, like

many of the aspects of the speci cally Western and especially American sections of the mindfulness
p. 72 movement, these changes are greatly furthered and take on new aspects in the United States.
The redistribution of authority from monks to laypeople that accompanies the disentanglement of
mindfulness from traditional Buddhist forms allows women to participate in much greater numbers and
with more central roles. Because women normally cannot be ordained as full nuns in mainstream Theravada
Buddhism (there are various small-scale nunhood revival e orts in contemporary Theravada, mostly
ignored or condemned by the majority), removing monks as the proprietors of and role models for
mindfulness automatically expands women’s status. This also tends to undercut traditional views about the
polluted or tempting nature of women’s bodies, as such teachings were especially promulgated by monks in
order to reinforce their commitment to monastic celibacy. Ignoring Buddhist cosmology or rendering it
merely symbolic also raises the status of women, as longstanding teachings about birth in a woman’s body
as punishment for karmic misdeeds, the inability of women to become buddhas or be born in the highest
heavens, and the many misogynist stories about women su ering in the hellish realms are also thereby
removed. The reorientation from renunciatory, nirvanic motivations for practicing mindfulness toward
everyday approaches embedded in normal life is also a boon for many women—disproportionately tied to
managing family life, raising children, and maintaining homes, women have had signi cantly less ability to
go on extended retreats, attend frequent meditation sessions, or travel to meet prominent mindfulness
teachers. But when mindfulness comes to be promoted as part of normal life, with mindful cooking and
dishwashing (as well as mindful work, given the common experience of contemporary women as both
homemakers and breadwinners), it meets ordinary women where they are, and mindfulness becomes more
innately relevant to their real lives.
It is no mistake that many of the mindfulness promoters quoted in this chapter are women. Today, women
make up a very signi cant proportion of the teachers and authors spreading mindfulness in American
culture, and quite likely represent an actual majority of the American practitioners of mindfulness. The new
applications of mindfulness that have emerged are often designed to meet needs that contemporary women
feel they have, and in some sub-segments of the mindfulness movement—such as mindful eating and
mindful parenting—women are clearly the dominant voices. These phenomena are given greater attention
in Chapter 5. The appropriation of mindfulness by the helping professions, and especially its deep
penetration in therapy and counseling practices, have brought great numbers of women into contact with
mindfulness and produced some of the most active female authorities on mindfulness. Chapter 3 details
p. 73 many examples of this phenomenon. The appropriation of mindfulness by the self-help genre—a form
of writing widely written by and marketed to women—also gives a boost to the presence of women in
American mindfulness. And the actions undertaken to make mindfulness more available to whites naturally
make it more available to white women. It isn’t a mistake that the covers of both the preliminary and rst
o cial issues of Mindful were illustrated by images of women, that much of the Shambhala Sun sta is
female, or that Tricycle was founded by a woman. The process of deculturizing Buddhism to make it available
to all naturally brings it closer to being gender neutral.
Conclusion
Obscuring how mindfulness operated in historic Buddhist practice, or even going so far as to hide
mindfulness’s origins and Buddhist connections makes it (allegedly) available to everyone, increasing the
sellers who can appropriate it and the buyers who can consume it. There is a progressive process: rst
Buddhism is made palatable via mindfulness in order to sell Buddhism (a process on display in Chapter 1),
then mindfulness is made palatable via eliminating Buddhism in order to sell mindfulness (something we
can see in this chapter), then mindfulness is so appealing and denatured that it can be used to sell other
products, such as nancial services, vacations, clothing, computer software, etc. (a further process explored

in Chapter 5).
Especially as represented in its most extreme forms of de-Buddhi cation and simpli cation, mindfulness is
the arrival of meditation that is truly for the masses. It requires no gurus, no initiation, no foreign mantras,
no years on a cushion, no silence, no devotion, no moral restraint, no belief, no physical exibility, no
wisdom, no patience, no submission, no money, no community, no costumes. In some cases, it doesn’t even
require meditation for more than a minute at a time. Yet as we will soon see, especially in Chapters 4 and 6,
it promises everything: it can allegedly improve any conceivable activity and provide unlimited practical
bene ts. Perhaps it can even save the world.
We should not lose sight of the fact that there are still many teachers who continue to promote mindfulness
as fully and irreducibly Buddhist, and many non-Buddhist meditators nonetheless know that they are
involved in a form of Buddhist practice. Even those who seek to disaggregate mindfulness and Buddhism to
some degree often also wish to retain some connection between them or at least feel the need to
acknowledge their historic relationship. The mindfulness movement ecosystem is extremely diverse, with
p. 74 promoters of monasticism, religious Buddhism, personal spirituality, multiple religious belonging,
secular meditation, mindful therapy, and more.
Yet there is an ever more di use chain of custody that characterizes the mindfulness movement in America,
as described in Chapter 1. First the property of monks, it moved to also becoming the property of lay
teachers trained in traditional methods. From there it moved to lay teachers trained in nontraditional
settings, and then on into the hands of promoters primarily trained as doctors, therapists, counselors,
dieticians, and so forth. Eventually it ends up in the hands of self-help authors, nancial advisors, and all
manner of non-Buddhist advocates of mindfulness. The result is a signi cant population of non-Buddhists
teaching other non-Buddhists about Buddhist mindfulness, with many of them probably never aware that
mindfulness has Buddhist connections. Is this the triumph of Buddhism in a non-Buddhist culture or its
death knell? Most people in the mindfulness movement seem not to worry about such questions. For them,
reducing su ering (a very Buddhist motivation) appears to be the primary concern, and if that is best
accomplished by transferring mindfulness out of Buddhism, a great many nd that to be an acceptable
price.
Notes
1. “Mystify.” The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971: 1889.
2. Andrew Weiss. Beginning Mindfulness: Learning the Way of Awareness, a Ten-Week Course. Novato, CA: New World Press,
2004: xvi.
3. Weiss, 2004: xvi.
4. Weiss, 2004: xvi.
5. John Corrigan and Lynn S. Neal, eds. Religious Intolerance in America: A Documentary History. Chapel Hill, NC: University
of North Carolina Press, 2010.
6. William Alexander. Cool Water: Alcoholism, Mindfulness, and Ordinary Recovery. Boston: Shambhala, 1997: 17.
7. Susan Albers. Eat, Drink, and Be Merry: How to End Your Struggle with Mindless Eating and Start Savoring Food with
Intention and Joy. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger, 2008: 115.
8. Judy Lief. “The Middle Way of Stress.” Shambhala Sun, 21.1 (September 2012): 45.
9. Lief, 2012: 46–47.
10. Lief, 2012: 89.
11. Ronna Kabatznick. The Zen of Eating: Ancient Answers to Modern Weight Problems. New York: Perigee, 1998: 85.
12. Kabatznick, 1998: 86.
13. Coleman, 1971: 102–103.
14. I mean generation in terms of stages in a lineage, not in terms of chronological age of the participants. O en the second-
generation individuals who trained entirely in the United States were the same age as their returned lay teachers.
15. Janet Taylor. Buddhism for Non-Buddhists: A Practical Guide to Ease Su ering and Be Happy. [Kindle edition]. Kansas

City, MI: Janet Taylor, 2012: 1–2.
16. Nyanaponika Thera, 1965: 82–83. Italics in original.
17. Nyanaponika Thera, 1965: 93.
18. Mark Thornton. Meditation in a New York Minute: Super Calm for the Super Busy. Boulder, CO: Sounds True, 2006; David
Harp. Mindfulness to Go: How to Meditate While Youʼre on the Move. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger, 2011; David B. Dillard-
Wright, Heidi E. Spear, and Paula Munier. 5-Minute Mindfulness: Simple Daily Shortcuts to Transform Your Life. Avon, MA:
Adams Media, 2011.
19. Sylvia Boorstein. Itʼs Easier Than You Think: The Buddhist Way to Happiness. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995;
Steve Hagen. Buddhism Plain and Simple: The Practice of Being Aware, Right Now, Every Day. New York: Broadway Books,
1999; Ronald D. Siegel. The Mindfulness Solution: Everyday Practices for Everyday Problems. New York: Guilford Press,
2010; Rick Hanson. Just One Thing: Developing a Buddha Brain One Simple Practice at a Time. Oakland, CA: New
Harbinger, 2011.
20. Mahasi, 1976: 1.
21. Goldstein, 1976: 1–2.
22. Byles, 1962: 9–10.
23. Albers, 2003: 7.
24. Susan Albers. Mindful Eating 101: A Guide to Healthy Eating in College and Beyond. New York: Routledge, 2006: 10.
25. Robert J. Wicks. Bounce: Living the Resilient Life. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010: 129.
26. Wicks, 2010: 135.
27. Ihnen and Flynn, 2008.
28. Ihnen and Flynn, 2008: 13.
31. Daniel J. Seigel. Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation. New York: Bantam Books, 2010: 83.
32. Daniel J. Seigel. The Mindful Therapist: A Clinicianʼs Guide to Mindsight and Neural Integration. New York: W.W. Norton,
2010: 239.
33. Alan Epstein. How to Be Happier Day by Day: A Year of Mindful Actions. New York: Penguin Books, 1994.
34. Marcia Montenegro. “Mindfulness Goes to Kindergarten.” Christian Answers for the New Age. Retrieved from
http://www.christiananswersforthenewage.org/Articles_MindfulnessForChildren.html (Accessed January 31, 2013).
35. Stephanie Warsmith. “Plain Township School Stops ʻMindfulnessʼ Program a er Some in Community Raise Concerns.”
Akron Beacon, April 15, 2013. Retrieved from http://www.ohio.com/news/plain-township-school-stops-mindfulness-
program-a er-some-in-community-raise-concerns-1.389761 (Accessed May 17, 2013).
36. Warsmith, 2013.
37. Melvin McLeod. “A Magazine for Everyone.” Shambhala Sun, 21.4 (March 2013): 11.
38. McLeod 2013: 11.
39. I do not mean that white people actually lack race—my point is that in predominant American society white is coded with
an essentially neutral value: it is the natural default state of human beings, from which those with particular race (African
Americans, Asian Americans, etc.) are perceived as deviations.
40. Hagen 1999: 3.
41. Hagen 1999: 3.
42. Hagen 1999: 3–4.
43. Hagen 1999: 4.
44. Jane Naomi Iwamura. Virtual Orientalism: Asian Religion and American Popular Culture. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2011: 21 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199738601.001.0001 .
45. Carsten Knox. “Raising Baltimore One Child at a Time.” Mindful, 1.1 (April 2013): 42–51.
46. Pico Iyer. “Still on the Road.” Mindful, 1.1 (April 2013): 60–63.
47. Charles Johnson. “Why Is American Buddhism so White?” Buddhadharma, 11.2 (Winter 2012); Jan Willis. “Yes, Weʼre
Buddhists Too!” Buddhadharma, 11.2 (Winter 2012).
48. Donald McCown and Marc S. Micozzi. New World Mindfulness: From the Founding Fathers, Emerson, and Thoreau to Your
Personal Practice. Rochester, VT: Healing Arts Press, 2012: 2–3.
49. John R. McRae. Seeing Through Zen: Encounter, Transformation, and Genealogy in Chinese Chan Buddhism. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2003; Alan Cole. Fathering Your Father: The Zen of Fabrication in Tang Buddhism. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2009 10.1525/california/9780520254848.001.0001 .
50. Hilda Gutiérrez Baldoquín. “Introduction.” In Dharma, Color, and Culture: New Voices in Western Buddhism. Hilda
Gutiérrez Baldoquín, ed. Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 2004: 15.
51. Eduardo Duran. “Buddhism in the Land of the Redface.” In Dharma, Color, and Culture: New Voices in Western Buddhism.

Hilda Gutiérrez Baldoquín, ed. Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 2004: 47.
52. Viveka Chen. “Finding True Freedom.” In Dharma, Color, and Culture: New Voices in Western Buddhism. Hilda Gutiérrez
Baldoquín, ed. Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 2004: 111.
53. Chen, 2004: 111.
54. Baldoquín, 2004: 19, 21.
55. Charles Johnson. “Mindfulness and the Beloved Community.” East Bay Meditation Center. Retrieved from
http://www.eastbaymeditation.org/media/docs/3604_TWSummer03MindfulnessAndTheBelovedCommunity.pdf
(Accessed February 1, 2013). Originally published in Turning Wheel: The Journal of Socially Engaged Buddhism (Summer
2003).
56. Sister Chan Chau Nghiem. “Coming Home.” In Dharma, Color, and Culture: New Voices in Western Buddhism. Hilda
Gutiérrez Baldoquín, ed. Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 2004: 118–119.
57. Charlie Johnson. “Looking at Fear: Memory of a Near Lynching.” Inquiring Mind: A Semiannual Journal of the Vipassana
Community, 10, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 16–17.
58. Marlene Jones. “Moving Toward an End to Su ering.” In Dharma, Color, and Culture: New Voices in Western Buddhism.
Hilda Gutiérrez Baldoquín, ed. Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 2004: 43.
59. Obviously, women and people of color are not mutually exclusive categories. I am simply framing the issues in these ways
in order to tease out the particular dynamics that occur due to race vs. those that occur due to gender specifically.

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Mindful America: The Mutual Transformation of Buddhist Meditation and American Culture

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2 Mystifying Mindfulness: How Is Mindfulness Made

https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199827817.003.0003 Pages 43–74

Keywords: appropriation, Buddhism, laypeople, mindfulness, monks, mystification

Mystify: to involve in obscurity; to obscure the meaning or character of—Oxford English

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Removal of Monastic Context

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Removal of Buddhist Context

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Examples of this de-racialization (arguably, actually a re-racialization), spiritualization, and

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Mindfulness for People of Color

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Gender Implications of Mindfulnessʼs Evolution

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