After Mindfulness Also by Manu Bazzano SPECTRE OF THE STRANGER: Towards a Phenomenology of Hospitality THE PERPETUAL BEGINNER (in Italian) THE SPEED OF ANGELS BUDDHA IS DEAD: Nietzsche and the Dawn of European Zen ZEN POEMS (editor) HAIKU FOR LOVERS (editor) Music albums: DAEDALO: Walk Inside the Painting NAKED DANCE SEX, RELIGION & COSMETICS After Mindfulness New Perspectives on Psychology and Meditation Edited by Manu Bazzano University of Roehampton, UK Selection and editorial content © Manu Bazzano 2014 Individual chapters © Respective authors 2014 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-137-37039-6 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2014 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-47525-4 ISBN 978-1-137-37040-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781137370402 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Contents List of Tables vii Preface ix Acknowledgements xiii Notes on Contributors xv Part I Mindfulness in Context 1 Sati or Mindfulness? Bridging the Divide 3 John Peacock 2 Beyond Mindfulness: An Other-centred Paradigm 23 Caroline Brazier 3 The Everyday Sublime 37 Stephen Batchelor 4 Mindfulness: A Philosophical Assessment 49 David Brazier 5 Mindfulness and the Good Life 61 Manu Bazzano Part II Beyond Personal Liberation: Mindfulness, Society, and Clinical Practice 6 How Social is Your Mindfulness? 81 Meg Barker 7 Mindfulness as a Secular Spirituality 101 Alex Gooch 8 Mindfulness and Therapy: A Skeptical Approach 112 Rebecca Greenslade 9 Meditation and Meaning 124 Jeff Harrison 10 Clinical Mindfulness, Meta-perspective, and True Nature 136 Dheeresh Turnbull v vi Contents 11 The Value of Meditative States of Mind in the Therapist 148 Monica Lanyado Concluding Unmindful Postscript 163 Index 169 Tables 6.1 Key differences between popular Western mindfulness approaches and the social mindfulness approach 87 vii This page intentionally left blank Preface “Mindfulness is not a technique, but the cultivation of a sensibility.” These words, spoken by Stephen Batchelor during a talk in 2012 at the annual seven-day Zen retreat he facilitates with Martine Batchelor in Devon, UK, provided the initial spark for the book you are reading. A silent Zen retreat ‘gathers the mind’ (sesshin, in Japanese). A gath- ered mind is a receptive mind. I find the combination of intensive sitting and walking meditation, of working on a koan—all the while sus- tained by a temporary community of supportive practitioners—effective in fostering greater receptivity, deepening my practice, and gaining fresh insight into the way I live and work. On that particular day, these auspicious conditions helped bring forth the idea of this book. Several eminent practitioners in the fields of both meditation and psychology subsequently accepted my invitation, contributing diverse and thought-provoking essays, which are found in this collection. If I believed in karma and reincarnation, as some Buddhists do, I would have said that finding such an enthusiastic response was due to the merit I accumulated in past lives. Given my preference for light-footed skepticism in such matters, I will simply say that I have been lucky beyond belief. The book is a collection of unpublished essays by leading exponents of contemporary Buddhism, esteemed psychotherapists, and writers. Focusing on various practices of ‘mindfulness’ especially within mental health settings, it aims to bring critical evaluation, as well as appreci- ation, of mindfulness. Unlike most books on the topic, it offers a way forward out of what many practitioners begin to perceive as an impasse. The sheer diversity and depth of expertise assembled in the book also contributes to widening the standard presentation of mindfulness, bringing, for the first time, new perspectives. We are in a phase of transition in the integration of Eastern con- templative practices and Western psychology. In many ways, this book reflects this transition. The reader will find here in-depth explorations of diverse approaches—from the teachings of the Buddha to contemporary psychoanalysis, from phenomenology to relational and sexual therapy, from cognitive–behavioural therapy to secular Buddhism, from religious Buddhism to mundane Buddhism, from existential psychotherapy to ix x Preface other-centred therapy. In spite of such wide diversity, contributors agree on the need for a greater contextualisation of mindfulness, and a more contemporary and wide-ranging articulation of the dharma. Mindfulness programmes have so far mostly relied on a cognitive– behavioural framework, which has been influential in mental health culture during the last three decades. There are signs, however, of a paradigm shift (Bazzano, 2013). Contemporary interdisciplinary stud- ies in developmental psychology, child psychiatry, and developmental neuroscience (Ryan, 2007; Panksepp, 2008; Leckman and March, 2011; Schore, 2012) are currently reframing John Bowlby’s (2006) attachment theory into an arguably truer context, insisting that the crucial aspects of motivation, emotion,andself-regulation, present in Bowlby’s original formulation, had been ignored at the time of its inception because of a cultural climate dominated by behaviourism and cognitive psychology. In other words, we might be effectively reaching the end of the cog- nitive turn. This is by no means a uniformly consistent phenomenon, yet its varied manifestations converge. Thinkers inspired by Barthes, Derrida, and Deleuze (Massumi, 1995; Ticineto Clough and Alley, 2007; Gregg and Seigworth, 2010) have written about the affective turn, empha- sising the unpredictable, event-like and self-organising nature of the affects, as well as the fact that they cannot wholly be translated into cognition or representation. Rather than strengthening the ego-self, the affects are a crucial expression of the embodied life of the organism. It’s early days, but if what is now limited to the world of research gath- ers momentum, it will begin to have an impact on how we understand and implement meditation. For instance, it may no longer be under- stood as a set of skills aimed at controlling the ‘disorderly’ nature of the affects, the chaos produced by powerful emotions, or as a tool-box of corrective procedures. It may come to mean being with, valuing the complexities and uncertainties inherent in being human—appreciating one’s life, as Maezumi Roshi was fond of saying (Maezumi, 2001), rather than chastising it. Many agree that mindfulness programmes have been beneficial in the mental health field. At the same time, there is a growing recog- nition that two crucial components have been missing so far: (1) the background (historical, religious, and anthropological, as well as mythical) upon which the teaching of mindfulness rests; and (2) the social, familial, and philosophical context in which the individual is embedded. The book addresses these two distinctive points. In Part I, ‘Mindfulness in Context’, four contemporary Buddhist teachers provide four different views on the background of mindfulness. John Peacock, Preface xi Caroline Brazier, Stephen Batchelor, and David Brazier eloquently artic- ulate this point from diverse perspectives. My own chapter concludes Part I, linking the broader context discussed thus far to some of the specificities present in the second half of the book. Part II, ‘Beyond Per- sonal Liberation’, looks at some of the societal and clinical applications of mindfulness. It calls for an embodied and psychologically informed awareness of dukkha (a key term in the teachings of the Buddha, indi- cating the transient nature of life), beyond the confines of a ‘good life’ pursued by an allegedly separate individual. This crucial point is addressed by Meg Barker, a keen advocate of ‘social mindfulness’ and a writer alert to the need to extend mindfulness to issues of gender, sexu- ality, and relationships. In order to be relevant, a truly secular approach to mindfulness also needs to be informed by contemporary develop- ments in