15/11/2017 - Fit in my 40s: ‘I’d rather eat earth than meditate for 17 more seconds’

Mindfulness has to be principled, otherwise it’s just a guy in California eating a raisin really, really slowly

Zoe Williams   Saturday 11 November 2017

The problem with mindfulness is that it spread across the world unhinged from the philosophy of human goodness that was supposed to underpin it. A sniper has to be mindful, in the sense of living in a state of complete presence and awareness; but he wouldn’t do much for the Dalai Lama. It doesn’t have to be religious necessarily, but mindfulness has to be principled, otherwise it’s just a guy in California eating a raisin really, really slowly.
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This was the starting point for the Foundation for Developing Compassion and Wisdom, a modest but global organisation calling itself Buddhism’s “secular wing”. It’s just round the corner from my house, as fortune would have it, and I’ve imbibed the benevolent self-acceptance that suffuses its scruffy south London headquarters – above a vegan cafe, next to a Buddhist film archive – but you do your own work on the 16 Guidelines app. Every day, you choose a value to live by and spend five minutes thinking deeply about what it means.  more...