The Dark Side of Mindfulness in Education

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 10
  In Roundtable Session: Titillating and Trifling Matter(s) in Curriculum Studies

Abstract

Contemplative practices have been appropriated by the medical/therapeutic industry as a self-help tool for bolstering wellness for the individual. This focus on the individual dovetails conveniently with the aims of neoliberal corporate capitalist principles by which modern educational institutions (and others) operate in order to pathologize stress as an individual shortcoming and failure. From the Buddhist perspective, the aspiration of spiritual practice is the cessation of suffering for all sentient beings, it is not be become a blissed-out individual. Contemplative practices have great potential to be engaged in a critical analysis of the structural, systemic, institutional forces and the ways in which they cause harm.

Author

• Muga Miyakawa, Simon Fraser University