Critical Mindfulness: Exploring Neoliberal Erasure of Buddhism and Asian American Buddhists in School Mindfulness Programs

• In Event: Co-Opting Justice: How Neoliberalism Profits From Race in Educational Reform Projects

Abstract

This paper examines the growing trend of mindfulness programs (from here on distinguished as secular mindfulness programs) in education. Of particular focus are the embedded racial dynamics of secular mindfulness, which has produced an overwhelmingly white field of mindfulness “experts” and educators. I provide a critical intervention to the dominant, secularized discourse on mindfulness and education by examining the racial implications and ramifications of such programs, especially in the ways they draw from and simultaneously erase Buddhist practice and Asian American Buddhist communities.

Drawing from and expanding on Henry Giroux’s (2010) conceptualization of the “new racism” of neoliberalism, I situate the growing phenomenon of secular mindfulness in schools within the intersecting context of 1) race and neoliberalism; 2) the secularization and commodification of the Buddhist practice of mindfulness; and 3) the simultaneous exotification and invisibilization of Asian and Asian Americans. I argue that secular mindfulness programs appropriate and commodify Buddhist practice, an indigenous Asian knowledge system, in order to transform a method for liberation into a neoliberal method for disciplinary self-regulation (Foucault, 1988). Such appropriation attempts to circumscribe Asian American and Asian diasporic Buddhist students within a “model minority” framework that employs a debased form of their spiritual practice to manage the behavior of other students of color, namely, their black and brown classmates.

In regards to methodology, I develop a theoretical analysis of secular mindfulness education programs and draw from methods in qualitative content analysis. I present findings from a qualitative content analysis of the demographics of mindfulness teachers from a sample of popular secular mindfulness programs. I also examine the language of each program in regards to their articulation of mindfulness practice, the origins of the practice, and the intended purpose in schools to ascertain the epistemological frameworks being advanced. In doing so, I demonstrate how the Buddhist context from which a many of school based secular mindfulness programs have been derived have been erased to produce a neoliberal educational commodity for self-regulation. I further demonstrate how such an epistemological move positions white secular mindfulness practitioners as “experts,” thus marginalizing the wisdom and authority of Asian American Buddhists who may have practiced diverse forms of mindfulness in the United States for generations. I present an analysis of such racial and religious erasure as part and parcel of the secularization and commodification of Buddhist mindfulness as a means of neoliberal educational discipline.

This paper draws from interdisciplinary modes of inquiry and thus contributes to work in the fields of education, ethnic studies, Asian American studies, American studies, and religious studies. It provides an important intervention to the dominant literature on secular mindfulness, which tends to celebrate its use in educational settings for the purposes of managing stress and behavior. Though there exist growing research on mindfulness, most of the literature focuses on questions of effectiveness and program implementation. There is little critical research on the racial or neoliberal implications of secular mindfulness programs in schools, and this paper begins to fill this urgent need.

Author

• Funie Hsu, San Jose State University