Let’s begin with our eyes open, and a nice, soft focus…

Mindfulness is everywhere. Southwestern has its own Meditation Mondays and its psychology courses draw attention to its healing power. The U.S. mindfulness industry is currently valued at 2.4 billion dollars, with meditation apps alone making up over two-thirds of that value and only set to increase further (United States Meditation Market Report 2025: 36 Million Americans Fuel $2.4 Billion Meditation Industry Growth; Mindfulness Meditation Apps Market Set to Surge from USD 1.2 Billion in 2024 to USD 3.2 Billion by 2033, Experiencing a Robust CAGR of 14.5% – Market Research Intellect). Standard economic analysis sees this boom as meeting an increasing demand for de-stressors and peace, as 1 in 5 U.S. adults currently suffer from some type of mental illness (Mental Health Statistics [2026] | USAHS). Standard psychological analysis would deem the mindfulness movement a great success in meeting this demand, as empirical studies report that mindfulness brings about “increased subjective well-being, reduced psychological symptoms and emotional reactivity, and improved behavioral regulation” (Effects of Mindfulness on Psychological Health: A Review of Empirical Studies – PMC). The point of this article is not to comprehensively refute such results, nor totally condemn meditation as a practice. On the contrary, in an age of overstimulation and political turmoil, the ability to step back and pay more attention to the world around you is invaluable. However, the U.S. mindfulness industry and the narratives attenuating it present an incomplete picture of itself, and not for our benefit. In this article, I plan to fill in this incomplete picture by drawing attention to three aspects of mindfulness which need more attention: (1) the cognitive dissonance between eastern spiritual practices and western neoliberalism, (2) the potential adverse effects of meditation, and (3) mindfulness as a individualist solution to a deeply systemic ailment. Then, I will offer some concluding reflections on the social value of mindfulness.

Whenever you are ready, close your eyes and take a moment to enjoy that feeling, that feeling of having nothing to do and nowhere to be… 

While meditation is common to many religious traditions, the mindfulness movement is primarily rooted in the meditative practices of Zen Buddhism. Zen Buddhism, originating in China, is a tradition of Buddhism heavily focused on union with the world around you. Whereas other religions and philosophies build various abstract systems to understand the world, Zen would rather us merely attend deeply to the things around us to understand them, foregoing the desire to theorize about things and instead immersing ourselves in them. While the tradition acknowledges theories as helpful tools, it would say that they are all ultimately false, as the world is in such a constant state of change that by the time we develop a theory of a phenomenon, that phenomenon has already mutated into something else.

This philosophy of constant flux applies to the self as well. For Zen Buddhism, the unified self is a construct. While again, it is a useful one, just like philosophical theories about the world, the unified self is an illusion, nothing more than a bundle of psycho-physical processes. Thus, the goal of Zen Buddhist meditation is to achieve a state of “no-self” or anatman, in Sanskrit. As philosopher Byung-Chul Han writes of Zen meditation, contrasting it with the meditations of Descartes:

Zen meditation differs radically from the Cartesian meditations, which, as is well known, are based on the aim of achieving certainty and saving themselves from doubt by way of the ‘I’ and ‘God’. Zen master Dōgen would suggest that Descartes continue with his meditations, pushing and deepening his doubt even further, to the point at which he himself becomes the great doubt in which the ‘I’ as well as the idea of ‘God’ are shattered completely (The Philosophy of Zen Buddhism).

Mindfulness meditations are still fundamentally practices in ego-dissolution to some extent. However, the mindfulness movement is not aligned with the whole philosophy of Zen Buddhism. If it were, it would radically critique the neoliberal capitalist society we live in today, a society which loves the simple, unified self and its maximal optimization. Zen Buddhism is fundamentally against the constant striving and ambition commonplace of neoliberal subjectivity, while the mindfulness movement embraces such subjectivity. In her dissertation, Economizing the Self: Mindfulness Therapeutics and Neoliberalism, philosopher Kel Montalvo-Quiñones writes about how mindfulness therapeutics provide a “technology of access and self-realization” which makes it so that people can self-govern and wholly regulate themselves, reinforcing the neoliberal philosophy of minimal collective organization and state intervention. Therefore, mindfulness continues the neoliberal project of turning all issues into individual ones to be solved on individual levels, eschewing the need for any collectivity in politics (I will return to this later) (https://escholarship.org/content/qt95w716ww/qt95w716ww.pdf). 

It is this cognitive dissonance which intrigues me. Zen Buddhism is a philosophy all about extreme relationality and collectivity, encouraging the expansion of our consciousness outside of ourselves to embrace all people in loving compassion. It encourages unambitious forms of life, those which lack the obsession with achievement and subsequent burnout neoliberal subjects find themselves in. The mindfulness movement takes the spiritual practices from Zen Buddhism, but disregards the surrounding philosophy, allowing the neoliberal subject to take a brief break from their toil, enjoy the feeling that they can fully control their lives, and then dive right back into work. Zen Buddhism wants you to feel like you have nowhere to go and nothing to do; Neoliberalism wants you to always be doing something and going somewhere in life.

Of course, I don’t want to suggest that the relief mindfulness offers to stressed, burnt-out people is a bad thing. If it works for them, I am glad they have something to calm them down and help them think better. But that’s only if it actually works for them…

As we bring our attention to our body, notice the places where there is any discomfort, any stress, and relax them…

“Meditation sickness” is a phenomenon which was first documented by Buddhist communities 1,500 years ago. It refers to various adverse effects of regular meditation: increased anxiety, depression, dissociation, derealization, psychotic episodes, and more. Many contemporary studies have examined meditation sickness more. A 2022 study with a sample of 953 U.S. adults who regularly meditate reported that over 10% of participants experienced adverse effects, the most common being anxiety and trauma re-experiencing. If you already suffered from a mental illness, you were at an increased risk (Full article: Prevalence of meditation-related adverse effects in a population-based sample in the United States). A more comprehensive 2020 study, compiling 40 years of research and including a total of 6703 participants who regularly meditate, found that anxiety, depression, and psychotic episodes were the most common adverse side-effects of meditation (Adverse events in meditation practices and meditation‐based therapies: a systematic review – Farias – 2020 – Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica – Wiley Online Library). And yet another study by Cambridge University in 2021 found that, across a sample of 1370 regular meditators, 22% reported adverse cognitive and somatic side-effects (Prevalence, predictors and types of unpleasant and adverse effects of meditation in regular meditators: international cross-sectional study | BJPsych Open). 

My own experience of meditation has aligned with these findings, though the adverse effects I’ve experienced have been less severe. I have been trying meditation off and on for months now, and it has yet to make me calmer. On the contrary, I often emerge from meditative states with headaches, lightheadedness, increased anxiety, and/or the feeling that all my nerves are exposed. What was supposed to reduce tension in my body only made me more tense. That’s not to say I have found all practices under the “mindfulness” label unhelpful, but inward meditation has yet to prove fruitful for me.

Of course, there is evidence I mentioned at the beginning of this piece that mindfulness enhances well-being. We should not be hasty to universalize the negative effects. However, the negative effects are seldom mentioned by mindfulness apps and the people who promote them. The mindfulness movement is rarely honest about these adverse outcomes of meditation, despite the fact that they are well documented and have been for over a thousand years. In fact mindfulness leaders often willingly ignore them in their religious zeal for mindfulness. John Kabat-Zinn, a key figure behind the mindfulness movement, despite admitting in a 2017 interview that “90% of the research [on positive impacts of meditation] is subpar”, still believes that mindfulness can transform “who we are as a species”.  What accounts for this willed ignorance?

You may notice your mind wander as we do this. That’s okay. That’s normal. Whenever your mind does wander, simply note it, don’t judge yourself, and gently bring your attention back to your breath…

Ronald Purser, an ordained Buddhist teacher and professor at San Francisco State University, wrote a book in 2019 called McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality. The book is an argument that Buddhist meditation has been co-opted and commodified since the 1970’s in America to serve the interests of the status quo, that is, the interests of neoliberal capitalism. Part of this co-opting is the re-framing of stress as a purely individual problem divorced from social factors. As Purser says in an interview about McMindfulness:

The dominant narrative of stress is reductionistic, diagnosing the problem as one of individual maladjustment. By individualizing social problems, the practice of mindfulness disadvantages those who suffer the most under the status quo. The stress discourse also plays on public fears. Stress is an epidemic, omnipresent, inevitable. So it’s up to us to mindful up and cope. It’s seen as an individual-level problem, divorced from any historical, social and political context. 

Mindfulness thus acts as a way for individuals to cope with the stress and despair accompanying this era of capitalism, rather than inviting them to question whether this era of capitalism is in any way responsible for their mental ailments. Rather than getting people to question whether the Big Tech companies manipulating our behavior for profit are to blame for the American mental health crisis, or whether increasing wealth disparities are to blame, or whether the sheer abundance of pointless jobs is to blame, mindfulness asks that we merely turn inward and be complicitly happy no matter what the socioeconomic state of the nation is. 

Again, this goes against Buddhism in so many ways. Buddhist meditation was never meant to be something which pacifies people and prevents them from taking meaningful political action. Buddhist meditation is about revolutionizing your consciousness and recognizing the solidarity which exists between all beings, human or otherwise. It is about moving outside of self-centered states of being to states of being completely devoid of what Byung Chul-Han calls a “ruling centre”. The subject is eminently open and free, experiencing the deepest compassion on those suffering.

Mindfulness, by contrast, stays within neoliberal, self-absorbed consciousness. It provides the means for us to constantly monitor ourselves and control our emotions so that we are able to endure unhealthy work environments. Mindfulness, as Purser says, starts to resemble the Protestant work ethic, where productivity at work is automatically equated with moral righteousness. Any thoughts which question whether the work environment you’re in is just should be acknowledged but then ignored. One must bring their attention back to their work, no matter how pointless or soul-crushing it may be.

Therefore, if the mindfulness movement were more honest about the philosophy it gets its practices from and how those practices often produce adverse effects, a huge component of contemporary social control would be undermined. People would stop their self-optimization grinds, actually start to think beyond themselves, and start to question the world around them. The self-focused spirituality of our age would dissipate, and it would be harder to motivate people to work useless, difficult jobs. Therefore, the mindfulness movement remains silent.

And whenever you feel ready, you can gently open your eyes again…

Across my journey of navigating my own mental health issues, I have often felt the desire to be more “present”and “in the moment”, and I truly don’t believe that attending to the present is a bad thing. Whenever I am in my head too much, I benefit enormously from walking around outside and taking in the world around me. As a way of clearing my head so I can think better, these moments are invaluable. However, whenever I was first implementing such moments into my life, I noticed that my brain would be constantly monitoring myself to see if I was attentive or “mindful” enough. This ironically took myself out of the very present I wanted to immerse myself in, and I became stressed again.

The extreme self-monitoring mindfulness encourages does not make people less anxious. On the contrary, it only heightens their anxiety. By encouraging people to view themselves as things which can be optimized, known fully, and controlled, it makes people more worried about whether or not they have achieved such a state of self-mastery. Rather than have people view themselves as incomplete processes, the mindfulness movement promises us that we can fully know and control ourselves. If there’s one thing living with OCD has taught me, it’s that such a notion is far too naïve. Combine this with everything we have already discussed, and we are left with a pertinent question: what should we make of mindfulness?

Again, if some of its practices benefit you, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. What I am concerned about is the false and even dangerous narratives accompanying the mindfulness movement, narratives that mindfulness has no negative side effects and can transform society for the better, if only enough people download meditation apps. I am concerned about the way mindfulness trains us to view ourselves as endlessly adaptable and optimizable productivity machines. I am concerned about the ways it ignores the very philosophy it gets its practices from, a philosophy which is far more beautiful and rich than the five minutes of serenity you get with the help of some vaguely British voice.

Overall, I would encourage a number of different things. For one, read more about actual Zen Buddhism. It is a fascinating philosophy you can learn a lot from (I know that I have) and it gives you a deeper view of what meditation should actually accomplish. I would recommend The Philosophy of Zen Buddhism by Byung-Chul Han, which I have been referencing throughout this article, as a starting point. For another, find ways to be attentive without being overly mindful. Our attention spans are vital to maintain, especially in our extremely distracted age. But as we have seen, mindfulness does not always promote healthy forms of attention. I would advise reading How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell or Mind Space: Discovering Meditation Without the Meditator by Ronald Purser to see different, richer ways of practicing deep attention that aren’t individualistic mindfulness meditation. 

Additionally, I would encourage letting your mind wander more, rather than constantly direct your attention back to some object. This does not mean you should ruminate or stress more, but rather gently let your mind do its thing: thinking. To accomplish this, I would recommend finding mindless, repetitive activities that do not involve screens and doing those over and over again, letting your mind go and ponder things. I often draw shapes mindlessly to help my mind wander. A wandering mind is not necessarily a lost or stressed mind. In fact, it is often when we let our minds wander that our most creative and insightful thoughts come about. 

Finally, I want to find some ways of challenging the notion that the goal of life is to achieve some fully optimized self. What exactly this looks like, I don’t know fully, but I suspect it will involve a reframing of our consciousness away from the language of utility and productivity we often use to talk about our lives. It will involve going out into nature and enjoying the trees as they are, rather than enjoying them because they allow us to produce more commodities. It will involve artistic creation that is enjoyable not because it will result in some masterpiece, but because the process of making art is enjoyable in itself. Above all, it will involve a shift away from extreme self-monitoring, which never allows someone to be “in the moment”. Perhaps the only way we can be truly present and thereby truly “mindful”, is by acknowledging our failure to make ourselves so.