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Abstract
The practice of mindfulness adapts Buddhist meditation to everyday life. It seems effective at managing depression and anxiety, and is taught in schools to boost resilience and grades. Mostly, this prioritises calm. Students learn to focus on themselves, without Buddhist teachings on ethics or interdependence. This limits the scope for transformation. Whilst it can help to share techniques to cope with stress, it would be more insightful to target its causes not just symptoms. Instead, a fixation on self gets reinforced, which serves the prevailing market system. The onus is on individuals to be more resilient, instead of changing how things work. Widening inequality and a volatile climate are communal expressions of the roots of suffering, identified by Buddhists as greed, hatred and delusion. If mindfulness in schools were to cultivate ‘moral and civic virtues’, as British members of parliament argue it should, it could foster compassionate ‘pro-social’ action.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to the Mindfulness in Schools Project for sharing course materials; to Chris Cullen and Daniel Ingram for interviews; to Tessa Watt and Ron Purser for reading suggestions; to Zoë Slatoff and Eugene Romaniuk for guidance; and to Matthew Green for inspiration.
Notes
1. Quotations from MiSP materials are from the 2015–2016 edition of the dot-b syllabus (Mindfulness in Schools Project Citation2016). The course has nine lessons, plus an introductory class. There are also guidelines for staff and a student workbook. All documents and slides are available online to MiSP-trained teachers.
2. See Felver and Jennings (Citation2016), and Felver et al. (Citation2016).
3. Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta (MN I.55-63) and Mahā-Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta (DN I.290-315).
4. MN I.56, trans. Gethin (Citation2008).
5. MN III.78-88, trans. Ñānamoli and Bodhi (Citation1995).
6. The concepts are frequently linked, for example in SN IV.210-214.
7. DN I.12, trans. Walshe (Citation1995).
8. DN I.165, trans. Walshe (Citation1995) and MN I.447, trans. Ñānamoli and Bodhi (Citation1995).
9. AN II.95, trans. Bodhi (Citation2012).
10. Interview with Chris Cullen, 11 July 2016. Cullen no longer works for the MiSP due to other commitments outside schools.
11. Presentation by Mark Williams at MiSP conference in London, 22 January 2016.
12. Interview with Daniel Ingram, 16 July 2016.
13. Email correspondence, 15 July 2016.
14. MN I.190-1.
15. MN I.167, trans. Ñānamoli and Bodhi (Citation1995).
16. See National Union of Students (Citation2016) and Department for Education (Citation2016).
17. Foreword to MAPPG (Citation2015).