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Mindfulness is now all the rage.

From celebrity endorsements to monks, neuroscientists and meditation coaches rubbing shoulders with CEOs at the World Economic Forum in Davos, it is clear that mindfulness has gone mainstream. Some have even called it a revolution. But what if, instead of changing the world, mindfulness has become a banal form of capitalist spirituality that mindlessly avoids social and political transformation, reinforcing the neoliberal status quo?

In McMindfulness, Ronald Purser debunks the so-called “mindfulness revolution,” exposing how corporations, schools, governments and the military have co-opted it as technique for social control and self-pacification.

A lively and razor-sharp critique, Purser busts the myths its salesmen rely on, challenging the narrative that stress is self-imposed and mindfulness is the cure-all. If we are to harness the truly revolutionary potential of mindfulness, we have to cast off its neoliberal shackles, liberating mindfulness for a collective awakening.

 
Dr. Ron Purser

Dr. Ron Purser

Dr. Ron Purser is the Lam-Larsen Distinguished Research Professor (2021-2023) in the Lam Family College of Business at San Francisco State University. His scholarship has been a pioneering voice in critiques of contemporary mindfulness and how mindfulness became the new capitalist spirituality. Prof. Purser’s academic writings have spanned numerous topics over the course of his career - from seminal writings on organizational change and development, workplace democracy, ecological sustainability, time and temporality in a digital age and virtual reality - to his popular media journalism on McMindfulness. Dr. Purser is an ordained Zen Priest in the Korean Zen Taego order of Buddhism and a faculty member at Dharma College in Berkeley, CA.

His current book, McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality (Repeater Books) is also available as an Audible (audio) book and has been published in Spanish, German, and Korean.

 
 
 
 
An attention grabbing and forceful critique of the over-blown claims of the mindfulness movement.
— DAVID BRAZIER, Institute for Zen Therapy and author of The New Buddhism
 
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If you are wondering about whether mindfulness is really a panacea for all our problems, this is the book to read.”

DAVID LOY, author of Money, Sex, War and Karma

McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality

 

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A lively and razor-sharp critique of mindfulness as it has been enthusiastically co-opted by corporations, public schools, and the US military.

Purser explains why such programs inevitably fall short of their revolutionary potential. Simply paying attention to the present moment while resting snugly in our private bubbles is no mindfulness revolution. Mindfulness has become the new capitalist spirituality, a disciplined myopia, that mindlessly ignores the need for social and political change.

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