Ron Purser is the Lam-Larsen Distinguished Research Professor (2021-2023) in the Lam Family College of Business at San Francisco State University. His essays and cultural criticism have appeared in the Huffington Post, The Guardian, Current Affairs, Salon, Alternet, Tikkun, Monocle, Pando Daily, Refinery 29, Tricycle, Inquring Mind and many more. His viral article, "Beyond McMindfulness", opened the floodgates for the mindfulness backlash.

His recent book, McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality, has garnered over 100 media radio, TV, podcast interviews, as well as newspaper and magazine articles. He has been a guest on such TV shows On Contact with Chris Hedges, with Redacted Tonight with Lee Camp, The Zero Hour with RK Eskow, the Institute of Art and Ideas (IAI) TV, as well as radio interviews by the BBC, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Radio New Zealand, the Progressive Radio Network (Gary Null show), KQED, KPFA, KCBS, KPOO. He has been a sought out guests on many podcasts, including the Intelligence Squared, Chauncey DeVega Show, The Wright Show, Upstream and many more. His work has been featured in such outlets as The New York Times, the Financial Times, the London Evening Standard, London Metro, The Irish Times, The Nation, Fast Company, VICE, HACK, the Saturday Evening Post, Telegraph, The New Statesman, Truthout.org, the Sydney Morning Herald, San Francisco Chronicle, LA Review of Books, El Mundo, the New Indian Express.

Author of eight books, his recent books include the Handbook of Mindfulness: Culture, Context and Social Engagement and the Handbook of Ethical Foundations of Mindfulness. Prof. Purser’s writings have been exploring the challenges and issues of introducing mindfulness into secular contexts, particularly with regards to its encounter with modernity, Western consumer capitalism, and individualism. Dr. Purser is an ordained Zen Priest in the Korean Zen Taego order of Buddhism and faculty member at Dharma College in Berkeley, California.

His book, McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality (Repeater Books/Penguin Random House) is now available on Kindle and Audible (audiobook), and has been published in Spanish, German and Korean.

Taego Zen

Dr. Purser is an ordained  Zen Priest in the Korean Zen Taego Order and serves as its interim head teacher of the Western region. He received ordination in April 2013 from the Venerable Jongmae Park, Partriarch of the Taego Korean Zen order for the overseas sangha. His Dharma name is Hae Seong, which means “The Nature of Wisdom.” He is also a faculty member at Dharma College in Berkeley, California.

Dr. Purser’s began studying Buddhism in 1981 as a student at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute in Berkeley, and formal Zen training at the Cleveland Zen Center in 1985, receiving precepts from Koshin Ogui Sensei. In the Tibetan Nyingma and Kagyu traditions, Dr. Purser has studied, practiced and taken retreats under the direction of Tarthang Tulku Rinpoche of Nyingma Centers, Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche at Rangjung Yeshe Gomde, Drikung Kyabgon Chetsang Rinpoche, and Wangdor Rinpoche from Rewalsar, India. His former Zen teachers include Albert Low, Abbot of the Montreal Zen Center and Rev. Koshin Ogui, former Bishop of the Buddhist Churches of America. He also completed a two year teacher training program for Time, Space and Knowledge (TSK) vision, the Full Presence Mindfulness Teacher training, the Lotus Trilogy and Revelations of Mind teacher training (at Dharma College), a nine month intensive training program, Nondual Psychotherapy, with Dr. Peter Fenner from Australia. Dr. Purser has traveled extensively in Northern India, making pilgrimages to the Holy sites of the Buddha.

Ron Purser is co-host of The Mindful Cranks Podcast, which broadly explores the cultural translation of Buddhism in the West, various facets of Buddhist modernism, and the mainstreaming of mindfulness in secular contexts. The podcast serves as a forum for voices that go beyond the dominant narratives which have been thus far uncritical of consumerism, medicalization, psychologization, corporatization and self-help approaches.