Mindfulness Meditation: Benefits and Dilemmas

Mindfulness meditation is one of the most popular contemplative techniques in the world. Recently, however, a number of influential criticisms of the practice have emerged, many of which frame the technique as part of a larger neoliberal endeavor meant to privatize emotional well-being. Others have pointed to potential dangers of the practice, identifying cases where, for some people, it may actually trigger some of the dilemmas it is meant to treat, including anxiety, depression, and dissociation. And yet, it is difficult to find a major institution today that does not have some kind of training program or space devoted to various forms of meditation, accompanied by claims that it will help you live longer, enhance your performance at work, stay focused in an age of distraction, heal from trauma, and increase your compassion. What kind of reasonable expectations can one have regarding mindfulness? Has the practice become too commoditized to be effective? Is there an “authentic” mindfulness meditation? What philosophies of mind inform the practice? This roundtable will explore these and other questions on the way to gaining a better understanding of what the practice has come to mean today.

Participants:

Marrk Epstein, M.D., a psychiatrist in private practice in New York City, is the author of a number of books about the interface of Buddhism and psychotherapy, including Thoughts without a Thinker, Going to Pieces without Falling Apart, Going on Being, Open to Desire, Psychotherapy without the Self, The Trauma of Everyday Life and Advice Not Given: A Guide to Getting Over Yourself. His latest work, The Zen of Therapy: Uncovering a Hidden Kindness in Life, was published in 2022 by Penguin Press. He received his undergraduate and medical degrees from Harvard University. He has been a student of vipassana meditation since 1974.

David Forbes, PhD, is an Emeritus in the Urban Education Doctoral Program at the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center. He teaches and writes on critical and integral approaches to mindfulness in education and has consulted with New York City schools on developing social mindfulness programs. He recently helped form the CUNY Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies network and develop an upcoming online advanced certificate program on mindfulness through Lehman College/CUNY. David is the author of Mindfulness and its Discontents: Education, Self, and Social Transformation and co-editor of the Handbook of Mindfulness: Culture, Context, and Social Engagement with Ron Purser, with whom he co-produces the podcast, The Mindful Cranks.

Andrea R. Jain, Ph.D. is professor of religious studies at Indiana University, Indianapolis, editor of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, and author of Selling Yoga: From Counterculture to Pop Culture (Oxford, 2014) and Peace Love Yoga: The Politics of Global Spirituality (Oxford, 2020). She received her doctorate degree in religious studies from Rice University in 2010.She writes and speaks about capitalism, religion, sex, and society in our contemporary world and from a leftist, feminist perspective. She also advocates for neurodiversity everywhere she goes. Her politics inform her work—the work is always-already political.

Tim McHenry has been presenting Rubin Museum of Art audiences over the past twenty years with what the Huffington Post has called “some of the most original and inspired programs on the arts and consciousness in New York City.” McHenry created 26 onstage conversations around Jung’s Red Book in 2009 with Jungian analysts paired with the likes of composer John Adams, artist Marina Abramovic, musician David Byrne, filmmaker Jonathan Demme, and novelist Alice Walker. He initiated some of the early public conversations on neuroscience and meditation practice and mindfulness in the context of his long-running series Brainwave. A weekly art-and-practice session Mindfulness Meditation continues to be a Rubin offering at the Insight Meditation Center in New York City.

Dr. Catherine Wikholm is a Clinical Psychologist based in Kent, UK. She is registered with the HCPC and Chartered by the BPS. Having previously worked in the National Health Service (NHS), Catherine currently works in private practice and specialises in child, adolescent and young adult mental health. She is the co-author of The Buddha Pill: Can Meditation Change You?

R. John Williams, PhD, is Professor of English, and Film and Media Studies at Yale University. He is the author of The Buddha in the Machine: Art, Technology, and the Meeting of East and West, and has published as well on a number of topics including religion, futurology, systems theory, psychoanalysis, and film and television. His forthcoming manuscript, Out of Mind: A Media-Theoretical Critique of Meditation (University of Chicago Press) examines the role of communication technologies in the evolution of contemplative practices during the twentieth century.

For more info: https://www.helixcenter.org/roundtables/mindfulness-meditation-benefits-and-dilemmas/

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