I have been meditating regularly for about ten years now. I have attended and facilitated meditation groups and retreats, in various places in Europe, North America, and Asia, in different (mostly Buddhist-inspired) traditions. I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to do so and have experienced great benefits from this practice. However, one thing has kept bothering me all those years. The Buddha claims – and I deeply believe – that his teaching can liberate all beings, yet when I join meditation groups, I often see myself surrounded by rather socially privileged people (just like myself1). Why does (Buddhist-inspired) meditation in the West seem to attract mainly an academically educated,2 (upper) middle class audience? Is meditation not relevant for other social groups, or is there something else at play here? (I will focus on class privilege in this article. Gender and white privilege fall beyond its scope. I believe others to be far better qualified than me to comment on these and many have already done so.3)
On our path there is no caste. In the Way of Awakening, caste no longer exists
I believe the Buddha and his message were radically egalitarian. He ordained casteless people and women into his Sangha, which was revolutionary and totally unheard of in the spiritual circles of the time. People from all walks of life were able to benefit from his teachings. This has also been my personal experience, having been a teacher in a high school in a largely working class / immigrant community, where I introduced students to meditation. Yet today, surveys seem to indicate that convert Buddhists in the West are largely white, academically educated and upper middle class. Why is this so? One could come at this question from many different angles, but I will focus on two points here: first, how Buddhism was introduced in the West as a practice of the cultural elite, and second, how the contemporary mindfulness movement fits in a ‘wellness’ discourse attuned to the socially privileged.
Cover of a popular magazine
Showing a young white woman
practicing mindfulness
Buddhism came to the West in the late 19th and 20th century roughly in two ways: as ‘immigrant Buddhism’ imported by Asian immigrants who took their native traditions with them, and as ‘convert Buddhism’, at first studied by Western scholars and later practiced and adapted when Westerners studied with Asian teachers either in Asia itself, or when Eastern teachers traveled West. (I will focus on the latter type as that is the one I am most familiar with.4) This ‘convert Buddhism’ was a largely modernist Buddhism. It adapted Buddhist teaching to a secularizing Western environment, and de-emphasized ritualistic and supernatural elements, introducing it not as a religion but rather as a naturalistic philosophy palpable for ‘modern’ Western minds.5 Highlighting the philosophical and psychological aspects of Buddhist teaching, this type Buddhism has always been popular with the cultural and intellectual elite.6
Not only because of its intellectual leanings Western Buddhism is strongly connected to the upper (middle) classes, there also exists a tendency to more frequently address the problems the upper social strata are faced with. Buddhism is the Buddha’s teaching on how to overcome suffering, yet in the contemporary mindfulness movement, it seems to speak mostly to the suffering of the socially privileged. What is commonly known today as 'mindfulness’ is itself a form of secular Buddhist(-inspired) meditation, popularized by an intellectual elite of psychologists, clinicians and scientists.
I have been in the mindfulness scene for about ten years, and – even though these practices and teachings are profound – they mostly seem to address white collar workers who have secure jobs and are materially well off, and whose main problem seems to be that they are too busy with work and get carried away by their ambitions in life.7 In this regard, it fits into a wider ‘wellness’ discourse, together with spas, massage, aromatherapy, some forms of yoga etc. Even though these practices are widely different in their history and working, in popular culture they seem to be supported by the message that we all just need to de-stress and be content with what we have, because we already have more than enough. This in itself is a quite universal message, however the implication here seems to be that the people addressed literally have above average material well-being and social security, which cannot be disconnected from the privilege they hold.
Even though I acknowledge these sufferings, and I believe they should be taken care of – all forms of suffering should be taken seriously, so teaches the Buddha – I believe that they only represent a certain (class-related) aspect of the suffering in our society. In mindfulness courses and books, there is little talk about the stresses brought about by financial insecurity, discrimination or oppression. Yet it has been well documented that people who face these obstacles face above average psychological discomfort and trauma (Treleaven 2018).
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| Has mindfulness become a tool of the economic elite? |
So how do we create a meditation and mindfulness movement that is more inclusive and appeals to people from all walks of life? I cannot give you a simple answer to this question, mainly because I do not have one, and I cannot claim to be an expert on the matter. I mostly write this with a lot of questions in my mind, and I would also like to hear from you whether you have any answers. I think beyond practicing mindfulness of our breathing, we should practice to be more mindful of the social privilege we hold. We should become aware of how we present mindfulness, the language we use, the spaces and social circles we move in, the assumptions we make about our audience, and – not unimportantly – the financial and other barriers we put up around our practice.
Moreover, we have to remember that mindfulness and meditation itself are not enough to change the world. If we do not actively address the inequalities and injustices that pervade it, meditation can act as a pacifier and we will lose ourselves in navel gazing. We have to remember the ethical code that these teachings were embedded in and the Buddha’s radical attempts to honor all living beings regardless of their caste or creed. ‘All our tears are salty, all our blood is red,’ as he said. Luckily, many attempts are already being made to create mindfulness and meditation spaces that are more mindful of trauma and different forms of social discrimination, and the same could be done to work on class and educational diversity.
Do not get me wrong, I do not have anything against Buddhist meditation and mindfulness as such. I think its mainstream success is amazing and has brought benefits to many people. Yet, as this movement is becoming well-developed and mature, it is time to look beyond the initial success and cast a critical look on how its success has been limited. Because I do honestly believe that Buddhist(-inspired) meditation is able to help everyone, given the right approach.
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1 Being a white, cisgender, young and healthy, straight male, with multiple higher education degrees, coming from an upper middle class, Western European family, I posses a rather considerable amount of social privilege.
2 I intentionally do not use terms like ‘well-educated’ or ‘highly educated’, as it seems to imply that those with academic educational diplomas are somehow ‘better’, ‘more sophisticated’, or stand higher on the social ladder. I find this highly problematic. However, the social hierarchies and power structures embedded in our educational system fall beyond the scope of this article. For a discussion of how education reinforces privilege, see Bowles & Gintis (2011).
3 For a discussion of white privilege and Western Buddhism / mindfulness, see Kyodo Williams et al. (2016), Ng & Purser (2015) or Sherrell & Simmer-Brown (2017). For Buddhism from LGBTQIA+ perspectives, see Harrold (2019) and Manders et al. (2019). For an overview of gender-related issues, see Seager (1999, pp. 185-200).
4 However, ‘immigrant Buddhism’ is probably the larger group. There are notable differences between the two groups. Meditation for instance seems less common among immigrant Buddhists (PEW 2012, p. 90). The lineage I belong to myself, Thich Nhat Hanh’s Plum Village tradition, is probably an exception here, as it is a mix of both immigrant and convert Buddhism.
5 Tibetan Buddhism is a notable exception to this rule, possibly due to a large and continued presence of native Tibetan teachers in exile.
Not only that, but the paywall for these retreats and centers can be a real barrier, though scholarships and such are available.
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