http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/26/o pinion/sunday/actually-l

>>8778129
>I’m at the kitchen sink, after a long day of work and kids and chores and the emotional exhaustion of a toxic election season,

Oh, the poor baby. I already dislike.. *checks name of author* her. Will keep reading though.

>>8778140
>It’s a special circle of self-improvement hell, striving not just for a Pinterest-worthy home, but a Pinterest-worthy mind.

Okay, she's becoming likeable again. Will keep you updated.

"Mindfulness" is a bastardized version of the transcendentalists

Mindfulness is to Transcendentalism what Zumba is to fitness

>>8778129
Humanists have created one buddhism 100 years ago. It was some weird christian buddhim. After this first attempt, Humanists are trying to digest buddhism and it will take another century to get to western buddhism independent like are the buddhisms from tibet, china, SEA.
Westerners love the idea of a ''science of enlightenment'', since their belieef science is all they have not explicitly related to leisure and work for leisure.

I got to the end, somehow. I think she is semi-deliberately misunderstanding mindfulness practice in order to sell a product - in this case, her book. No, mindfulness isn't the way, it will probably say (among other things). Its practitioners are shallow and stupid, irrational trend-following sheep, unlike me, a journalist about to impart nothing on you that you couldn't learn in a day on Wikipedia!

Typically within the first few minutes of being taught mindfulness meditation you'll be told that the thoughts and feelings you have are *okay*, and that it's most helpful to accept them. The same goes for your attention wandering - it's inevitable. None of it is to be judged or condemned like Ruth here is implying, because it's very difficult to change any of it by force of will. You learn that distracting thoughts and feelings are going to arise anyway for even the mindfullest asshole on earth, and that's fine.

The issue mindfulness can help to deal with is entanglement in those cognitions, which really does contribute a great deal to suffering. This isn't equivalent to blaming someone for their problems, which she compares to neo-liberalism, but rather providing one tool that can at least lessen their emotional impact. Any therapy worth its salt will attempt to to provide such tools, too, without claiming it's *all* one needs to live well.

Often, it is in fact an idea to do something about your situation. But it can be extremely difficult to do so if you're enmeshed in despairing thoughts that drain you of any motive to act. Mindfulness doesn't dispel such thoughts, but is a way of moving your focus from them and lessening their hold on you. The majority of mindfulness programs I've seen don't promote doing mindfulness all the time, in any case - 20 minutes a day is closer to the reality. Mindfulness can be useful when your thoughts themselves are making you suffer. If they aren't, it's not so necessary. A wandering mind isn't itself the enemy.

What I hate about these sorts of articles and books is that even when they claim otherwise, they tend to suggest you should change large aspects of your life that are somehow wrong. "If you're practicing mindfulness, you shouldn't, and here are some rather shallow reasons why." It's the same sort of extreme all-or-nothing dumbass consumerist mindset it pretends to be above. Mindfulness isn't a panacea, won't save the world, and in some forms is pretty stupid, but it can be useful.

>>8778176
holy shit, I have no clue who or what I am, can someone please tell me what and how to think, quick, please hurry