The Long Marriage of Mindfulness and Money

http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-long-marriage-of-mindfulness-and-money?intcid=mod-latest

by nether • 11 years ago

39 33 11 years ago

newyorker.com

dasil003• 11 years ago

Brendel’s fear is that meditation might make executives too mellow and compassionate

Won't someone please think of the shareholders!

afarrell• 11 years ago

Both of these things lead to indecision

"I don't know right from wrong all the time, I wish I did, but one thing I cannot be is indecisive." - Frank Underwood to an Arab in a wheelchair, justifying his choice to blow that man's legs off via drone strike.

verytrivial• 11 years ago

Deepak Chopra. First sentence. Next!

vanderZwan4• 11 years ago

The article neither about him, nor is mindfullness a quack method unverified by science.

And even if it was, a report on how this method is embraced by Wall Street can still be worthy of your time.

sago9• 11 years ago

nor is mindfullness a quack method unverified by science

What specific benefits had mindfulness been verified to provide, in comparison to placebo meditation? I'd be very grateful for any references to peer-reviewed study.

pvnick2• 11 years ago

Interesting that they mention mindfulness as we know it today is been gutted of theological meaning. I would say that is largely true of modern mindfulness, but it doesn't have to be the case. Christianity, for example, has a form of prayer called "centering prayer," in which one mindfully meditates on God while letting distracting thoughts flow away [1]. The parallels between westernized mindfulness and centering prayer are notable, and I find it encourages an opportunity for deeper spirituality than the more ubiquitous conversant prayer ("God, please forgive me for lying and oh can you please let the Patriots win the Super Bowl"). I have been practicing both for a couple weeks now and I find I am much better able to concentrate on focus-driven tasks like reading literature, something I have always struggled with due to a history of ADHD.

[1] http://cct.biola.edu/blog/2014/aug/04/when-strivings-cease/

kylek• 11 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugio_Cent

westoncb2• 11 years ago

A funny error in the article: "The Varieties of Religious Experience" was written by William James, not Henry James—it'd be a very different book if his brother had written it.

The article tries to give the impression that mindfulness meditation as it appears in the U.S. is more of a money making gimmick than an effectively distilled version of the Eastern tradition. Undoubtedly people will try to make money off of it and you'll have plenty of books/teachers who present it in a disconnected fashion whose only efficacy derives from the placebo effect (which will probably be enough for it to spread with good reputation through corporate culture). That said, there's a pretty long tradition of smart people who've been trying in earnest to interpret meditation practice and Eastern philosophical concepts in a Western framework. There's a lot of variety in the results, sure—but at the same time there's a core set of ideas and practices that have an internal consistency, and—in my opinion—which fill an important gap in the typical U.S. life philosophy. In particular, it offers a solution to the problem of, "what greater ultimate goal can I have for life than obtaining positive experiences and avoiding negative ones, if I'm basically an experience machine who will cease to exist after X years?"—without asking people to have faith in some positive metaphysical system. Additionally, meditation can be powerfully instructive in letting people see/remember certain aspects of being human that it's easy to lose after spending years feeling driven to accomplish some goals.

The Long Marriage of Mindfulness and Money

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