Mindfulness and meditation have entered the mainstream of western societies. Emerging from Buddhist traditions, mindfulness practices claim to be “non-judgemental” and compatible with any belief system. Advocates claim meditation can reduce stress, alleviate physical pain, boost productivity and creativity, and help adherents understand their “true” selves. Yet for Sahanika Ratnayake, a “cultural Buddhist” and a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy at Cambridge University, mindfulness and meditation are “metaphysically loaded.” In her evocative account, first published in Aeon, she suggests why mindfulness practices are unsuited for reaching real self-understanding, and warns against the tendency to view mindfulness as a panacea for the modern world’s ills.
A Spite That Knows No Bounds
Gratingly awful global scold Greta Thunberg’s latest stunt is to turn on her own motherland. Sweden has been very good to her, but the former social-democratic paradise’s mugging by the realities of uncontrolled immigration do not sit well with the keffiyeh-clad rabblerouser. “For years, Sweden took more asylum seekers per capita than any other country in Europe,” writes Fredrik Karrholm in The Spectator. “Now asylum numbers have fallen to their lowest level since 1985.”
