Mindful America: The Mutual Transformation of Buddhist Meditation and American Culture Edited. By Jeff Wilson. Oxford University Press, August 1, 2014. 280 pages. ISBN-10: 0199827818 ISBN-13: 978-0199827817
摘要
Jeff Wilson's important Mindful America is the first book‐length work of religious studies scholarship on what Wilson calls “the mindfulness movement,” an indisputably major current religio‐cultural force in the United States. Wilson charts the “large scale trends” of the adoption and adaptation of Buddhist‐derived mindfulness teaching and practices. His work is a useful history of these developments and the significant permutations that even the term “mindfulness”—much less understandings of the experiential state to which it refers—has gone through over time. Each chapter focuses on different processes by which these permutations have occurred (the unfailingly alliterated “mystifying mindfulness,” “marketing mindfulness,” etc.). Some of the most helpful portions of Wilson's work include his analyses of the often‐ignored gender and racial dynamics of these activities, the gendering and, as he says, “whitening of mindfulness.” Wilson describes how “mindfulness” has been reconstructed to fit with “mainstream” US norms and values, “mutually transforming” both Buddhist traditions and US culture. He outlines how “mindfulness” has been primarily approached for practical benefit here whether in medical or corporate spheres. But, countering common criticisms of these phenomena, Wilson states that “an important guiding thesis for Mindful America is that this is actually how Buddhism moves into new cultures and becomes domesticated.” Wilson's conclusions, on this point and others, are somewhat conflicted. He states his intention “not to be an advocate or a critic,” but alternates wearing the guise of both. Nonetheless, this work is a highly recommended “first foray” into a hugely popular phenomena of far‐reaching influence.
