Mindfulness provides important psychological and emotional benefits for individuals, but caring for our own personal wellbeing as if it were a private affair is no longer sustainable given the impending risk of the collapse of civilization. Paving a mindful path for collective liberation and ecological healing requires a shift in consciousness from ‘me to we’ to engage with the challenges we face in ways that go beyond a concern for personal salvation.
This shift calls for new forms of spiritual activism that engage the sociopolitical domain with what the Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi calls “conscientious compassion,” where the practice of compassion is unified with a drive for justice. Thus, we need a ‘civic mindfulness’ that focuses attention on stresses in the body politic as well as the structural interventions and systemic changes that are the root causes of our cultural malaise and ecological collapse. Whereas most therapeutic interventions place the burden on the individual for coping with the anxieties produced by this malaise, civic mindfulness empowers individuals to question the dominant order so that they can see how their everyday worries and insecurities are linked to the social and economic contexts of their lives.
When mindfulness is taught and practiced in ways that help people connect the dots between their personal troubles and public issues, it becomes potentially transformative, but this can’t be done without forging deep bonds of solidarity and communities of resistance as a path for engendering a regenerative culture. However, isn’t this just another call for politics and social activism? Where does mindfulness come in?
