Why you can't buy inner peace Why you can't buy inner peace

Nowadays, mindfulness meditation is widespread. The practice is taught in schools and hospitals, studied in universities around the world and practiced by traders and even basketball players like Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant.

Studies have shown that meditation helps reduce anxiety and regulate blood pressure, among other benefits. Jon Kabat-Zinn, a doctor who developed the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program to help psychiatric patients, is one of the most famous teachers.

In a world that pushes us to work harder and longer, people burn out and our lives are reduced to cogs. Most of us work in front of a computer and deal with great amounts of pressure at work, all while taking overcrowded public transportation and being more and more plugged in on social media.

Companies have started encouraging their employees to practice meditation in order to reduce work-related stress and to make them more performative. But is it doing any good?

Presence is not management

The problem is that mindfulness isn’t a management tool to control yours or others’ experiences, but rather helps you explore and develop the quality of your attention through practice. The medical benefits are real, but grasping for them greedily goes against its openness.

Moreover, wanting to take these benefits for our own is delusional. It’s like not being able to sleep: you’re not going to fall asleep by forcing yourself to. It’s the same with meditation: forcing yourself to be open and present is not possible. Presence comes when you don’t expect it. Openness happens when you let go of your goals.

Meditation is increasingly becoming a management strategy. Although it’s fair to offer people a way to overcome their problems and to be happy, it’s hypocritical to want them to be that way. Seeing meditation as a way to “improve yourself” is just a way to manipulate people into meeting economical and performative standards.

The perpetuation of individual guilt

Another problem that arises through the popularity of mindfulness is the myth that we are fully responsible for everything in our lives. For example, if we have issues at work, it’s our fault. We then put tremendous amounts of pressure on ourselves to succeed and be worthy of our job. More and more, that state of mind leads to the illness of today: burning out. Like a car that accelerates and brakes at the same time, we are torn between two contradictory movements: “I have to work more” and “I have to think less about my basic needs – sleep, social interactions, hobbies.”

Of course, we have some responsibility for everything we experience. But our partners, the companies we work for, and our governments are also responsible. Everybody does their share.

As a person, you have to make sure you do your best work. That includes knowing you may be tired or lazy at times – it happens. As a company, you have to make sure you don’t overwhelm your employees with too much work or pressure. It used to be thought that the more you pressured someone, the more you’d get out of them. But the drastic increase of burnout at work shows us that while the philosophy might apply to grapes, it doesn’t apply to humans.

Studies on burnout have shown that those most affected are hard-workers who don’t want to let down their company or their colleagues. They stay late, work a lot, and eventually break down. They are not lazy or fragile – they are the most strong and courageous ones. They are under the impression that “it’s never good enough”, and they push their limits too far.

Can meditation be dangerous?

The trendy idea that meditation is quick fix to all our problems is very revealing. It outlines how our capitalistic world tends to consume everything to perpetuate itself. Traditionally a spiritual practice of awakening and freedom, meditation has become a way to being professional powerhouse. What a change!

I am not saying we should go back to the Buddhist way of practicing meditation. We are Westerners, and I think it is good that meditation has found a way to help us.

But we have to be vigilant. Meditation can become another plague if we let it be manipulated and distorted. Remember: meditation is meeting what is, not improving it; being open, not focused; being fully present and aware, not monitoring everything.

The only way to let meditation be what it is – a wonderful tool to be fully human – is to let go of every misconception we have of it.