Clinical Care, Counseling, and Chaplaincy After the Racial Capitalism of Mindfulness
"Matta" Matthew Zheng, MDiv, Goucher College
Mindfulness is currently posited as a cultural and biomedical panacea; this paper links the recent wave of academic and social criticism of this groupthink to transforming the relationship of the medical-clinical institution to the wisdom traditions of Buddhism(s). This paper argues that the theory and practice of implementing Buddhist-founded clinical care (chiefly existing in counseling and chaplaincy, though broader implementations exist less commonly) have been systematically delimited by an epistemic obsession with mindfulness. Synthesizing historical, anthropological, and philosophical literature, this obsession is contextualized as emerging from the complex, violent, and ongoing colonization and Orientalization of Buddhist Asia by Euroamerican powers. That is, the paper explicates the systematic, sociohistorical conditions which produced the myopic framing of Buddhist contributions to contemporary clinical care as reaching to certain visions of silent, sitting mindfulness meditation and no further. This myopia, of course, extends to the monetization of mindfulness into products, therapeutic modality trademarks, and AI chatbot marketing. "Mindfulness", as such, is revealed to be a social object produced at this junction of domination, capitalist accumulation, and racial hierarchy whose existence evidences the strategically racial & Orientalist flattening of Buddhism as a key cultural foundation to the postcolonial Euroamerican treatment of (Buddhist) Asia.
From this critical and theoretical portion, the paper advances to a constructive and prescriptive analysis of transforming how Buddhist clinical care is envisioned and actualized in context. Drawing on the author's firsthand experience as a Buddhist minister in formation who has served as a clinical hospital chaplain working at a Level I trauma center, a spiritual counselor for LGBTQ+ college youth, and in other helping roles as a Buddhist spiritual companion, it is proposed that 'mindfulness' be replaced as the cultural focus point for Buddhism with 'diaspora', ergo 'diaspora Buddhism'. Diaspora Buddhism is a new concept which has been previously theorized by the author which reframes the Buddhist wisdom traditions beyond Christocentric categories of 'denomination' or 'school', and instead recasts the entire Buddhist social object as phenomena of migration, border and boundary crossing, and the flux of humanity always in emergent formation. Understanding the relationship of Buddhism to contemporary clinical care through this central vehicle of 'diaspora' totally reimagines what can be drawn into clinical practice from religious/spiritual wisdoms, while also calling for those clinical practitioners interested in drawing Buddhist resource into their work to first engage in deep, embodied, and community-informed learning about the sociopolitical and sociocultural history of Buddhist Asia and Buddhism as an inexorably Asian religion (though not one limited to Asians by any means).
The paper is of relevance to clinical chaplains, spiritual caregivers, counselors, therapists, psychiatrists, psychologists, and beyond. It also contributes to academic disciplinary discourses in Buddhist studies, religious studies, anthropology, critical theory, Asian American/diaspora studies, and postcolonial thought.
From this critical and theoretical portion, the paper advances to a constructive and prescriptive analysis of transforming how Buddhist clinical care is envisioned and actualized in context. Drawing on the author's firsthand experience as a Buddhist minister in formation who has served as a clinical hospital chaplain working at a Level I trauma center, a spiritual counselor for LGBTQ+ college youth, and in other helping roles as a Buddhist spiritual companion, it is proposed that 'mindfulness' be replaced as the cultural focus point for Buddhism with 'diaspora', ergo 'diaspora Buddhism'. Diaspora Buddhism is a new concept which has been previously theorized by the author which reframes the Buddhist wisdom traditions beyond Christocentric categories of 'denomination' or 'school', and instead recasts the entire Buddhist social object as phenomena of migration, border and boundary crossing, and the flux of humanity always in emergent formation. Understanding the relationship of Buddhism to contemporary clinical care through this central vehicle of 'diaspora' totally reimagines what can be drawn into clinical practice from religious/spiritual wisdoms, while also calling for those clinical practitioners interested in drawing Buddhist resource into their work to first engage in deep, embodied, and community-informed learning about the sociopolitical and sociocultural history of Buddhist Asia and Buddhism as an inexorably Asian religion (though not one limited to Asians by any means).
The paper is of relevance to clinical chaplains, spiritual caregivers, counselors, therapists, psychiatrists, psychologists, and beyond. It also contributes to academic disciplinary discourses in Buddhist studies, religious studies, anthropology, critical theory, Asian American/diaspora studies, and postcolonial thought.