The Mindful Elite: Mobilizing from the Inside Out

Abstract

From the halls of the Ivy League to the C-suite at Fortune 500 companies, this book reveals the people behind the mindfulness movement, and the engine they built to propel mindfulness into public consciousness. Based on over a hundred interviews with meditating scientists, religious leaders, educators, businesspeople, and investors, this book shows how this highly accomplished, affluent group has popularized meditation as a tool for health, happiness, and social reform over the past forty years. Rather than working through temples or using social movement tactics like protest to improve society, they mobilized by building elite networks advocating the benefits of meditation across professions. They built momentum by drawing in successful, affluent people and their prestigious institutions, including Ivy League and flagship research universities, and Fortune 100 companies like Google and General Mills. To broaden meditation's appeal, they made manifold adaptations along the way. In the end, does mindfulness really make our society better? Or has mindfulness lost its authenticity? This book reveals how elite movements can spread, and how powerful spiritual and self-help movements can transform individuals in their wake. Yet, spreading the dharma came with unintended consequences. With their focus on individual transformation, the mindful elite have fallen short of the movement's lofty ambitions to bring about broader structural and institutional change. Ultimately, this idealistic myopia unintentionally came to reinforce some of the problems it originally aspired to solve. Part I: An introduction to the mindful elite. The contemplative elite and capitalism : a case of contradictions, successes, and shortcomings -- A brief history of Buddhist-inspired American spirituality, 1830s-1970s -- The contemplatives (1979- ) -- Part II: Mobilizing meditation through consensus-based strategies. Accessing institutions -- Making mindfulness appealing -- Interventions' transformation from the inside out -- The elite circuit -- Part III: Assessing the contemplatives' success, 2013-2016. Collective authenticity -- In conclusion.