Can Thich Nhat Hanh win the mindful competition?

In the world of corporate mindfulness, Google -- which is so ubiquitous that its name is synonymous with "search online" -- has an equally impressive teacher: Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh. Thay, as he is known by followers, has sold more than 2 million books in the U.S. and is deeply admired and respected.

He recently spoke to The Guardian about his message to Google and other tech companies.

It doesn't matter, he said, if companies begin promoting mindfulness to make their workers more effective of increase profits. If they are practicing "true" mindfulness, it will fundamentally change their perspective, opening the door to greater compassion.

"If you know how to practice mindfulness you can generate peace and joy right here, right now. And you'll appreciate that and it will change you.

In the beginning, you believe that if you cannot become number one, you cannot be happy, but if you practice mindfulness you will readily release that kind of idea. We need not fear that mindfulness might become only a means and not an end because in mindfulness the means and the end are the same thing. There is no way to happiness; happiness is the way."

Thay's optimism that mindfulness will transform business people rather than corporations transforming mindfulness isn't universally shared. David Loy and Ron Purser write that   "McMindfulness," the watered-down, stress-relieving version taught in some companies, is not what the Buddha intended.

According to the Pali Canon (the earliest recorded teachings of the Buddha), even a person committing a premeditated and heinous crime can be exercising mindfulness, albeit wrong mindfulness. Clearly, the mindful attention and single-minded concentration of a terrorist, sniper assassin, or white-collar criminal is not the same quality of mindfulness that the Dalai Lama and other Buddhist adepts have developed. Right Mindfulness is guided by intentions and motivations based on self-restraint, wholesome mental states, and ethical behaviors -- goals that include but supersede stress reduction and improvements in concentration.

Their essay was published on The Huffington Post, whose founder, Ariana Huffington, a meditator herself, wrote there about using yoga and meditation to reduce work stress. "I do want to talk about maximizing profits and beating expectations -- by emphasizing the notion that what's good for us as individuals is also good for corporate America's bottom line."

Huffington pointed to Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini, who practices yoga and meditation. Bertolini was paid $30 million in 2013. How can you be mindful of $30 million? Aetna is headquartered in Hartford, Conn. If you head a few miles east, you'll come to Bolton, a town whose entire budget is less than $20 million.

Thay told the Guardian that if executives are in the practice for selfish reasons, then they are experiencing a mere pale shadow of mindfulness.

"If you consider mindfulness as a means of having a lot of money, then you have not touched its true purpose," he says. "It may look like the practise of mindfulness but inside there's no peace, no joy, no happiness produced. It's just an imitation. If you don't feel the energy of brotherhood, of sisterhood, radiating from your work, that is not mindfulness."

As he puts it: "If you're happy, you cannot be a victim of your happiness. But if you're successful, you can be a victim of your success.

... What is the use of having more money if you suffer more? They also should understand that if they have a good aspiration, they become happier because helping society to change gives life a meaning."

But how is suffering understood in these corporate environments? Or happiness? Do these meditators get the idea that happiness cannot be found in impermanent, material things but only from within?

Here's Huffington: There's nothing touchy-feely about increased profits. This is a tough economy, and it's going to be that way for a long time. Stress-reduction and mindfulness don't just make us happier and healthier, they're a proven competitive advantage for any business that wants one.

Mindful competition. So much for releasing the idea of being No. 1.

A Buddhist view of interdependence

This is a talk I gave Feb. 26 at the Unitarian Universalist Society: East in Manchester CT.

“We are the 100 Percent” Nancy Thompson

The UUS:E Buddhist Group read the book “One City: A Declaration of Interdependence,” over several months, one or two chapters each month. When we got to the end, one of the members commented that she preferred the UU view of interdependence. What is that view? I asked. “It’s self-explanatory,” she said, “respect for interdependent web of all existence. Everything is connected.”

That’s pretty much the Buddhist view of interdependence too.

But interdependence has been a UU principle only since 1985. The Buddhists have been playing with the idea for 2,500 years, so we’ve had a lot more time to complex things up.

In Buddhism, interdependence operates on two levels, which the two readings described. The reading from “One City,” about waking up, is about interdependence on the relative level, the physical world, where we live and breathe and function.

(Contrary to what you may have heard about Buddhist ideas of non-self and emptiness, you do exist.)

But on the absolute or ultimate level, which is described in the reading from Thich Nhat Hahn, you don’t exist the way you think you do. On that level, we’re connected not only by manufactured goods or the Internet, we’re connected because we all share the same nature – which is inherently pure and rich and free from limitations; It’s the energy that precedes the labels good or bad, the pure perception of the moment.

It’s described as beyond concept, and it’s not a place we can go with our relative, or form, bodies. Those bodies have to eat, sleep, earn money, function in this world. But that feeling can inform our actions in the physical world.

Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, a Tibetan teacher whose Shambhala Buddhist lineage aims to make traditional teachings relevant to the modern western world, describes the two aspects as “earth, which is what you have in your refrigerator and bank account,” and “heaven,” or your lofty ideals. Human beings bring them together.

So … if our role is to manifest the all-encompassing goodness of the absolute in this relative existence, how do we do that? What does that look like? How would we act – how would we resolve disputes, celebrate life events, organize our households, our cities, our governments?

How would we behave toward one another if we knew, REALLY knew without question, deep in our bones, that we’re all parts of the same organism, not separate bits?

One of the things Buddhism shares with Unitarian-Universalism is that it doesn’t provide answers to the questions. The Buddha set out a process by which we investigate for ourselves – starting with ourselves.

The Interdependence Project, which Ethan Nichtern founded and where I study, has this slogan: “Change your mind to change the world.” The only way to create true, lasting change is to examine the assumptions that guide our actions. That goes for our cultural, societal assumptions, as well as our personal ones.

This is a passage from “One City”:

“Interdependence doesn’t only mean that conditions and events in the world exist inseparably –like the link between a half-liter plastic bottle, oil, and the environment. It also means the mindsets of individuals and the society that those individuals co-produce are likewise inextricably connected.

“The logic of this relationship is almost painfully obvious: our society has manifested in its present form because the people who comprise it – knowingly or not – collectively acted to make it this way. So where do those actions come from? They spring from the thoughts, habits, and conditioned beliefs of the many individuals who create our society.

“Not only is it important for us to examine our actions in the world, but we also need an ongoing method for examining the thoughts, habits, and belief structures from which those actions unfold.”

That’s done through meditation, the main practice of Buddhism. You’ve probably seen statues or paintings of the Buddha sitting cross-legged. Meditators still sit that way, as still as possible, only their minds moving. Because in meditation, we watch thoughts arise, observe habitual patterns assert themselves, pick apart the source and meaning of thoughts to learn how our minds work.

While meditation is an internal practice, it changes how we relate to the world.

Pema Chodron, a Buddhist nun and student of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, says that if we begin to let go of the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and the world and simply sit with the sometimes messy and awkward and painful stuff of reality “we begin to find … the tenderness that’s underneath all the harshness. By being kind to ourselves, we become kind to others. By being kind to others—if it’s done properly, with proper understanding—we benefit as well.”

The point, she says, ”is that we are completely interrelated. What you do to others, you do to yourself. What you do to yourself, you do to others."

If we see someone as our enemy, we approach them in a certain way – warily, with our defenses up, ready to defend against attack – or to attack first. If we start instead from a view of commonality, our approach is different.

One approach encourages separateness, defensiveness. The other considers all possibilities. Rather than operating from a view of scarce resources, it sees shared richness.

Look at our consumption habits. We buy a lot of stuff. We buy a lot of stuff we don’t need, in packaging that uses more material than necessary. Why?

Because, Nichtern argues, we feel that we are inadequate, and our culture reinforces that. We’re constantly presented with images of a life that’s better, bigger, with brighter things. He equates this to the Buddha’s first and second noble truths: We are dissatisfied with our lives and feel inadequate because we misunderstand our fundamental nature. We pursue our ideal of perfection – whether that’s a more muscular body, a nicer car, a better social life, a certain political candidate – instead of looking at and becoming comfortable with reality.

If we examine those views, we could find that the present moment is enough.

He writes: “Buddhism’s contribution to interdependence starts with individuals trying to understand what makes our minds tick – why we want what we want, fear what we fear, act how we act, do what we do. From there we can initiate a discussion about how our world works. And once we gain some insight into our minds and the world, we can begin to control our personal projectors and the collective projection, in small ways and big ones. Who knows what this world might look like if we transformed it? It might look a little bit different. Or maybe we would look at it a little bit differently.”

Nichtern is a shastri, or senior teacher, in the Shambhala tradition. Trungpa Rinpoche wrote about the need for enlightened society; his son, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, who now leads Shambhala, recently has made that his focus.

Enlightened society, he says, is one that recognizes that all beings share an inherent richness, a primordial goodness, much like the inherent worth and dignity of all beings in our first Unitarian Universalist principle.

The question is: How do we act from that recognition? What does an enlightened society look like? How do people behave? What are the structures?

There are no set answers. The closest to a directive is the Sakyong’s emphasis on creating “a culture of kindness.”

I just got back from two weeks at a retreat contemplating enlightened society with a group of other dedicated meditators. If that society can exist, this was how it starts.

What I can tell you is that even when people are willing to be open-hearted and honest, to interact from a place of kindness, they still have disagreements. They still snore. They stand too close or smell too strongly. They are human.

But they’re willing to own their reactions. And they’re willing to assume that others’ actions are not intended to harm them or judge them so that awkwardness dies out and love arises. And if we replace judgment and condemnation with kindness and acceptance, the culture cannot help but transform.

The actual practice of interdependence means making choices throughout the day. Nichtern writes, “Practicing interdependence requires constantly examining our lifestyle and making decisions about what habits to cultivate and what to avoid.”

He lists three daily practices (in addition to meditation) that he chose to do at the time he wrote the book:

1) Question one consumption choice.

2) Thank everyone who serves you.

3) Pick up a piece of garbage you did not create.

Not too hard. My own daily practices include answering the phone with friendly curiosity rather than hostility, telling people about the good I see in them, delighting in the world around me. Small things, but they begin to turn our minds from a base of conflict to kindness.

Nichtern writes: “Fumbling blindly for what is mystical, we miss what is holy within the mundane event of walking down a city street. Interdependence only SEEMS like a profound truth because we don’t recognize it 99 percent of the time.”

Chogyam Trungpa suggests that the secret is appreciation. “We have fundamental appreciation and respect for what we do,” he said. “Every act is a sacred act. With that inspiration, we regard every experience in our life as sacred as well.”