Guerrilla Buddha

Where the spiritual becomes political. For those whose internal work supports external change, and whose social activism is a spiritual practice.

[gbuddhaface]

Is Your Spirituality Bullshit?

11 simple ways to check if your spiritual practice is fake-arse harmful consumer Prozac bullshit or the real revolutionary deal?

- by Sub-Meditator Marcos 

“Whatever relationships you have attracted in your life at this moment, are precisely the ones you need in your life at this moment. There is a hidden meaning behind all events, and this hidden meaning is serving your own evolution.” - Deepak Chopra speaking to 1 million dead in Iraq, the 200 species that went extinct today, rape victims worldwide and the rest of us. Wanker. 

Religion has been described as the opiate of the masses, and modern “spiritual but not religious” approaches as another Prozac of the middle class. I have been critical of how supposedly spiritual practices such as yoga, meditation and martial arts can be used in the service of harmful consumer culture. While posing as revolutionary much of modern new-age spirituality and it’s packaged “alternative” offshoots are really in service of a psychologically, socially and environmentally destructive system. It could be argued however that McMindfulness and friends are only harmful as corrupted forms and that the real thing is actually deeply radical. In Buddhism beneficial qualities have “near enemies” - pity with compassion and attachment with love for example, and this makes a nice analogy. One might point to Jesus kicking money-lender butt or Buddha smashing up the Indian caste system, or more modern embodiments of spiritual arse-kickery such as Gandhi’s spiritually driven resistance (but note he didn’t JUST meditate) or South American liberation theology. How then might one determine if you’re suckling on a spirituality painted capitalist teet or getting to the heart of the good stuff? 

First, I’d like to be clear I’m not having the mainstream religious vs spirituality debate here. It’s old news that religion is often used to prove your ethic group is God’s favourite, go on a murderous crusade/jihad, put up with anything for the promise of heaven, and generally be social controlled and manipulated by the ruling class. Church has traditionally been massively in cahoots with both state and business as a tool of conformity and oppression and I take it as a given that you’re smart enough to see this. Heh, maybe the new groovy Pope will prove me wrong before the CIA send him to his socialist God prematurely.

What I’m asking is how would you know if your spiritual practice were genuinely transformative, and therefore deeply challenging to the status quo, or another way of sustaining it - part of the Spiritual Industrial Complex (SIC)? Here are some near enemies:

1. Leadership or egoic?

Genuine transformative spirituality has an agentic individualist component which I’ll label leadership - as in personally being responsible to lead your life, acknowledging we’re all different and choice really matters. Being egoic on the other hand is more like “fuck you, I’ll do what I like!!!”, serving nobody but yourself. You could also see this distinction as “purpose or pushing?”. Related to it is “psychologising” - turning personal responsibility into blaming oneself or others for harmful systemic structures, environmental damage and inequality. Turning these into individual psychological problems  - “you’re broken, not the system” - is extremely convenient for the status bullshit quo.*

Check - Do you have autonomy, personal responsibility and choice in your practice, while still acknowledging culture and systems as influences?

* In integral terms this is seeing only the upper left quadrant as causal, a viewed shared by the far right and new agers. 

2. Service orientated or group conformity? 

Any healthy spirituality must balance the rights of the individual with group belonging and positive social action. If I had to pick just one factor as a differentiator it would be this. The SIC forms lack a service element and either encourage new-age egotism “you can get whatever you want!” or the unhealthy group conformity like traditional religion and cults. Spirituality is always about putting something beyond oneself, while not getting lost in the crowd (think Nuremberg), hence these first two points need to be in harmony. This service element needs to be at the very core of the practice like the Bodhisattvas vow - “for all sentient beings” - not a corporate social responsibility style “lot of work for charity” add on.

Check - Is a service element at the core of your practice? 

3. Community or pseudo-community? 

In many SIC events there is the plastic veneer of community. Real community take time and commitment and can’t be achieved in an intense weekend retreat. Practising in a real  community means mutual support and challenge for a common goal. Also that the community has shared values and some norms, and a hard boundary with conditions for entry and exit - sorry folks, a community can not function without these any more than a person without a skin. NB: The consumer model of the expert “works” and you “shop” (a fee paying “workshop“) almost totally precludes community and also damages agency (1.). 

Check - is your practice both supported by, and to support, a committed group with a common purpose?

4. Awordly or worldly?

If a practice is just about getting rich (e.g. meditating on abundance and mindfulness for corporate jerks), getting famous or powerful (e.g. many influence and leadership workshops) or getting more attractive (most yoga let’s be honest confuse embodied with body beautiful ascribing to the same sick standards as consumer culture) it’s bullshit. Gaining wealth of various kinds can be seen as toxic too (imwordly), a nice but largely irrelevant byproduct of (aworldly) or even a helpful means to an end (tantra) of spiritual practice, but it is never the point. This is the classic spiritual materialism.  

Check - is the point of your practice worldly gain?

5. Acceptance or passivity?

Acceptance is a beautiful double-edged sword. Surrender to what is the case, is not the same as surrender to authority or passivity in the face of what really can be changed. True spirituality misquotes Suzuki Roshi, “The world is perfect as it is, and it could do with massive social change”. Paradoxically, acceptance and letting go of resentments is actually the beginning of effective action, as we need to start where we actually are and go with the flow. This is deferent from being a victim. A key bullshit indicator that MOST ancient and modern systems have is spiritual practice instead of social action. This is the basic placating anaesthetic effect of pseudo-spiritual practice. If I feel bad I can either deal with that externally by enacting change or use and use meditation/prayer/ whatever to feel better internally. Real spirituality looks the dying kid on the poster in the eye, feels the fucking burn and feels compelled to act. Compassion is just a rumour until it’s in the muscle.    

Check - Do you take shit? Do you deal with external shit by practicing to feel better about it. 

6. Gratitude or fake smile?

Cultivating gratitude as any US Army approved Positive Psychology course will tell you is a part of most genuine spiritual traditions. Personally I have found it transformative to look at each day and ask, “what can I be thankful for?”, taking acceptance one step further. This is  quite different from ignoring what needs to be changed or plastering on a fake smile - see smile or die on the harmful effects of “being positive” and more on the psychologising of social injustice. 

Check - Are you grateful without forcing a smile?

  7. Emotionally intelligent or emotionally indulgent? 

A healthy spirituality is emotionally aware yet appropriately expressed and contained. SIC tends to be repressed like mainstream religion or more commonly a cathartic emotionally indulgent bukkake pornfest, confusing emotional release and intensity with spirituality. Often only certain emotions are allowed - e.g. the repression of anger in West Coast eye-contact Buddhism or of sadness in Positive Psychology - so emotional range is a factor here.

Check - Are you in touch with, but not run by, the full range of emotions? 

8. Discerning or judging?

I added this one as I get accused of it all the time :-) Discernment is making distinctions and choices, while judgement adds an aggressive moral component. Critical thinking is a good thing, yet in SIC circles it is often taboo. Related to this would be diversity vs naive pluralism - accepting there are many ways to do spirituality well, but many ways to get it plain wrong! Also, wise vs clever, as a lot of modern spirituality informed by therapy and well-read middle-cass cleverness gets lost in cranio-rectal inversions. 

Check - can you make critical assessments and choices without saying there is only one true way and the others must die! 

NB, this article is a judgmental form for humour and clarity but really about discernment.

9. Mystery or superstition 

Spirituality is just reality. It tastes of bread (and no, not the gluten-free shit). Genuine spirituality is also about mystery and the unknowable, but does not descend into superstition so is in no way in conflict with science. Spirituality is for the subjective and ethical domains and doesn’t make claims over the objective or say there’s no such thing (see Wilber on art, morals and science). Much SIC bullshit like The Secret and other Law of Attraction BULLSHIT!!! (his one deserves capitals and the number of !!!!’s usually only employed by teenage Justin Bieber fans) is about pure narcissistic fantasy. You are not Harry Potter, you can’t do magic you tie-dye dolphin fucking muppets.  

Check - got science? 

10. Self-care or narcissism 

Self-care is a really good idea and the basis on any spirituality. Put your own oxygen mask on first and all that but don’t JUST put your mask on and let everyone around you suffocate. Much of the SIC is very much in keeping with modern consumer self-obsession and just another vanity project. As well as just not giving a damn about others another variation is actually thinking you can do some good by personal example alone as if the hyper-purity of brushing your teeth with organic Fairtrade houmous will be enough to inspire the world and bring down power structures. 

Check - Do you look after yourself without getting off on yourself or thinking that it alone will change the world?

11. Inner vs outer change or both? 

This one is perhaps the crux of it. The litmus-test for your spirituality. Ghandi did yes, drink his own piss and mediate but he also undermined the economic base of the British Empire. While integrity, personal example and self care are important, they’re also not enough. Equally social activism without a strong psychological and spiritual base is more often than not ineffective as burn-out, addiction, lack of discipline, wonton aggression, in-fighting and ethical issues derail good intentions. A much-needed integral approach to spirituality views the inner as a foundation for outer change, and the outer as inner work. This view is actually quite rare in history but is I think, the only chance a world on the brink has. The world needs spiritual warriors, and not just the pretentious metaphorical ones you find in California, but ones who can lovingly kick some serious arse. 

Check - Do you see inner and outer change as mutually exclusive or supportive?  

A note of thanks to Deep Green Resistance who helped me gather much of my thinking here. Onwards comrades! Spiritual Wanker is also a classic if you not seen it, though I think the last word here should really go to Peep Show though. Enjoy.

[gbuddhaface]

Yoga-Whoring, MacMindfulness & the Spiritual Industrial Complex

by Sub-Meditator Marcos 

“Be the change AND use it to kick some arse” - Mahatma Guevara

Wisdom traditions and bodymind practices such as yoga, embodied approaches to leadership and meditation have been co-opted in service of the ruling corporate class. A radical alternative is now needed to what has become a Spiritual Industrial Complex (SIC). This article is a battle cry for guerrilla teachers in the awareness industry who no longer wish to prostitute themselves to the 1%. 

The functions of the Spiritual Industrial Complex (SIC)

Warped wisdom traditions and body awareness practices are now serving a number of harmful functions. This may be hard reading if like me you’ve dedicated much of your life to this field, please stick with it, the second half of the article is about how we can become spiritual warriors in a meaningful way. In brief, the SIC can and often does:

Make us suck more

Help only the 1% to get unsuck

Helps the 1% make our lives suck more

1. Makes us suckers who accept the suck 

Warped wisdom traditions and body awareness practices can make life in a psychological and emotionally damaging, social unjust and isolating, and environmentally destructive world bearable. While well-intended they can perpetuates a system that needs change not toleration. Bodymind practices, particularly when twisted and packaged for the mass market, do not threaten the status quo but unwittingly support it by placating those it damages. If we are suffering from the state of the world we can either do something about it or mediate to feel better irrespective. Religion has always been the opiate of the masses but now the opiate of the middle classes is “spiritual but not religious”. McMindfulness meditation®, Shitram yoga© and other Bodymind Lite™ practices are organic prozac.

A wider context of Western consumer bodymind practices is the the Positive Psychology movement which has roots in nutty religious America and now expresses as a requirement to be optimistic no matter how bad things get - expressed eloquently in “smile or die!”. The head of the movement and president of the American Psychological Society Martin Seligman won a huge military contract uncontested after inspiring the CIA’s “learnt helplessness” torture strategies. 

2. Makes us suck more

Many modern adaptations of bodymind systems focus us on the individual, and on personal gain through superstition. This stems from West-Coast US cultural dominance in the personal growth field (see here) and its place as another market product to be consumed means that bodymind practices are increasingly vehicles for narcissism, selfishness and vanity. This was first identified and named “spiritual materialism” - using spiritual practices in service of the ego - and is now the norm.  See also this piece on spiritually transmitted diseases. “Yoga makes you skinny and hot” is the message on almost every flyer and website I see. The SIC is actively creating the unhealthy consumer culture it claims to cure. 

SIC hyper-individuality diverts the energy of questioning individuals from external social change to internal change. This happened in the late 60’s and early 70‘s when the US West Coast “human potential” movement hijacked a politicised youth and sent them up their own arses. If bodymind practices were done in tandem or to support external change this would be admirable but it is usually offered instead of. The standard view is that if enough people can relax and get long hamstrings the world will be transformed irrespective of domination structures and systems. The incomplete sentence “be the change” is useless as a strategy for social justice or environmental sustainability: at no point in human history has personal example alone forced those abusing power to give it up. Gandhi also fucked shit up - massively disrupting the economic base of the British Empire. The warped wisdom of the SIC can be seen as a kind of “second matrix” - a pressure valve for the mainstream. 

Another issue with bodymind practices politically is that they are usually structured like medieval Asian dictatorships. The implicit message in many classes is conform and obey an authority external to yourself. When was the last time you gave feedback to your Five Rhythms teacher or did yoga democratically? 

What appears to be counter-cultural is not, it is part of the problem.

3. Help only the 1% to get unsuck

While watered-down SIC new-age bodymind practices to subdue the masses have proliferated, other awareness practices are mostly accessible to the elite with financial and cultural barriers blocking others. I had a moment recently where I saw this in yet another workshop full of white, middle-aged, middle-class corporate trainers and the wives of the 1%. Increasingly quality bodymind teachers prostitute* their services to the world’s abusers by only making them available to the highest bidder. Were they doing genuinely transformative work this might be a good thing (it’s the sick who need a doctor after all) but more often than not it’s just putting knives in the hands of dangerous children (see 4.).  In a world where everything had a price, wisdom is just one more commodity to be traded, and those with money will get the biggest share. 

4. Helps the 1% make life suck more

Bodymind practices are increasingly used to benefit the efficiency of psychopaths in power without changing either their fundamental attitudes and behaviours, or the structures and systems they benefit from. Teaching meditation to arseholes can just make them more efficient arseholes (or snipers). It is naive to think that powerful tools will always have a positive impact. I have also learnt working in business that there are many non-psychopaths in charge (I’d guess about 50% of the 1%) trapped in a kind of doublethink, horribly stressed and hooked on wealth and also victims of the system in a way. Causing distress causes discomfort in all but the psychopathic, alleviating this distress is not kind. Even of we take the perspective we are helping traumatised and dehumanised people feel again, this is little more than cruelty when they continue to operate a machine that retraumatises and dehumanises them and others. Note that even if wisdom traditions could make them happy the machine they operate does not stop. While humanising those in power can of course be beneficial - in fact I’d make the argument that helping those in power to feel themselves and therefore others and the planet is a vital PART of the solution - much more is needed for significant change. Teaching yoga to banker is not revolutionary. 

Invalid Excuses

The following are excuses I have made myself and continue to hear in the field as reasons to continue supporting a harmful, unjust and environmentally destructive system. I’ve become recently become somewhat intolerant of my own and peer’s bullshit so excuse the cantankerous tone:

“I just help people”

No, you help people who hurt people

“I help everyone”

No, you mostly help those who have the $$$

“The work always have a positive influence”

Don’t be so naive. Read Zen at War. 

“I change things from the inside”

Really? You may help people get happier but does that change the systems and structures?

“I can’t afford it”

You mean, “I’m not willing to make any sacrifice at all in my lifestyle to live in accordance with my ethics”. It refers to greed not necessity. With very few exceptions most of us are not breadline. Cut down on trips to India and save some carbon too :-)

Guerrilla action for bodymind teachers:

So what’s can I do? Can we fight for something instead of just against how things currently are?

First, I think an honest holding up of our hands and saying, “yes, I’m a part of this” is needed in the teaching community. I am far from free from blame and write this having recently started to wake up to the SIC. This is quite painful but for me now, anything else is living a lie. I encourage others to have the courage to take a hard look and make the transition to being “guerrilla” meditation teachers, yoga teachers, aikido teachers etc. If you're tired of saving people from drowning and want to find out who's pushing people in the water in get in touch. I would love a world where wisdom traditions are used in support of genuine social change. Where we meditate to support social action, and our social action is part of our spiritual practice. What would it be like if having the privilege of access to leading-edge bodymind technology we ensured accessibility to all, especially those on the front lines of social activism? What would it be like if we downed tools and refused to help those perpetuating abuse?

Here are some personal commitments that may also be helpful for others too. For my part I will:

Take the position that we live under an occupying force that does not have our best interests at heart, and that I am part of the resistance. My aim is not to accommodate or support a psychologically damaging, socially unjust and environmentally destructive system but to support those who will destroy it from within and without. The first shift is mindset. I have a choice between being a collaborator or being a trainer of real revolutionaries. No, not metaphorical spiritual revolutionaries, real integral ones who use the inside to benefit the outside and vice versa. 

Find ways to make my work financially and socially accessible. No excuses. I may have to cut down on expensive soy cappuccinos. This has already started by designing an open-source peer-led and democratic personal development program based on 12-step.  

Refuse to teach anyone with power unless I see a significant opening for meaningful change. No giving knives to already dangerous children.

Actively seek our change makers who would benefit from what I do

Design a radical embodiment course to highlight issues of social injustice

Design a leadership course specifically for radical groups and give it away 

Continue psychological resilience work with NGOs

Cease supporting the mainstream SIC financially as a consumer

Incorporate a service elements into my courses and other aspects to discourage narcissism 

Make the links between the embodied work I teach and politics explicit (see video links)

The term “spiritual warrior” can be taken much more literally than the normal Californian lameosity...including in ways I won’t be discussing publicly online ;-) 

*NB: prostitution is used as an emotive analogy for selling that which is sacred and is not an attack on sex workers.

Video resources on the politics of embodiment

Deep Green Resistance - an inspiration 

Climate change and Buddhism 

When practice isn't enough

Dance therapy for veterans 

Africa Yoga Project

Aiki Extensions (martial arts for social change)

Body electric

Disembodied mess

Spiritual wanker

Consumerism and the body

Occupy Oneself

Anna Halprin

Embodied Nonviolence - Paul Linden

Body and gender in the media

Better Dead than TED

Wellbeing tips for those on the front lines

Environment and the body

Zen Peacemakers 

Anti-fascist martial arts 

Somatherapy

Who the hell am I talk like this?

In the spirit of self-obsessed personal development allow me the indulgence of sharing my own story here. I came to the beautiful bodymind practice of aikido while depressed and alcoholic while still part of an “educational” system I found a repulsive tool of social control. In aikido I found meaning and dived-in, eventually becoming a full-time live-in aikido student in several countries. My life changed when I became involved with Aiki Extensions an organisation that used aikido in peace projects in the Middle East, The Slums of Brazil and East Africa. After some years living put of a bag in various areas of conflict I came home burnt-out and traumatised. I got myself together and started employing what I’d learnt in the bodymind field to organisations founding a business training company. In the last seven years I have been of some use in major multi-national corporations, in well known charities, with Occupy and even the Army of Sierra Leone and The House of Lords I travel to areas of conflict with our resilience training initiative. In this time I have seen the popularity of mindfulness, yoga and related disciplines sky rocket, first to my glee and now with concern. I think my industry has reached the point when we have moved from helping the sick get better to helping them make everyone else sick, hence this blog.