McMindfulness

Purser appears to have multiple criticisms of the craze for secular mindfulness, among them that it's stripped of any ethical framework, that its claims of scientific backing seem pretty weak (TBH, I'm taking his word for that -- he does provide references, but I haven't followed them up yet), that it claims to be inspired by Buddhism when it's useful to do so, but then ditches it when it's useful to be purely secular and, perhaps most pointed, that it's ideally suited to corporate wellness programs as it mitigates the stress of the workplace without challenging anything about why work is the way it is. Can feel a bit overly ranty, and maybe too personally directed at Jon Kabat-Zinn in particular. Also leans towards being repetitive, though the latter part of the book does break this down quite well by having separate chapters about mindfulness in schools, for example, or in the military. Purser does admit that Buddhism can also fail here, such as the support of the Zen establishment for Japanese militarism in the early twentieth century. He does appear to allow that it makes sense that individuals use mindfulness to ameliorate their own life conditions, and direct his anger at the corporate-friendly practitioners and teachers, but the book felt weakest in expounding alternatives.