A Serialization of Coming to Our Senses

I suspect there might be general agreement among the readership of Mindfulness, at least in principle, that a dose of authentic mindfulness, whatever that means—and it is, happily, open to a range of different creative interpretations—would be potentially helpful in the worlds of economics and politics at this moment in time. This may be especially the case given (1) the paroxysm of greed and delusion within the financial industry that almost brought down the global economy and has created so much suffering in our society and worldwide, and (2) the level of antipathy between the two leading political parties in the USA that has developed over the past decade and the impasses it has led to in terms of steering the nation toward greater well-being and health. The rise of the Occupy movement and its vociferous protesting of the economic inequality in the society, as encapsulated in the “we are the 99 %” slogan, is to my mind a hopeful diagnostic, suggesting that a new way of seeing the condition of the body politic—economically, politically, and socially—is widely felt to be necessary. …