As communists, we understand the causes of many of our woes in the modern life (i.e. class warfare, exploitation, etc), we are also not the most spiritual folks (at least from my anecdotal experience). Both things usually don’t mix well with this now trending topic of meditation and mindfulness in the West. Unfortunately, as with everything on capitalism, meditation was commodified, and often as not sold as the new snake-oil for mental health and improvement of lifestyle for the mordem working class of big cities, masking the causes of the many issues afflicting us in this late stage capitalism. HOWEVER, we know that meditative practices predate capitalism by several centuries. Also, anyone who’s been serious on the practice, knows that there is much more to meditation than what your mindfulness app endorsed by The Economist is promising you (helping fall asleep, focus, put up with your insufferable boss or wtv). So I’ll stop rambling and just go to my question: anyone has any Marxist oriented views on meditative practices? It’s something that interests me much, since the practice is totally self-oriented, and so, much less likely to be subject of socialism/communism discussions, but at the same time, in the East the practice is much more common and widespread, so in China, for example, there must be some interesting views on this.
Do not underestimate the compatibility of materialism with spiritualism, they are perfect complements for each other IMO and IMO it is such a tragedy that these twins are pitted against each other. I feel like this seeming dichotomy is merely the result of historical conditions, religion has been used as such a painful weapon of oppression against the workers for so long that it seems inseperable from the ruling class and all their insanity.
Along those lines, yes meditation and everything surrounding it in the West is a toxic cesspool of capitalist evil, but as others have pointed out don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. I find even having a nominally meditative task where you just shut your brain off to be so invaluable, I always tell people “find your ‘gardening’ .”