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Funie Hsu’s “How Mainstream Mindfulness Erases Its Buddhist Roots” hit my classroom like a bombshell. We had studied Hindu and Buddhist teachings in my sophomore-level philosophy class, and we were ending the semester by discussing the mindfulness movement. I had introduced Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and we had watched a video where Jon Kabat-Zinn demonstrated the program in action. The students were deeply moved by how he helped people with severe chronic pain in the video, and they loved his caring and gentle teaching persona.Funie Hsu was less impressed, pointing out that white people like Jon Kabat-Zinn appropriate Buddhism without acknowledging Asian American Buddhists and their contributions. They talk about going to Asia as part of the counter-culture movement, learning meditation and mindfulness from Buddhist teachers in Asia, and then bringing it all back to the United States. But Buddhism didn’t come to America in the 1960s. It was brought to the United States by Chinese and Japanese immigrants in the 1800s.My students already looked nervous, and it got worse. Hsu explained that those immigrants and their religion were met with suspicion, racism, and discrimination. But many of their leaders still opened their temples to curious white visitors, and some became mentors to them. Their work has remained largely invisible in the white community, even though many of the famous white teachers were taught by Asian-American Buddhists. And that seems kind of … racist. Hsu writes,Though Kabat-Zinn has practiced with Buddhist teachers himself … his strategic erasure of Buddhism reinforces racial and religious stereotypes in order to appease a white-dominant social structure. (“How Mainstream Mindfulness Erases Its Buddhist Roots,” The Progressive, February 12, 2022)All this seemed … very bad indeed.My classroom was almost all white (except for a Muslim student from Pakistan), and that was suddenly painfully visible to all of us. The students were in shock. They were also guilt-ridden and defensive. Several argued that Jon Kabat-Zinn was a bad man, and other students nodded. They concluded that Buddhism should be left to Asians and Asian Americans, white people shouldn’t explore Buddhism, and they certainly shouldn’t adopt and modify any of its practices in the ways that Kabat-Zinn had. Two guys in the back of my classroom timidly suggested that Kabat-Zinn should get credit for helping people with severe chronic pain cope without opioids, but they were quickly shamed into silence.I wasn’t quite shamed into silence myself, but I might as well have been since my talking had no effect. It wasn’t my finest hour. I paid for it by reading a lot of preachy and one-sided final papers.So how should non-Asian Americans handle Buddhism and mindfulness in our classrooms and our lives? Were my students right that we should just stay away?No, I don’t think so. I may have been more successful in getting students to reconsider if I had asked them to reread Hsu. She writes,Buddhism belongs to all sentient beings. Even so, Asians and Asian Americans have a rightful, distinct historical claim to Buddhism…. It is because of our physical, emotional, and spiritual labor, our diligent cultivation of the practice through time and through histories of oppression, that Buddhism has persisted to the current time period and can be shared with non-Asian practitioners.In order to alleviate the suffering caused by cultural appropriation, we can refrain from asserting ownership of a free teaching that belongs all. We can refrain from asserting false authority and superiority over those who have diligently maintained the practice to share freely with others. And we can actively work to give dana [generosity] by expressing gratitude for the Asian and Asian American Buddhists who have shared their indigenous ways of being as integral expressions of their practice. (“We’ve Been Here All Along,” Lion’s Roar)Buddhism does belong to all sentient beings. But with that ownership comes responsibility. We need to learn the history. We need to seek out and listen carefully to Asian American voices whenever we can. We need to learn from those whose connections to the tradition are deeper than our own, and we need to acknowledge our debts to them.So how might I teach a class that would do all that better?Here’s what I’m trying this semester.We start with mindfulness and MBSR, reading Thich Nhat Hanh and Jon Kabat-Zinn.We then critically examine the mindfulness movement. We read Funie Hsu, learning how Buddhism was brought to the United States by Asians and how it has been received. We read narratives of young Asian American Buddhists (courtesy of Chenxing Han’s work) and notice the wide variety of practices and views. We read Donald Lopez, learning that the mindfulness movement adapts Buddhism in a selective and limited way. We think through the thorny issues of cultural appropriation, and we discuss ways in which we may be able to engage Buddhist people, ideas, and practices in a more respectful way.Only after all that, several weeks into the semester, do we turn to Buddhist teachings.I like how the class is going so far (we’re starting Buddhist teachings), and I just won a big victory. A student from the first class I discussed is also in this one. She was loudly unflinching in her condemnation of Jon Kabat-Zinn last time. I was not happy about having her in this class: I worried that she would make it impossible for the other students to think through the issues. But she is two years older now, and she’s better at nuance. In her midterm paper, she is planning on critiquing her final paper on Jon Kabat-Zinn from two years ago. When I spoke with her yesterday, she was still objecting to Kabat-Zinn’s work, but she had just reread her old paper and found it embarrassing – “it is so all or nothing, so very simplistic.”I look forward to reading what she comes up with. Clearly, I’m not the only one who has learned something since last time.Notes & Bibliography Han, Chenxing, Be the Refuge: Raising the Voices of Asian American Buddhists (North Atlantic Books, 2021).Hsu, Funie, “How Mainstream Mindfulness Erases Its Buddhist Roots,” The Progressive, February 12, 2022.Hsu, Funie, “We’ve Been Here All Along,” Lion’s Roar.Lopez, Donald, “The Scientific Buddha,” Tricycle, Winter 2012.Moyers, Bill, “Healing and the Mind,” Moyers, February 23, 1993, 1:25:30.

One of my courses is a first-year tutorial designed to fit in with the college-wide objectives to develop new students’ basic academic skills, including writing, critical reading, and oral communication. It also involves individually advising new students to navigate their learning journey until they declare their major field of study. Because the course has multiple goals, it took me a long time to think about an appropriate topic to connect college students’ academic success with their personal lives. I also facilitate students’ embodied learning in their first year. What strategies can I teach them that will enhance their learning progress while adjusting to a new school environment.When designing my course, I found Tammy J. Freiler’s view of being attentive to the entire body as a way of whole-person learning to be helpful. She argues that embodiment is an approach “to construct knowledge through direct engagement in bodily experiences and inhabiting one’s body through a felt sense of being-in-the-world…. It also involves a sense of connectedness and interdependence through the essence of lived experiencing within one’s complete humanness, both body and mind, in perceiving, interacting, and engaging with the surrounding world.”[1] The statement of “complete humanness” inspired my tutorial course topic, “Mindfulness: The Art of Living,” in which I guide students to develop a sense of physical and mental awareness.This is not a meditation course. Instead, the class uses mindfulness as a subject of study. Students study Jeff Wilson’s Mindful America (Oxford, 2014) to build reading, writing, and presentation skills. They also learn how to evaluate the credibility of online resources. While I guide students to take an active role in learning and exploring their academic interests, I encourage them to incorporate mindful practices into their professional performance and everyday life. Teaching the tutorial not only helps me critically reflect upon how to develop a more holistic view of education, but also makes it clear that the traditional approach to teaching mindfulness focuses primarily on the mental aspect, which creates some pitfalls. Although establishing mind-body interaction is the goal, it is easy to neglect the living body as a medium for knowing and connecting with the surrounding world. Several questions and challenges arise, and I have learned at least two noteworthy points about embodied learning.  Providing practice-based learning opportunities is not enough. Active engagement is the key to triggering embodied experiences. This notion is too obvious to be overlooked. My first day teaching this class was a bit challenging, in part because it was ironic to guide a discussion about “mindfulness” when students were sleepy. The class started at 8:00 am, a time when young learners felt a lack of energy. Attempting to address this, I added two-minutes of mindful listening (to the natural sounds of birds singing or forest stream), combined with three minutes of relaxing body movement. In theory, this should have been beneficial and meaningful. Some students, however, did not find it useful. Why? The critical element is engaging with the doing and being immersed in the activity. It takes practice to hone one’s mindfulness and cognition. Students cannot gain any constructive effects unless they develop exactly their own whole-body practice, bringing sensory organs and the mind together.Learning space matters, but students may not be mindful of their interactions with the external world. Being at a residential college, all full-time students are required to live on campus, thus there are very few clear boundaries between living and studying spaces.  How can I help students develop their bodily awareness in academic environments and beyond? I ask students to write a journal to observe their study habits and in what ways they learn the best. The main concern is whether their bodily activities are related to a learning task in a meaningful way, or not. In addition, I have them pay attention to where the most effective locations that enhance their productivity are, to help students think about how environments affect their cognitive process. Some students report locations where they feel less anxious while doing homework, including the Spencer Grill (a café), the atrium at the Human and Social Studies Center, and outdoors. None of them mention their dorm rooms. Students’ reflections are meaningful, as they develop their bodily awareness on campus, acknowledge the body as a basis for their being in the world, and create a personal connection with their surroundings. Teaching first-year students about mindfulness allows me to reflect that learning involves embodied cognition. Although most agree that mindfulness is a practical approach to dealing with day-to-day issues, not everyone values the importance of being attentive to the body. They tend to take their physical presence for granted, and aren’t aware of body experiences as a way of knowing. Thus, it is my responsibility to guide students to develop cognitive awareness, which can subsequently help them appreciate mind-body integration as a powerful tool to enhance productive learning. [1] Tammy J. Freiler, “Learning Through the Body.” New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education 119, (2008): 40, DOI: 10.1002/ace.304.

One of the cruel ironies of teaching in Atlanta is that the so-called fall semester always begins in the damp-flames-of-hell climate that is August in Georgia. But this morning, as I sit with my coffee on my back porch, I recognize the halting, modest signs that a proper fall may arrive after all, despite all evidence to the contrary. I see a few yellow leaves drifting to the grass from the weeping cherry tree. Likewise, I notice the tip top of the Japanese maple tree is hinting at its fall purple-red glory. The air, while still sticky, carries a whisper of crispness. I could sit here for a while, if I can just slow my mind and let my senses help me pay attention to the world. Embodiment should come easily to me. I am a practical theologian whose specialization is the relationship between theology, education, and ecology. This intersection can hardly be imagined absent a strong commitment to embodiment, to the ways in which we understand our bodies to inhabit particular places and relate to other bodies; to see, to breathe, to taste, to hear, and to touch. In honoring the body’s knowledge, we name its vulnerability, and the ways in which we are tied to the vulnerability of other bodies.[1] I have tried to counter false narratives that would suggest that a real academic somehow transcends her embodied self. I have developed practices to help ground me in my heart and body, and when I’m able to commit to these practices, everything else seems to flow: my research, my teaching, even those administrative tasks. Easier said than done, though. In our institutions of higher education, serious inquiry has been conflated with dispassionate objectivity, learning with the cognitive work of recalling and interpreting.[2] We might even struggle to recognize the needs and honor the knowledge of our own bodies, as individual scholars and human beings.[3] Speaking for myself, I might spend hours crouching at my computer, loathe to break my supposed focus. With high hopes, I might have scheduled a workout or a walk with the dogs for later in the afternoon, only to abandon those plans when it seems I do not have time. I might eat breakfast and lunch at my desk. Now, after two years of remote work and learning, I think the question of embodiment is insisting itself to us in new and powerful ways. I think we begin to find our way toward an answer by first looking within. How do you begin your day? Environmental education scholar Mitchell Thomashow writes, “Consider two different ways of greeting the day. You can step outdoors wherever you may be in order to feel the temperature, wind conditions, light, sounds, and smells, or whatever visceral impressions fill your senses. Or you can immediately glance at your phone to check your messages, email, or whatever virtual information gets you oriented.”[4] On good days, I might begin the workday at my writing desk at home, which faces out a window, and quietly work on research and writing projects for an hour before the rest of the family awakens. Sometimes I might check in online with some colleagues who also arise early to write before turning to our other daily tasks. It’s a tiny act of resistance to the culture of accelerated and sometimes frenetic work demanded by the pressures facing so many of our institutions.[5] But more often than I would like to admit, I start my day by checking my institutional email on my smart phone before my feet even hit the floor. It’s a seemingly small thing, but the net result is that, from the start, my mind is in a reactive state. I respond to every demand, every email, every knock on my door, with little sense of purpose or vision. I end the day exhausted, my eyes and shoulders strained, with seemingly little satisfaction to show for it. This way of being is not sustainable, of course. And as orientation approached this fall, I was confronted in a new and urgent way with the limitations of approaching my work without mental and emotional intentionality. Even deeper, I was confronted with the poverty of the life of the mind absent a steady, trusting, and grounding practice that honors my own body’s knowledge. Thanks to a benign but persistent virus that took up residence in my inner ear in August, I found myself unable to be in crowded spaces, to process complex visual or aural stimulation, to look at my computer screen, or even read without becoming very dizzy. I would clench my jaw and “power through” whatever task was before me, practically racing back to my office to close my eyes—no fluorescents, please!—or rest my head on my desk until the next thing. I barely got my syllabus revised and was grateful for a colleague who volunteered to build my course website for me. To my surprise, though, I could work in the yard, walk the dogs, and even do yoga with little difficulty. The body that found itself queasy and unsteady after just twenty minutes of looking at my computer screen was calmed and centered by these practices that grounded me in sensory experience, slowed my mind, and allowed room to reflect, think, and be present. Embodied practices that I once had perhaps too eagerly broadcast as a countercultural “choice” became a necessity and a source of salvation. As I write this, episodes of dizziness and disorientation are, happily and as expected, becoming less frequent and less severe. Yet I am clinging to a reordered pattern for the morning, landing me here, on my porch, greeting the day with all of my senses, watching the leaves turn and listening to a chorus of birds and bugs. There is so much to do, it’s true. But might you also find a place to pay attention to the world, and your body’s place in it? A place where you could sit, just for a while?   [1] Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (New York: Verso Books, 2004), 26-27. [2] Furthermore, the ways in which learning is structured in so many of our institutions reveal a disembodied “implicit curriculum” observable in how our classrooms are arranged, the kinds of assignments we make, and the reduction of embodied exercises and classroom breaks to reluctant “accommodations” we make so that the mind can continue the work of learning, unencumbered by the inconvenient needs of the human body. See Elliot W. Eisner, The Educational Imagination: On the Design and Evaluation of School Programs (New York: Macmillan, 1979), 97. [3] It is, of course, important to acknowledge that “embodiment” has historically carried additional risks for too many scholars and students in institutions with unexamined racist, sexist, and heteronormative assumptions. See, for example, Carol B. Duncan, “Visible/Invisible: Teaching Popular Culture and the Vulgar Body in Black Religious Studies,” in Being Black, Teaching Black: Politics and Pedagogy in Religious Studies, edited by Nancy Lynne Westfield (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2008), 3-15. [4] Mitchell Thomashow, To Know the World: A New Vision for Environmental Learning (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2020), 75. [5] Maggie Berg and Barbara K. Seeber, “Introduction,” in The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016), 1-15.

I distinctly remember what my husband said when he found me typing an email to a student in the middle of the night, the glow of my laptop illuminating my face in the darkness: “You need to set better boundaries.” Suffering from insomnia–whether it was in the late stages of pregnancy or the first year of night feedings, I can’t remember–I rationalized my behavior by saying that I was being productive since I was up already, and that the student seemed genuinely distraught by the state of their paper in light of a pressing deadline. In fact, his words resonated profoundly with my own sense of being out of balance. Online teaching can blur the boundaries between our work and our lives. People readily remark that online courses take a long time to design and develop, but less time to administer. In other words, they are more frontloaded than face-to-face courses. However, communication and interaction with students over email, Skype or Zoom, or even face-to-face can also place considerable demands on our time during the course of the semester. Because we can virtually correspond anytime and anyplace, it is easy to find oneself replying to students during times that one would not even entertain the possibility of a face-to-face meeting. An added pressure is that online students consider prompt responses and feedback from their instructor crucial and an indication that they care. On their evaluations students report greater satisfaction when they receive prompt replies to their emails. Yet we do a disservice when we reply as soon as we see their email, regardless of the time of day. Although this might create a greater sense of satisfaction on the part of our students, it fuels the idea that instructors are constantly “on call” and undermines their own capacity to delay gratification, which is a crucial skill for self-regulated learning. Moreover, when they see that we have emailed in the middle of the night, they may conclude that it’s all right to prioritize other things over sleep, rest, and wellbeing. We lose the opportunity to model to our students a more balanced, mindful approach to our communication and interaction. Mindfulness encourages us to cultivate an embodied presence, receptivity, and awareness of ourselves and our surroundings, so that instead of immediately reacting to what we experience, we can instead create space for a more thoughtful response. We may overlook our bodies as we interface with digital devices and screens, but as Linda Stone has observed through the phenomena of “email apnea” – the temporary absence or suspension of breathing, or shallow breathing, when doing email (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/just-breathe-building-the_b_85651 )– our online interactions have physical, emotional, and cognitive ramifications. By immediately replying to students’ emails, I was failing to address my own sleep habits, and I was not giving the space for students to try to resolve their problems by themselves. In the case of students who had clearly procrastinated and emailed me an hour or two before a deadline, one could even argue that I was encouraging bad habits. Aiming for a quick turnaround, I was being reactive rather than responsive. A more mindful approach would have aligned my online communication with the expectations laid out in my syllabus, where I explain that email is my preferred method of contact, and that they should expect a reply within 24 hours. Those parameters allow for balance: one can establish hours to be offline. Admittedly, we may still find the need to accommodate students even when it impinges on our personal lives. Once I found myself emailing back and forth with a student, trying to clarify the expectations of the final project, when he suddenly asked, “Can we talk over the phone?” Although I was at my parents’ house, I felt bad and agreed to call. Bracing myself for the potential of a half-hour interruption, I dialed his phone number. After responding to various questions I hung up and looked at my phone. It had taken less than ten minutes. This made me realize that we should take advantage of multiple channels of communication with our students. In another case, a student asked if we could meet face-to-face to discuss his ePortfolio for the course. We sat together looking at his laptop, and he scrolled through some of the ePortfolio pages to ask about my comments and suggestions. Again, within a very short span of time, I was able to address all of his concerns . . . and meet the student in person. These kinds of interactions with students–over the phone, via Zoom or Skype, or in person–not only show that we care about our students, but they contribute to a greater sense of embodied presence. Although I still have a long way to go, I have found myself trying to be a more mindful online teacher, for the sake of both myself and my students.

I distinctly remember what my husband said when he found me typing an email to a student in the middle of the night, the glow of my laptop illuminating my face in the darkness: “You need to set better boundaries.” Suffering from insomnia–whether it was in the late stages of pregnancy or the first year of night feedings, I can’t remember–I rationalized my behavior by saying that I was being productive since I was up already, and that the student seemed genuinely distraught by the state of their paper in light of a pressing deadline. In fact, his words resonated profoundly with my own sense of being out of balance. Online teaching can blur the boundaries between our work and our lives. People readily remark that online courses take a long time to design and develop, but less time to administer. In other words, they are more front loaded than face-to-face courses. However, communication and interaction with students over email, Skype or Zoom, or even face-to-face can also place considerable demands on our time during the course of the semester. Because we can virtually correspond anytime and anyplace, it is easy to find oneself replying to students during times that one would not even entertain the possibility of a face-to-face meeting. An added pressure is that online students consider prompt responses and feedback from their instructor crucial and an indication that they care. On their evaluations students report greater satisfaction when they receive prompt replies to their emails. Yet we do a disservice when we reply as soon as we see their email, regardless of the time of day. Although this might create a greater sense of satisfaction on the part of our students, it fuels the idea that instructors are constantly “on call” and undermines their own capacity to delay gratification, which is a crucial skill for self-regulated learning. Moreover, when they see that we have emailed in the middle of the night, they may conclude that it’s all right to prioritize other things over sleep, rest, and wellbeing. We lose the opportunity to model to our students a more balanced, mindful approach to our communication and interaction. Mindfulness encourages us to cultivate an embodied presence, receptivity, and awareness of ourselves and our surroundings, so that instead of immediately reacting to what we experience, we can instead create space for a more thoughtful response. We may overlook our bodies as we interface with digital devices and screens, but as Linda Stone has observed through the phenomena of “email apnea” – the temporary absence or suspension of breathing, or shallow breathing, when doing email (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/just-breathe-building-the_n_85651) –our online interactions have physical, emotional, and cognitive ramifications. By immediately replying to students’ emails, I was failing to address my own sleep habits, and I was not giving the space for students to try to resolve their problems by themselves. In the case of students who had clearly procrastinated and emailed me an hour or two before a deadline, one could even argue that I was encouraging bad habits. Aiming for a quick turnaround, I was being reactive rather than responsive. A more mindful approach would have aligned my online communication with the expectations laid out in my syllabus, where I explain that email is my preferred method of contact, and that they should expect a reply within 24 hours. Those parameters allow for balance: one can establish hours to be offline. Admittedly, we may still find the need to accommodate students even when it impinges on our personal lives. Once I found myself emailing back and forth with a student, trying to clarify the expectations of the final project, when he suddenly asked, “Can we talk over the phone?” Although I was at my parents’ house, I felt bad and agreed to call. Bracing myself for the potential of a half-hour interruption, I dialed his phone number. After responding to various questions I hung up and looked at my phone. It had taken less than ten minutes. This made me realize that we should take advantage of multiple channels of communication with our students. In another case, a student asked if we could meet face-to-face to discuss his ePortfolio for the course. We sat together looking at his laptop, and he scrolled through some of the ePortfolio pages to ask about my comments and suggestions. Again, within a very short span of time, I was able to address all of his concerns . . . and meet the student in person. These kinds of interactions with students–over the phone, via Zoom or Skype, or in person–not only show that we care about our students, but they contribute to a greater sense of embodied presence. Although I still have a long way to go, I have found myself trying to be a more mindful online teacher, for the sake of both myself and my students.