The “Mindfulness” Degree

Do American colleges still teach students how to think? Or have whole programs been built on fashionable but unexamined assumptions? Increasingly, one wonders whether parts of the curriculum are outright harmful. For years, it has felt as though American higher education were approaching rock bottom. One of the newest degrees on offer suggests we may finally have arrived.

As a religious practice within Buddhism—particularly in its Theravada and Zen traditions—so-called mindfulness meditation aims to cultivate an awareness of the present moment, calm the mind, and help one avoid being carried away by thoughts. The term often overlaps with self-help trends and spa treatments these days, especially on American campuses.

Mindfulness programs on campus have moved well beyond weekend retreats and self-help courses. At Bucknell University, for instance, students are offered a “mindfulness menu” featuring instructions for DIY body scrubs, eye masks, lotions, and similar indulgences. At Yale, students can enroll in a four-week Koru mindfulness course that promises to help them to become “kinder” to themselves (is there anyone else?) or to craft their “very own meditation bracelet with a variety of beautiful beads.”

They have emerged as an academic field that encourages students to calm what ought to be active minds. But mindfulness programs on campus have moved well beyond weekend retreats and self-help courses. They have now embedded themselves within higher education itself, emerging as an academic field that, paradoxically, encourages students to calm what ought to be active minds and to think as little as possible.

Lesley University, for example, offers both an M.A. and a graduate certificate in mindfulness studies, while Atlantic University markets an M.A. in the same subject. At Brown, the School of Public Health houses the Brown Mindfulness Center, which offers not only a master of public health concentration in mindfulness but a certificate track in mindfulness-based stress-reduction teacher training.

This is puzzling, given the fact that Brown is also home to a clinical and affective neuroscience laboratory that has provided extensive research on the adverse effects associated with the mindfulness fad. Its director, Willoughby Britton—who runs a support group for people who have experienced psychological and physical harm from meditation—has described potential side effects in stark terms: “People describe a loss of emotion beyond what they wanted, and loss of motivation or enjoyment of things.”

In one project, Britton and her research team documented accounts of severe adverse outcomes among nearly 40 individuals, noting that many were “fairly out of commission, fairly impaired for between six months [and] more than 20 years.” The research team found participants through established meditation teachers such as Jack Kornfeld—one of the key figures to introduce Buddhist mindfulness to the West—and Joseph Goldstein, who has spoken of “instances during past meditation retreats where students became psychologically incapacitated.”

Another study interviewing 60 meditation teachers and practitioners—an equal number of men and women across the traditions of Zen, Theravada, and Tibetan Buddhism—identified a range of common adverse effects such as hyper-arousal and increases in anxiety, fear, panic, insomnia, trauma flashbacks, and emotional instability. Participants also reported sensory hypersensitivity, including heightened sensitivity to light and sound. Such hypersensitivity might be pleasant at first when colors get brighter, and one might indeed start to notice more. But when that doesn’t stop, sounds may become irritating and distracting. Others might experience a loss of motivation or enjoyment of things—as if campuses weren’t experiencing enough of that already.

Regardless of these downsides, the academic mindfulness trend continues to spread worldwide. In Ireland, the master of science in mindfulness-based wellbeing at University College Cork promises to train graduates to teach mindfulness in schools, workplaces, and everyday life. City College Dublin offers a professional diploma in mindfulness and wellbeing. In Wales, Bangor University maintains an M.A. in mindfulness-based approaches, while Monash University in Australia describes itself as “a world leader in the integration of mindfulness into the workplace and tertiary education.” Scotland has joined in, as well: The University of Aberdeen now awards a master of science in studies in mindfulness, and the University of the West of Scotland advertises a master of science in mindfulness and compassion.

The modern American rebranding of mindfulness as some kind of ancient psychotherapy is mistaken. As absurd as it is to award degrees in compassion (as though it were something universities could certify), compassion is not even something that follows from mindfulness practice—at least not in the sentimental sense in which the term is now understood. Some scholars of Buddhism note that “compassion is generally understood in Buddhism as having a magical power to protect” one from vicious animals, assassins, or the weather. Instead of praying for good weather, you meditate for it. The modern American rebranding of mindfulness as some kind of ancient psychotherapy or wellness treatment is, thus, mistaken. It is more accurate to understand “compassion” in early Buddhist contexts as a form of capital—much like the way we speak today of political capital or moral bankruptcy—rather than as an emotional disposition. It is the dharma, the teachings of the Buddha, that instruct a Buddhist to be an ethical person. Both Buddhism and the academic study of it rest on scripture and doctrine, not on meditation.

The scientific literature identifies a wide range of negative effects associated with mindfulness meditation. It is puzzling that there is so little pushback from scholars of Buddhism against these programs that, at best, offer a thin, romanticized account of Buddhism and often function as an academic veneer for spa treatments. The course “Mindfulness, Meaning, and Resilience” at Harvard, for example, declares, “Mindfulness is a way of attending to the experience of the present moment with full awareness and without judgment or reactivity. […] This introductory course explores the origins of mindfulness in Buddhist philosophy and how it can promote these states.”

The historical record of Buddhist traditions shows something very different. Sources often refer to troubling effects from the practice. As Jared R. Lindahl and colleagues note in a paper, “The term nyams refers to a wide range of ‘meditation experiences’—from bliss and visions to intense body pain, physiological disorders, paranoia, sadness, anger and fear.” Zen lineages have long recognized a related condition, sometimes described as “Zen sickness” or “meditation sickness,” in which practice leads to prolonged psychological or physical distress. There is even a sutta—a canonical discourse attributed to the Buddha—in which a group of monks go insane and commit mass suicide after meditating. A part of the history of the method is also how well it was received by Nazis and terrorists.

The scientific literature identifies a wide range of other negative effects associated with mindfulness meditation. Studies have documented adverse psychological, physical, and spiritual side effects, including depersonalization, psychosis, hallucinations, anxiety, increased seizure risk, disorganized speech, loss of appetite, and insomnia. One study led by Brent M. Wilson at the University of California San Diego found that participants exhibited increased susceptibility to false memories following mindfulness meditation—a result that, on its own, should give universities more than enough reason to question the practice’s place in higher education.

A study by Pablo Briñol and colleagues found that when participants were encouraged to objectify their thoughts, they subsequently relied on those thoughts less in their evaluations and decisionmaking, a result that raises obvious concerns for education, during which deliberation is essential. Mindfulness practice may also foster an avoidance of difficult thinking and tasks. One study found that mindfulness meditation reduced future-oriented focus and lowered arousal levels, which in turn diminished participants’ motivation to undertake challenging activities. In other words, the practice can make students calmer but also less inclined to think hard, plan ahead, or engage in demanding work.

One study found that 62.9 percent of participants experienced negative effects such as anxiety, panic, less motivation in life, depression, a feeling of addiction to meditation, pain, confusion, disorientation, or feeling “spaced out” during and after meditation. Notably, 7.4 percent suffered profoundly adverse effects, regardless of whether they had practiced for 16 months or more than 100 months.

The effect of mindfulness meditation is often a reduction in emotional activity, which can indeed be helpful for students prone to overwhelming reactivity, making them calmer and less susceptible to stressful situations. Yet, for some, this dampening becomes excessive. As Britton puts it, “People in our research complain of not having any emotions, even positive ones, not feeling any kind of love or affection for their families.” These adverse effects are not limited to vulnerable individuals; they have appeared in experienced meditation teachers and in practitioners with no psychiatric history.

One study found that 62.9 percent of participants experienced negative effects such as anxiety, panic, and less motivation in life. Yet, in 2023, Harvard opened the Thich Nhat Hanh Center for Mindfulness in Public Health in the T.H. Chan School of Public Health. In his New York Times bestseller The Art of Power, Thich Nhat Hanh writes, “To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself.” While these lines might be calming as poetry, they are most obviously destructive as self-help. Who would want to live in a world where everybody—the insane, the fanatical, the rude—simply accepts himself the way he is? One could even argue that such advice runs counter to the very purpose of education. But it must feel good for people at Harvard to hear such a message while they harass Jewish students on their way to class or rise to the university presidency without ever having written a book or an original paper. Just accept yourself!

The spillover effect of mindfulness into other fields is also concerning. The spillover effect of mindfulness into other fields is also concerning. Caroline C. Kaufman, an instructor in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, advocates incorporating meditation practices into psychotherapy with Jewish clients—a position that suggests a troubling lack of awareness of the potential negative side effects. Incorporating religious practices into therapy is also unethical unless they are clearly identified as such by the therapist; otherwise, the healthcare treatment risks becoming missionary in nature.

Moreover, mindfulness meditation is not a component of Judaism, nor does Kaufman’s approach indicate that this is something to be addressed with Jewish clients. Her approach assumes spirituality is universal and standardized rather than culturally specific or personal. In her research at Harvard, she even attempts to empirically measure spirituality. The very idea reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the limitations of scientific inquiry: It presupposes that a subjective, experiential, and culturally contingent phenomenon can be objectively quantified using standardized tools. For the same reason—the hopelessness of the attempt to quantify subjective inner states—mindfulness studies fails.

Meanwhile, Oxford is more upfront about incorporating a religious practice into healthcare with its master of science in mindfulness-based cognitive therapy. Beyond the supposed benefits for clients, the program also trains therapists themselves to be mindful during treatment. One might expect a “mindful” therapist to be especially attentive and capable of caring for clients. Yet one study suggested that “higher levels of therapist mindfulness predicted less reduction in client symptom severity at termination.” Mindfulness therapy, in this sense, seems oxymoronic. At most, one might argue that the practice helps therapists remain present while tracking themes. But that’s just another way of saying, “Therapists, pay attention and don’t drift off.” In which case, it should be a reminder, not a university degree.

Christopher L. Schilling is a lawyer and political scientist and the author of The Japanese Talmud: Antisemitism in East Asia (Hurst) and The Therapized Antisemite: The Myth of Psychology and the Evasion of Responsibility (De Gruyter).