Can you talk about your upcoming book Radical Mindfulness, and the role that “existential resentment” plays in social injustices?

The basic argument of the book is that existential resentment, particularly fear of death, is a really powerful explanation for social injustice, and one that keeps getting overlooked within critical theory. The book has four chapters that engage different philosophical traditions and philosophers that make this argument about existential resentment. There is a chapter on Ernest Becker looking particularly at human supremacy, there is a chapter on James Baldwin looking at white supremacy, a chapter on Indigenous scholars Vine Deloria Jr. and John Mohawk looking at class supremacy, and then a chapter still in progress drawing from Buddhist-Feminist thinkers to make sense of patriarchal supremacy. So there are all these different traditions and thinkers who all point to the political force of existential resentment in shaping a will to supremacy. And yet this explanation keeps getting forgotten or just doesn’t get the attention it deserves. So the book is sort of an effort in recovery, saying look, this argument keeps getting made by the these powerful thinkers in these different traditions, let’s listen and see how this argument—if we take it seriously—might start reshaping our politics.

In your article Baldwin and Buddhism: Death Denial, White Supremacy, and the Promise of Racial Justice, you discuss Baldwin’s idea that white people use race and racism as buffers against existential fears. This is similar to what Becker says as well. Can you summarize those insights here?

Baldwin peppered a number of his writings on whiteness with a death denial thesis very similar to Becker’s. One of his starting premises is that white supremacy is obviously a total fabrication, a total fantasy, a total flight from reality, and that begs the question, What are white people running from? Baldwin kept returning to death and finitude as something that white people struggled with and then compensated for with fantasies of supremacy. So white supremacy is a lie, and for Baldwin it’s a lie that’s rooted on an original lie, which is just not facing the fullness of reality, and trying to escape death with these fantasies of supremacy.

How can awareness of existential anxiety be used in the movement towards social equality?

There is an early terror management paper that concludes by saying that anti-racism training should include techniques for helping people cope with their mortality concerns, and I think that’s really spot on. I can’t speak to the Black experience, but as a white person and as someone who has participated in anti-racism training I think that following Baldwin, and Becker, and Greenberg/TMT folks, there would be a significant improvement on those training outcomes if they addressed some of those existential concerns that fuel white supremacy. Some avowed white supremacists even name their existential fear – they say they are afraid of being replaced and afraid of white people disappearing as a “race” of people. The existential anxiety for them is not subtext; it’s right there for all to see.

So white supremacy is a lie, and for Baldwin it’s a lie that’s rooted on an original lie, which is just not facing the fullness of reality, and trying to escape death with these fantasies of supremacy.

In your article Zen and The Art of Social Movement Maintenance, you say “Meditation and yoga do not automatically nurture an anti-racist and egalitarian ethos.” Is there a “dark side” to mindfulness if not used properly?

I think intent is super important to the outcome of any mindfulness intervention. Ron Purser has a book called McMindfulness that makes the argument that mindfulness is really easily co-opted by a neoliberal discourse of responsibilization. You know, why aren’t you making enough money to pay your bills, why are you unhappy—it’s because you’re not meditating enough! It can be a way of papering over the structural forces that cause such strife. If mindfulness is not practiced with a liberatory intent then it’s very likely not going to have liberatory effects. That’s why I’m particularly interested in integrating mindfulness with social justice theory and movements.

You have written about why not all “us vs. them” thinking is a bad thing. Can you talk a little bit about this nuance?

There is lots of talk now about our politics being too divided and too polarized, and I wouldn’t disagree, but it’s too easy of a step to be like: let’s just all get along, we’re all humans. That’s all true, but it avoids the reality that opposition is integral to politics. My concern with a refrain regularly heard in contemplative communities, that we need to move beyond “us vs. them” thinking, is that it’s often a form of spiritual bypassing that obscures the real divisions and interests that shape the political world.

I think we can get, hopefully, to a world beyond “us vs. them” thinking, but we actually have to get there through us-vs-them thinking. It was in the context of Occupy Wall Street that this first became clear to me. The folks at Occupy had this saying that “We’re the 99%, targeting the 1%” and that’s a brilliant political articulation. And yet, I heard a lot of people say, “What about the 100%?” and “We’re all humans.” Likewise in the wake of Black Lives Matter’s emergence, obviously we heard the refrain “all lives matter.” And of course that’s true, but it misses the point that there are very particular structural forces that are targeting Black people. We have to be able to name and face those divisions if we’re going to move beyond them.

If mindfulness is not practiced with a liberatory intent then it’s very likely not going to have liberatory effects…I’m particularly interested in integrating mindfulness with social justice theory and movements.

As a practicing Buddhist, do you think a truly equitable and just society is possible given the confines of human nature and our existential condition?

I’m not aware of a society ever existing that is perfectly free from the kinds of hierarchies that we might want to criticize. Some have been much more equal and have been much better vis-à-vis the natural world, so there are different ways to organize ourselves undoubtedly. I’m in more of a harm-reduction mode; I think we can limit the wills to supremacy that cause such harm, but I don’t lie awake at night fantasizing about the perfect utopia. But we can definitely do better, no doubt about it.

In your article Theorizing the Political Value of Mindfulness, you wrote that existential change strategies are “central to addressing the causes of injustice.” What are your main prescriptions or words of advice for those working in the world to combat discrimination and oppression?

For me, if we take the kind of argument that Becker makes, and that Baldwin makes vis-à-vis whiteness, if we take that seriously, it points to the importance of embodiment practices for social change. You know, techniques, rituals, ceremonies, whatever it might be that can help transform existential anxiety into existential affirmation. Practices that can help us feel grateful for our lives as opposed to feeling enslaved by our finitude. I’m excited by efforts already afoot – that’s part of why I researched Occupy Wall Street. I read about the daily meditations at Occupy and had my own ideas for why it’s important, but wanted to learn why they were doing it.

It’s already happening within social movements but it’s not often happening for reasons that I think it should be happening. That’s part of the reason that I’m writing this book—to remind folks of this powerful argument that has been made for now thousands of years in lots of different traditions. It helps valorize work that’s already happening within social movements that looks to the body and looks towards embodied fears and affect as really important planes of politics.

Do you feel that your personal relationship with Buddhism, as well as knowing about TMT and human behavior, have made you a less defensive person?

I feel like progress has been made in reducing defensiveness, but it’s also very humbling. As someone with a lot of resources and the time to practice these techniques, I can still get super defensive, and can have white fragility, so it’s not like you wake up and you’re enlightened. It’s a daily practice, sometimes one step forwards two steps back, but the practice is making a difference in my experience so it’s worth committing ourselves to. But it’s also worth being realistic that we’re not going to start meditating for 10 minutes a day for a month and then any kind of defensiveness is going to be suddenly gone. We need to commit ourselves to the daily work of it.