Mindfulness, Ethical Passivity, and Equanimity: Benefits, Limitations, and Structural Blind Spots
Part One: Teachers and Students
When I asked a Zen teacher to be my mentor for the jukai process several years ago, he said: “You know, your teacher will always disappoint you or fail you.”
While he did eventually keep that promise, at the time it felt so odd: was he copping out before we had even begun, making an excuse for potential future lack of performance?
Teachers are as human as the rest of us. When a teacher “fails,” they are just being themselves. Everybody will fail if we have expectations of them that exceed their capacities: or if, in the Buddhist sense of the 2nd Noble Truth, we want too much of them.
I had been disappointed in teachers before: I watched a revered college religion professor fall down drunk at a party … a respected yoga guru abuse his students … a beloved author be mean to his kids. In spiritual settings, it has been common to see teachers fall from grace.
In this and coming essays, I want to examine these relationships, the duties of teachers to students and vice versa, and the responsibilities of spiritual traditions to take ethical positions and act from principles.
I’m interested in the student/teacher relationship in the context of recent complaints from largely Insight practitioners about their teachers failing them by not speaking up about the war in Gaza.
I’m also interested in how the practice of mindfulness may have watered down these teachers’ ethics, as well as the ethical stances of other public figures, by using the concept of “equanimity” in the face of obvious human rights abuses in the Americas and abroad.
The following essays diverge from my usual conversational tone and are more academic. Bear with me. Part One, below, is about mindfulness.
Mindfulness, Ethical Passivity, and Equanimity: Benefits, Limitations, and Structural Blind Spots
Mindfulness has become a widespread psychological and pedagogical tool in contemporary society. Schools use it to help students manage stress and disruptive behavior; prisons use it to reduce aggression and recidivism; and the military uses it to improve emotional regulation and operational performance.
These applications reflect a belief that the capacity to observe thoughts and feelings non-judgmentally can improve individual well-being and social functioning.
Empirical research supports these benefits, particularly in clinical domains, where mindfulness-based interventions reduce stress, anxiety, and depressive symptoms (Kabat-Zinn, 2003; Chiesa & Serretti, 2009).
Yet critics have argued that mindfulness—especially in its secular and institutionalized forms—can encourage ethical passivity by directing attention toward inner experience without interrogating the structural forces that generate distress (Purser & Milillo, 2015; Purser, 2019).
In educational settings, mindfulness can help students manage anxiety, improve attention, and reduce conflict. Meta-analytic reviews suggest that school-based programs have a positive impact on behavior and cognitive performance (Zenner et al., 2014). In schools where students face chronic stress, food insecurity, or unsafe environments, mindfulness can provide emotional stabilizing skills that support learning.
However, mindfulness can also be used to maintain classroom order without addressing underlying inequalities. If students are taught to regulate their emotions without confronting structural conditions—such as racial discrimination, economic disinvestment, or punitive discipline policies—the result may be emotional adaptation to contexts marked by systemic harm.
In prisons, mindfulness programs have been shown to reduce aggression and improve emotional literacy among inmates (Himelstein, 2011). Such interventions can provide individuals with coping skills and a sense of agency in an environment characterized by instability and threat.
Yet prisons themselves are institutions shaped by racialized mass incarceration and economic inequality. When mindfulness is introduced without ethical or political context, it risks functioning as a technique for tolerating confinement rather than a tool for reflecting on the social systems that produce disproportionate incarceration of Black, Indigenous, and poor populations (Metzl, 2019).
In the military, mindfulness has been adopted to improve attention, reduce combat stress, and support post-traumatic recovery. Studies show that mindfulness training can protect working memory and reduce negative affect during high-stress situations (Jha et al., 2010). These results are valuable, especially for soldiers coping with trauma.
Yet the military context also exposes individuals to violence, moral injury, and institutional pressures that can conflict with personal conscience. If mindfulness is used primarily to sustain performance under stress, without supporting ethical evaluation of missions or structures, it may function as a tool of organizational efficiency rather than moral reflection.
One concept central to these debates is equanimity, often defined as the capacity to remain steady and non-reactive in the face of emotional experience. Psychological studies suggest that equanimity contributes to resilience and emotional regulation (Desbordes et al., 2015). Yet equanimity can also be interpreted as non-reactivity to injustice when it is decoupled from ethical inquiry. Calmness without reflection can help individuals endure abusive conditions; calmness with reflection can support meaningful change. The difference lies in whether equanimity is viewed as the endpoint of practice or the foundation for critical evaluation.
The problem becomes clearer when mindfulness is stripped of questions about values, power, and social context.
If individuals are taught that suffering arises solely from internal states, they may view anger, shame, or fear as personal malfunctions rather than as responses to racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, workplace exploitation, or state violence (Katz & Moore, 2004; Metzl, 2019).
For example, a student confronting racial harassment may be taught to “breathe through” their anxiety rather than recognize and challenge racism. An employee facing gender discrimination may be encouraged to “stay present” rather than advocate for structural change. Emotions that might otherwise function as ethical signals are reframed as internal disturbances to be neutralized.
This is what critics mean when they argue that mindfulness promotes ethical passivity. Rather than encouraging individuals to analyze sources of suffering or take action, mindfulness programs often emphasize acceptance, tolerance, and emotional neutrality. These qualities can be psychologically protective, but they may also serve the interests of institutions that benefit from compliant behavior (Purser, 2019). The risk is not that mindfulness creates indifference, but that it can make individuals more capable of enduring conditions that should be challenged.
Yet mindfulness also has the capacity to support ethical clarity rather than passivity. Awareness practices can help individuals differentiate between impulsive reactions and legitimate moral intuitions. Mindfulness can create cognitive space in which people recognize suffering, analyze its causes, and decide how to respond thoughtfully. In this interpretation, equanimity is not a form of resignation but a foundation for discernment, agency, and collective responsibility.
The challenge, therefore, is not to abandon mindfulness but to contextualize it. Schools, prisons, and military institutions may use mindfulness to reduce harm, but they must avoid framing suffering as solely an internal phenomenon. Unless mindfulness includes opportunities to interrogate the structural forces that produce distress—and the ethical values that inform responses—it risks functioning as a tool of adaptation rather than transformation.
References
Chiesa, A., & Serretti, A. (2009). Mindfulness-based stress reduction for stress management in healthy people. Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 15(5), 593–600.
Desbordes, G., et al. (2015). Moving beyond mindfulness. Mindfulness, 6(2), 356–372.
Himelstein, S. (2011). Mindfulness-based substance abuse treatment for incarcerated youth. International Journal of Offender Therapy, 55(8), 133–146.
Jha, A. P., et al. (2010). Protective effects of mindfulness training. Emotion, 10(1), 54–64.
Kabat-Zinn, J. (2003). Mindfulness-based interventions. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 10(2), 144–156.
Katz, J., & Moore, J. (2004). Racism, sexism, and the media. Sage.
Metzl, J. (2019). Dying of Whiteness. Basic Books.
Purser, R. (2019). McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality. Repeater.
Purser, R., & Milillo, J. (2015). Mindfulness revisited. Journal of Management, Spirituality & Religion, 13(2), 1–16.
Zenner, C., Herrnleben-Kurz, S., & Walach, H. (2014). Mindfulness in schools. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 603.