资本主义VS正念修行

资本主义VS正念修行
Is the practice of mindfulness and meditation compatible with the cut-throat ethos of capitalism? “正念”和“冥想”，跟资本主义那种拼命争个你死我活的特质可以并存吗？This is the dilemma at the heart of David Gelles’s intriguing, timely, and enjoyable new book, a fascinating account of the increasing adoption of these ancient oriental disciplines by western businesses as means of improving corporate efficiency, reducing employee stress, and, directly or indirectly, boosting the bottom line.动人
地描述了这些古老的东方修行之法是如何越来越多地为西方企业所采纳，用于提高公司效率、帮员工减压、以及直接或间接地提升公司利润。

Gelles is a reporter for the New York Times and former Financial Times journalist who is also a long-time practitioner of mindfulness meditation
—“the ability to see what is going on in our
heads, without
getting carried away with it”“一种能看清我们脑中
所想、而不会走火入魔的能力”. It is a useful combination: he has both an initiate’s appreciation of how meditation works, and a journalist’s objectivity and ability to tell a story.他身上是一种有价值的组合：作为修行者，他知道冥想是怎么回事；而作为记者，他能够客观地观察，并且能讲好一个故事。

In a potted history of mindfulness in the US, Henry David Thoreau gets Gelles’s vote as the earliest New World proponent and an inspiration for the Beat generation Dharma bums Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. More recently, Jon Kabat-Zinn, a molecular biologist who pioneered mindfulness based stress reduction at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, takes centre stage. His willingness to downplay the spiritual side of meditation主动淡化冥想的精神方面, Gelles argues, helped make mindfulness acceptable to mainstream science and medicine.有助于主流科学和医学界接受正念
The core of the book concerns the adoption of
mindfulness
by corporate America. 这本书的核心关注点是美国企业界对正念的
采纳。

Using expertly crafted anecdotes and case studies盖利斯用构思精巧的小故事和案例, Gelles illustrates the benefits of meditation that companies from General Mills to Aetna are seeking to harness.希望利用Arianna Huffington sums up the rationale for all this corporate interest: “Stress reduction and mindfulness don’t just make us happier and healthier, they’re a proven competitive advantage for any business that wants one.”“减轻压力和正念不仅会让我们变得更快乐、更健康，对任何缺乏这种优势的企业而言，它们还是一种已得到验证的竞争优势。

”
The data seem to bear this out. 数据看上去也证明了这
一点。

Aetna employees who took a Mindfulness at Work course saw their healthcare costs fall by $2,000 a year relative to a control group相对于一个对照组. On an Orwellian note, it also improved their productivity,
“resulting in more than an hour’s gain in work time
per employee per week”.“相当于让每个员工每周的工作时间增加了一个多小时”。

But is it not the case that难道不是the more one
practices mindfulness, the less interest one has in competition, profit, and all the other commercial imperatives that underpin capitalism?支
撑起资本主义的商业要素Is mindfulness really a neutral instrument that can be used for any end服务于任何的目的— or is it inextricably bound up with the elimination of selfishness, the cultivation of compassion and the rejection of materialism?
And might not promoting mindfulness among one’s employees be a bit risky as a result — because if one succeeds, they might stop bothering with anything so trivial as profits?那么企业家在员工中推广正念岂不是有些危险（因为假如他成功了的话，他的员工们可能就不再在意利润这么微不足道的东
西了）？
Gelles does not dodge this central question —indeed he devotes a whole chapter to it — but he does not resolve it either. The most revealing answer comes from the chief executive of Prana, one of the “mindful”businesses he visits. Challenged by Gelles on his claim to combine
compassion with capitalism, Scott Kerslake responds: “We’re still crappy at this. But we’re less crappy than a lot of people.”
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