Mindfulness

Thursday

Margaret Mitchell

The mindfulness behind the cooking of Buddhist nun Jeong Kwan

I am somewhat allergic to food nomenclature: zero-waste, plant-based, seasonal, small plates, “live cultures,” foraged, farm-to-fork. It’s not that these are inherently off-putting concepts, but I associate them with “foodie” fads, gimmicks and big egos. All of those trendy labels could apply to the food cooked by the “philosopher chef,” a Buddhist nun called Venerable Jeong Kwan, plus you could throw in a dash of mindfulness and eastern spirituality for good measure. Yet Kwan, who is venerated by Le Bernardin’s Eric Ripert and Noma’s René Redzepi, and has featured in an episode of Chef’s Table, is the furthest thing from an ego-chef.

Sunday

Melanie McDonagh

The trouble with mindfulness

From our UK edition

Mindfulness makes you smug. And not just mindfulness; a whole raft of alternative spiritual practices such as chakra cleansing and past life regressions feed a sense of superiority over normal mortals. That’s the finding of research from Radboud University in Nijmegen in the Netherlands involving some 3,700 people. The leader of the research, Professor Roos Vonk, first engaged in this field of study when she found that a boyfriend who went on a quasi-Buddhist spiritual retreat for clinical psychology students came back with ‘an enlightened, elevated look in his eyes’ and became really tiresome. In particular, she wanted to test whether the ideals of a Tibetan Buddhist meditation master, Chogyam Trungpa, who taught renunciation of self, actually worked out in practice.

Monday

Will Lloyd

Make America smoke again

The number of American adults who smoke has fallen to the lowest level ever recorded, a mere third of what it was 70 years ago. Decades of aggressive public health campaigns and advertising bans are responsible for this remarkable decline. As norms and mores changed, smoking became situated somewhere between bear baiting and regularly dining at Cracker Barrel as a form of utterly deviant behavior. Those who continue to smoke belong to the struggle towns and junklands of Middle America. They are usually adult men without much of an education, living below the poverty line; they are the very backbone of Trumpism.

patty duke smoke