Hi, it's Andy here and welcome to Radio Headspace and a Thursday morning.

A lot of different things have happened to mindfulness over the years.

One of the things I thought I never really expected to see happen was what I like to think

of as the weaponization of mindfulness.

I don't know if you've ever come across this.

I thought of it when I heard someone say, well that wasn't very mindful, was it?

It was almost like how could you take this sort of mindfulness, which is this non-judgmental

state, free of any sort of criticism and bias and use it in a really such a judgmental

way.

And I laughed as I think that we probably all do it at times.

And it reminded me actually of being in a retreat and you might think, well there's

no way that people are being judgmental and everything else in retreat.

Remember, these are just human beings in a retreat condition.

All of the same stuff that arises in everyday life arises in retreat.

The only difference is that within a retreat there is the opportunity and the environment

to see those behaviors more clearly and therefore create a bit of space to work with them

in a different way.

And I remember, as he wasn't that uncommon to see Tibetan scripture used in a sort of

British passive-aggressive way, I mean that's a real art, trust me, to approach Tibetan

scripture in that way.

But there was be the temptation sometimes to almost use that position of awareness as

a way of criticizing others.

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