Zen and the art of everything : Governing spirituality in entrepreneurship education

the author(s) 2016 ISSN 1473-2866 (Online) ISSN 2052-1499 (Print) www.ephemerajournal.org volume 16(4): 99-119 article | 99 Zen and the art of everything: Governing spirituality in entrepreneurship education Antti Saari and Esko Harni abstract In recent discourses on adult education it has become a commonplace to note that adult learning and professional development should touch the ‘deeper’ or ‘higher’ recesses of human existence instead of mainly focusing on learning technical skills or attaining preset standards. These higher aspects are often depicted as spiritual experiences. In particular, mindfulness meditation which draws from Zen Buddhism, among other wisdom traditions, is today frequently used to provide conceptual and practical tools for governing spiritual experiences in adult education. By analysing the uses of Zen experience in entrepreneurial adult education and coaching, we advance two key points. First, we analyse spiritual experience as an indicator of the inherent tensions in a socalled general economy in which the highest forms of human existence are used as a means of producing profit. Second, we argue that whereas the notion of spiritual experience can be used as a springboard for criticizing capitalism, it is also assimilated into the management of productive work by the sweeping logic of capitalism. Introduction Scholars across different levels and topics of adult education have recently called for addressing spiritual experiences in learning. As learning has become a lifelong task in post-industrial societies, the means of managing learning should allegedly be human-centred, that is, conform to the human capacities of learning to learn and the ability to find meaning and fulfilment in daily learning experiences. It has therefore become a commonplace to note that adult learning and professional development should touch the ‘deeper’ or ‘higher’ recesses of human existence instead of mainly learning technical skills or attaining pre-given ephemera: theory & politics in organization 16(4): 99-119 100 | article standards (see e.g. English, Fenwick and Parsons, 2003; Intrator and Kunzman, 2006; Vella, 2000; Vogel, 2000; Zajonc, 2006). In the contemporary uses of the term ‘spiritual experience’, the ‘spiritual’ is an index for a celebration of authenticity, and self-realization, whereas ‘experience’ conveys a notion of subjective, private mental phenomena that can be psychologically discerned across cultural time-spaces, without adherence to any particular creed (Jay, 2005: 78-79; Proudfoot, 1985; Sharf, 1998). In the discourses of education across institutional levels, spiritual experience then indicates a grid of intelligibility for a holistic understanding of learning with a special sensitivity to experiences that represent the noblest aspects of all humanity. In the past decade, mindfulness meditation that is influenced, among other wisdom traditions, by Zen Buddhism, has gained popularity in self-help and management discourses and practices. A Westernized and psychologized form of mindfulness highlights the ability to pay non-judgmental attention to the present moment. This is prominent in recent business magazine articles celebrating its effects on concentration, creativity and efficiency at work (see e.g. Essig, 2013; Schumpeter, 2013). Moreover, large companies such as Google and Apple now utilize mindfulness to enhance physical and mental well-being and productivity among their employees (Hansen, 2012; Schumpeter, 2013). Mindfulness has also spread to training in public sector professions from the military to social work and health care (Ryan, 2012). In this article, we will analyse the uses of mindfulness in recent entrepreneurial learning discourses as a case in point in discussing the role of spiritual experience in late post-industrial capitalist societies. We argue that such learning discourses find resonance in certain dynamics of production in which the labour force has primarily become a mental category and the discourses of a selffulfilment and flexibility are commonplace. We approach the analysis of mindfulness as a ‘history of the present’ (Foucault, 1978), that is, by tracing how the contemporary truths of spiritual experience in Western Zen Buddhism have been formed and made amenable to integration into entrepreneurial discourses of adult education. This enables an understanding of the ‘tactical polyvalence’ (Foucault, 2001: 100-102) of spiritual experience, i.e., that it can be used for a multitude of purposes and aims that may even be at odds with each another. We advance two key arguments. First, we argue that the nexus between entrepreneurial learning and spiritual experience in mindfulness can be Antti Saari and Esko Harni Zen and the art of everything article | 101 understood in the context of the inherent tensions of post-industrial capitalism. As production focuses on the higher human faculties such as spirituality as the source of profit, the temporal and spatial coordinates of production seem to be vanishing. Following Akseli Virtanen (2004; 2006), we call this the dynamics of ‘general economy’. Spiritual experience as depicted in mindfulness discourses can be seen as an attempt to grapple with general economy in the conditions of productivity. Spiritual experience is located neither in the body nor in the soul, nor is the experience of mindfulness traceable in conventional notions of subjectivity and time. Thus it resonates with the abstract quality in the conditions of production. Second, we see that the uses of Western Zen Buddhism in entrepreneurial learning illustrate how capitalism works as a ‘sweeping machine’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1984), that continuously assimilates its own critique and broadens its own boundaries, in this case, by taking over the ‘emancipatory’ strategies of Zen Buddhism and humanistic psychology. We describe how mindfulness seeks to provide a deeply personal and authentic, yet at the same time universal basis for fashioning entrepreneurial lifelong learners. The background mindfulness has in Western Zen Buddhism provides a melange of notions of authenticity, individuality and creativity that have been a part of countercultural movements and a criticism of the Taylorist management of work. General economy: Governing life itself Over the past few decades, there have been frequent calls to analyse the new capitalist regime with regard to current changes in modes of production and managerial techniques of work. It has been argued that capitalist societies have experienced transformation from industrial capitalism to post-industrialism and affective and/or cognitive capitalism (see e.g. Hardt & Negri, 2000, 2005; Lazzarato, 1996; Virtanen, 2006). Due to this transformation, it has been argued that the category of labour has become increasingly detached from its determinable physical and biological aspects, and become more and more an abstract mental and affective category (see e.g. Hardt & Negri, 2005: 145; Lazzarato, 1996; Virtanen, 2004; Vähämäki, 2004; cf. Sennett, 2006). Boltanski and Chiapello (2007) make similar arguments, although from slightly different perspective. They argue that the ‘new capitalist spirit’ today deals with the strong tie between individual self-fulfilment and corporate productivity (see also Binkley, 2014; Julkunen, 2008: 126). In other words, work is no longer the simple ‘production of necessities of life’ (Arendt, 1958) but rather that pivot point where the self is constructed (see also Rose, 1998: 160). ephemera: theory & politics in organization 16(4): 99-119 102 | article Subjectification of work is therefore at the core of the contemporary capitalist regime. Personal, cognitive and emotional competencies and capacities have become essential to the contemporary work ethos (see e.g. Julkunen, 2008; Mäkinen, 2012). In contrast to Taylorist management of work, a worker and an adult learner as an affectual and cognitive being are no longer external in relation to work process. On the contrary, a person’s affect, self-regulation in uncertain conditions and, for example, the ability to communicate and to be creative are prerequisites in an increasing number of jobs (see e.g. Virtanen, 2004; Hardt and Negri, 2005: 145). Moreover, work is not seen as a constraint of freedom, but as a realm in which entrepreneurial subjects can express their autonomy and confirm their identities (Rose, 1998: 160). In this regard, in the contemporary capitalist regime – whether one chooses to call it affective or cognitive capitalism – human life in itself has become a crucial element in managerial techniques of organization as well as in value creation. For illuminating this, Virtanen (2006; 2004) uses the concept of ‘general economy’. With this concept, he seeks to rethink economy in the same way that Foucault (2008) sought to problematize political science and philosophy with the notion of biopolitics. What defines economy and our experience of it today is that the bare humanness of human beings, that general potentiality and linguistic-relational abilities which distinguish human beings is revealing its self as the essence also of economic production. (Virtanen, 2004: 1) Thus the concept of a general economy refers to a stage of capitalism where subjectivity has become capital and the bare humanness of human beings reveals itself as the essence of economic production. The term bare humanness does not refer to any specific form of human behavior, but rather the preconditions of human thought and action in general (Virtanen, 2006). This means that ‘higher faculties’ of human existence, such as mental resilience, flexibility and creativity, have now become objects of contemporary government of work (ibid.). It follows from the logic of general economy that the modes of production and ways of organizing work cannot be unambiguously understood within a certain particular temporal or spatial framework. Instead of being traceable in the standardized behavior of a factory timespace, work is becoming increasingly immaterial: spatially boundless and temporally endless. It is difficult to make a distinction between working time and free time. It is also difficult to say where or when the actual act of production is being carried out, what is work and what is not, and what creates value and what does not (Virtanen, 2004; Virno, 2006; Lazzarato, 2009; Deleuze, 1992). Antti Saari and Esko Harni Zen and the art of everything article | 103 In a certain sense, the basic problem is quite same as it was before: how to control and organize the labour force. But how, then, to organize and manage human life itself, or those ‘highest recesses’ of human existence? According to Virtanen (2004: 54; 2006), governing life itself refers to a ‘power over mind’ which does not so much create physical, biological or spatial boundaries, but rather moods, sentiments and mentalities, ‘inscription habits’ on the mind: The organization of immaterial production is possible only through the management of the general conditions of human action and communication, through organizing the general conditions of organizing. This organization of organization does not operate at the level of actual action or plain intimidation but on that of anxiety and inadequacy; not by confinement or demanding obedience to the rules and being afraid of their violation, but by setting expectations, moods, opinion climates,standards of communication and cooperation. (Virtanen, 2004: 229) In this sense, Virtanen’s notion of a general economy reflects the ways in which theorists of affective capitalism have problematized ways of understanding the organization of human behavior as a source of value in capitalist production. The objects of governing work are becoming more and more general, as it were. As it focuses less on ‘actual action’, i.e. not regulating work in detail, it seems to give more and more autonomy to working subjects. This leads us to assess, how the criticism of standardized and disciplined work in the Taylorist regime has been assimilated to the current ethos of organizing work in general economy. Capitalism as a sweeping machine: Humanist psychology and Buddhist spirituality For Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (1984), capitalism is not a closed system, but a machine that sweeps new forms of life under its auspices. Capitalism is, therefore, continually broadening its own reach. This means, first, that capitalism does not only repress people, but also deals with the production of the real: it produces flows of desire, autonomy and freedom which are not opposite to individual interests, but rather produce arrangements in which certain kind of subjectivity is made possible (see also Hardt and Negri, 2000). Second, as a productive machine, capitalism assimilates heterogeneous elements from different fields, e.g. religion, humanist psychology and Western forms of Zen Buddhism. To illustrate the logic of the capitalist machine, Deleuze and Guattari (1987) use the terms deterritorialization and reterritorialization. Deterritorialization functions as a withdrawal or expansion from the current system. Reterritorialization functions in the opposite way. Where deterritorialization ephemera: theory & politics in organization 16(4): 99-119 104 | article withdraws from the system or expands it, reterritorialization seeks to return these expansions to a new territory. Therefore capitalism is an inventive and productive system which ‘progressively leaves the factory and invades, like a parasite, all spheres of life and the life-world itself. In the end, as we shall see, it is producing and consuming life itself’, as Vandenberghe (2008: 878) puts it. Since the 1960s, Europe and North America have witnessed an emergence of critical challenges to the nexus of positivist psychology of work and Taylorist management practices. This also entailed a demand that the public forms of human interaction be managed so as to make individual self-fulfilment and even spiritual experience possible at work (Binkley, 2014; Carrette and King, 2005). Abraham Maslow, a prominent proponent of humanist psychology, helped to legitimize religious experience as an object of psychological knowledge and praxis, and as irreducible to any particular religion. For Maslow, religious experiences were ‘peak experiences’ of creative, individualist minds that shunned organized and hierarchical forms of work and religion (Maslow, 1970). Maslowian ideas on spiritual experiences were quickly mobilized not only in the new psychology of work, but also in the countercultural movements of the 1960s (Carrette, 2007: 147-148; Herman, 1995: 269-275). In the 1950s and 1960s, humanist and existential psychologies also encountered the wisdom traditions of the East, most prominently including Japanese Zen Buddhism. Carl Jung and Erich Fromm were among the leading psychoanalytic theorists using Zen Buddhist influences in their work. Fromm, for example, referred to Zen Buddhism as a model of finding abundance in the present moment as well as a liberation from the greed and illusion cultivated by capitalist societies (see e.g. Fromm, 1997; Fromm, Suzuki and De Martino, 1960). Moreover, popular philosopher Alan Watts and poets Jack Kerouac and Gary Snyder made Zen an index of creative, counter-intuitive experiences that seemed to withhold forces able to challenge the cultural and political status quo (Goldberg, 2006: 290-291; Williams, 2011; Weir, 2011: 234, 236-246). Yet the interest in spiritual experiences and Buddhism did not remain the property of the countercultural movement alone. From the 1970s, both humanist psychology and Buddhist wisdom traditions drew attention to theories and practices of work, learning, and psychotherapy to account for the higher human faculties of creativity, reflexivity and spirituality. These aspects were an index of essential skills and competences needed especially in white collar work. Thus, what used to be subversive and countercultural, now became a part and parcel of the pact between the human sciences and an emerging post-industrial economy (Carrette, 2007; Carrette and King, 2005; Herman, 1995; Obadia, 2011; Williams, 2011). Antti Saari and Esko Harni Zen and the art of everything article | 105 The ‘sweeping’ nature of spiritual experience illustrates the inventiveness of capitalism in assimilating elements outside itself and even critical to it. In a similar fashion, Boltanski and Chiapello (2007: 241-90) have demonstrated how capitalism swept the postmodernizing critique of the 1960s and 1970s and used it as a way to reorganize itself and expand infinitely. The critical challenges to the nexus of positivist psychology and Taylorist management of work since the 1960s have offered styles of reasoning and new kinds of governmental practices for managing the labour force in a contemporary capitalist regime. As we will see, especially the use of Buddhism is indicative of the inherent problems of management of work in general economy. It is an attempt to harness the most general and flexible human capacities for production. It also represents the sweeping gesture whereupon critical movements aimed at an emancipation from the narrow forms of knowing are reappropriated. What seems to enable this overcoding is spiritual experience as a loose signifier of the highest faculties of human beings (cf. Žižek, 2001: 12-13). ‘Beat Zen’ and mindfulness: Spiritual experience in Western Zen Buddhism A central figure of the Westernization of Zen at the turn of the twentieth century was D.T. Suzuki (1870–1966). He was profoundly influenced by William James’s The Varieties of religious experience (1902), which characterized the core of religion residing in a subjective experience of transcendence that can be psychologically described across cultural and religious differences. Thus Suzuki saw Zen as a universal practice of cultivating spiritual experiences. For him, the essential part of Zen is the practice of meditation (zazen), in which a person can witness his/her own sensations, emotions and thoughts without judgment. The ultimate aim of this practice is a spiritual enlightenment experience (satori), in which one realizes the impermanence or ‘emptiness’ of all existence, including one’s own self (Suzuki, 1962). Suzuki argues that Buddhism materializes clear-headed rationality more than any other religion as it is not reducible to ritualistic or supernatural aspects of religion (Suzuki, 1908: 81). Yet this does not mean credence to mere intellect, for enlightenment is an ineffable personal experience of bare existence beyond any dichotomies produced by thought and language (Suzuki, 1957: 36-37; Suzuki, 1962: 5-7; Suzuki, 1969: 21-27). Having this experience is also to slip beyond time as a measurable, chronological succession of events (Suzuki, 1957: 98-99; Suzuki, 1969: 57). This resulted in Zen being understood as an individualistic way of life outside formal religious institutions or dogma. Moreover, as it was ephemera: theory & politics in organization 16(4): 99-119 106 | article based on subjective experience beyond language and culture, it could be discerned in other cultures and religions as well. Thus it is no wonder that Suzuki’s Zen could be quickly assimilated into American intellectual and popular culture (Borup, 2004; McMahan, 2008; Sharf, 1995). Coextensive with Suzuki’s academic Zen, a trans-Pacific movement was established, whereupon Zen monks started frequenting the United States (especially Hawaii and California) and American pilgrims were visiting Japanese Zen monasteries. As Robert Sharf (1995) notes, it wasn’t the Zen of the most notable Japanese schools of Rinzai or Sōtō that was mediated, but a marginalized, maverick Zen of Sanbôkyôdan established in the 1950s. It accentuated non-religious aspects of Zen as well as intensive meditation which would quickly bring about enlightenment experiences. This was not restricted to monastic life, but to be proliferated among lay people. This is the Zen that was to be aggressively proliferated in American Zen Buddhist communities from the 1960s onwards (Sharf, 1995; cf. Prebish, 1999: 8-26). Alan Watts aided in making Suzuki’s Zen popular in the Anglo-American world. For Watts, the core of Zen lies in the fact that wisdom can be found in the most ordinary aspects of living, without a life spent in pilgrimage or a monastery (Watts, 1958: 47-48). Zen is based on an experience which is so quotidian and universal that it can also be mapped in thinkers in European and American culture as well (ibid.; see also Ames, 1962). Like Suzuki, Watts also refers to a universal, ‘astonishing moment of insight’, which escapes any labels or dualisms one might attach to it. In meditative experience all existence seems to be focused into the present moment: ‘the immediate now…is the goal and fulfillment of all living’ (Watts, 1960: 18). This experience also conveys ultimate satisfaction and disappearance of personal problems and fears of future events, which result only from language and a false sense of temporality. Reality confronted in the now is the ineffable experience of existence as perfect, as lacking nothing (Watts, 1960: 17-30; see also Suzuki, 1969: 57-60). This provides a basis for world-affirming action in everyday life. Acting in the Zen way in quotidian life is always effortless and flexible, which follows from not being in opposition with one’s outer and inner reality (Watts, 1960: 67). A human being expressing Zen is likened to a ball in a mountain stream, which is to say that he cannot be blocked, stopped, or embarrassed in any situation. He never wobbles or dithers in his mind, for though he may pause in overt action to think a problem out, the stream of his consciousness always moves straight ahead without being caught in the Antti Saari and Esko Harni Zen and the art of everything article | 107 vicious circles of of anxiety or indecisive doubt, wherein thought whirls wildly around without issue. (Watts, 1960: 68) Such a flexible and creative person expresses the aforementioned emptiness or void (sunyata), which means the utter impermanence of existence. No thoughts or outer obstacles ‘stick’ in the person who acts effortlessly: they float by without friction, without clinging to conceptions of good or evil, possible or impossible (Watts, 1960: 68, 83-91). Watts claims that this attitude is discernible in ‘Beat Zen’, in which the younger generation of the 1950s was expressing passive resistance to the ‘American way of life’. Such resistance opts for a highly individualistic, easygoing lifestyle in which one ‘does not seek to change the existing order but simply turns away from it to find the significance of life in subjective experience rather than objective achievement’ (Watts, 1960: 91). This is opposed to what Watts rather pejoratively calls ‘Square Zen’, organized Buddhism obsessed with rituals and hierarchies that restrains the free flow of spiritual experiences (Watts, 1960: 103-105). The aforementioned elements of ineffable experience, world affirmation, and effortless and flexible action in the present moment are still discernible in contemporary popular Zen literature. Books on humanist psychology, self-help and management celebrate the ability to say ‘yes’ to the world without distorting dualisms and frictions. In management literature, the Zen experience gained popularity in the 1980s with the remarkable success of Japanese management theories and practices. Companies such as Toyota and Honda seemed to embody a holistic, intuitive and flexible management ideology that was conveyed to the Western hemisphere with such works as the all-time bestseller management book In Search of Excellence. In the 1990s, Zen received further attention as the tech gurus of the Silicon Valley (such as Steve Jobs) advocated Zen meditation as a resource of focus and creativity (Williams, 2011: 44-49). Western Zen experience also plays a part in Jon Kabat-Zinn’s idea of mindfulness. Trained in Korean Zen Buddhism, Kabat-Zinn defines mindfulness as a meditative practice of non-judgmental focus on the present moment (Kabat-Zinn, 1994; Williams & Kabat-Zinn, 2013). Kabat-Zinnian mindfulness is a therapeutic practice for treating experiences of stress, anxiety and pain that admits a Buddhist influence while being completely secular and resting on a Western scientific foundation. Kabat-Zinn also gives detailed accounts on how to assume meditation postures, how to observe one’s own breathing and how to relate to one’s own emotions and thoughts without judgment (Kabat-Zinn, 1994; Williams and Kabat-Zinn, 2013). ephemera: theory & politics in organization 16(4): 99-119 114 | article developing their own business enterprises. Weber described a subjective interiority as a private space for moulding religious virtues which would then also make up the foundation of a work ethic of effectiveness and profit responsibility (Weber, 1930). One can find consistency with the Weberian account in the way subjective interiority and spirituality have become the focal point of the entrepreneurial work ethic. However, the very notion of subjectivity now assumes a liquidity or ‘emptiness’, as there is seemingly nothing stable and unchanging in the ideal entrepreneur. Arguably, Zen discourse also destabilizes ontological categories and the binaries of mind and body and rationality and affects, in favour of the affective and intuitive aspect of productive action. This also has a different temporal orientation, as a person practicing mindfulness is not attached to the future nor the past, but focuses stringently on the present moment only. Holistic characterizations of spirituality in mindfulness discourses also resonate well with the notion of general economy, in which the most general aspects of what makes us human, are governed as sources of profit. Drawing from Zen Buddhism, the entrepreneurial celebration of mindfulness highlights its ability to cultivate creativity, intuitive and flexible action and learning to learn. It does not specify exactly how and where entrepreneurial spirit should be manifest, but instead, focuses on these meta-level conditions of entrepreneurial behavior. This can be understood as an attempt to grasp the nature of productive work as irreducible to spatial or temporal exigencies. Moreover, the way Zen spirituality is used in entrepreneurship education shows the inventive sweeping logic of capitalism: it broadens its own boundaries by assimilating criticism that seems to come from outside it. In this case, the countercultural and at times decidedly anti-capitalist ethos of Zen Buddhism was deterritorialized and annexed to the very conditions of productive work in general economy. This also highlights the way capitalism does not only ‘repress’ in the sense of suffocating human life, but creates human reality and cultivates it productive forces. references Altobello, R. (2007) ‘Concentration and contemplation: A lesson in learning to learn’, Journal of Transformative Education, 5(4): 354-371. Ames, V.M. (1962) Zen and american thought. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Arendt, H. (1958) The human condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Berglund, K. (2013) ‘Fighting against all odds: Entrepreneurship education as employability training’, ephemera, 13(4): 717-735. Antti Saari and Esko Harni Zen and the art of everything article | 115 Binkley, S. (2011) ‘Psychological life as enterprise’, History of Human Sciences, 24(3): 83102. Binkley S. (2014) Happiness as enterprise. New York: Suny Press. Boltanski, L. and E. Chiapello (2007) The new spirit of capitalism. London: Verso. Borup, J. (2004) ‘Zen and the art of inverting orientalism: Religious studies and genealogical networks’, in P. Antes, A. W. Geertz, and R. R. Warne (eds.) New Approaches to the study of religion. volume 1: Regional, critical, and historical approaches. Berlin: Verlag de Gruyter. Brunila, K. (2012) ‘A diminished self: entrepreneurial and therapeutic ethos operating with a common aim’, European Educational Research Journal, 11(4): 477-486. Carrette, J.R. (2007). Religion and critical psychology: Religious experience in the knowledge economy. London: Routledge. Carrette, J.R. and R. King (2005) Selling spirituality: The silent takeover of religion. London: Routledge. Chell, E. (2013) ‘Review of skill and the entrepreneurial process’, International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour & Research, 19(1): 6-31. Createapreneur (2014) [http://www.createapreneur.com/] Deleuze, G. and F. Guattari (1984) Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. Translated by R. Hurley, M. Seen and H.R. Lane. London: Athlone Press. Deleuze, G. and F. Guattari (1987) A thousand plateaus. Trans. B. Massumi. London: Continuum. Deleuze, G. (1992) ‘Postscript on the societies of control’, October, 59: 3-7. [http://www.jstor.org/stable/778828] Dewalt, K. (2013) ‘8 ways meditation makes you a better entrepreneur’, Entrepreneur, July 28. [http://kevindewalt.com/2013/07/28/8-ways-meditation-makes-you-a-betterentrepreneur/] English, L. M., T. Fenwick and J. Parsons (2003) Spirituality of adult education and training. Malabar: Krieger Publishing. Essig, T. (2013) ‘Mindfulness is a useful business skill, new research suggests’, Forbes, November 27. [http://www.forbes.com/sites/toddessig/2013/11/27/mindfulness-is-auseful-business-skill-new-research-suggests/] Foucault, M. (1978) ‘Nietzsche, genealogy, history’, Semiotexte, 3(1): 78-94. Foucault, M. (2001) History of sexuality vol I. Translated by R. Hurley. New York: Pantheon. Foucault, M. (2008) The birth of biopolitics: lectures at the Colle!ge de France, 1978–1979. Translated by G. Burchell. London: Basingstoke. Fromm, E. (1997) The art of being. London: Constable. Fromm, E., D.T. Suzuki and R. De Martino (1960) Zen buddhism and psychoanalysis. New York: Harper. Gartner, W.B. (2008) ‘Entrepreneurship’, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 32(2): 361368. Gibb, A.A. (2005) ‘The future of entrepreneurship education. Determining the basis for coherent policy and practice’, in P. Kyrö and C. Carrier (eds.) The Dynamics of learning entrepreneurship in a cross cultural university context. Tampere: University of Tampere, Research Centre for Vocational and Professional Education. ephemera: theory & politics in organization 16(4): 99-119 116 | article Goldberg, E. (2006) ‘Buddhism in the West: Transplantation and innovation’, in S. Berkwitz (ed.) Buddhism in world cultures: Comparative perspectives. Santa Barbara: ABC Clio. Gunatillake, R. (2014) ‘5 challenges of being a mindfulness entrepreneur’, Mindfulness Everywhere. [http://www.mindfulnesseverywhere.io/5-challenges-mindfulnessentrpreneur/] Hansen, D. (2012) ‘A guide to mindfulness at work’, Forbes, October 31. [http://www.forbes.com/sites/drewhansen/2012/10/31/a-guide-to-mindfulness-atwork/] Hardt, M. and A. Negri (2000) Empire. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Hardt, M. and A. Negri (2005) Multitude – War and democracy in an age of empire. London: Penguin Books. Herman, E. (1995) The romance of American psychology: Political culture in the age of experts. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hyland, T. (2010) ‘Mindfulness, adult learning and therapeutic education: Integrating the cognitive and affective domains of learning’, International Journal of Lifelong Education, 29(5): 517-532. Hägg, O. (2011) Yrittäjyysvalmennus ja yrittäjäidentiteetti. Tampere: Tampereen yliopisto. Intrator, S. and R. Kunzman (2006) ‘Starting with the soul’, Educational Leadership, 63(6): 38-43. Jacobs, M. (2014) ‘Meditation isn’t just for hippies: Here is how it can help entrepreneurs’, Entrepreneur, February 20. [http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/231647] Jay, M. (2005) Songs of experience: modern American and European variations on a universal theme. Berkeley: University of California Press. Jensen, T.L. (2014) ‘A holistic person perspective in measuring entrepreneurship education impact – Social entrepreneurship education at the Humanities’, The International Journal of Management Education, 12(3): 349-364. Julkunen, R. (2008) Uuden työn paradoksit. Tampere: Vastapaino. Kabat-Zinn, J. (1994) Wherever you go, there you are: Mindfulness meditation in everyday life. New York: Hyperion. King, S.B. (2009) Socially engaged Buddhism. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Kyrö, P., J. Seikkula-Leino and J. Mylläri (2011) ‘Meta processes of entrepreneurial and enterprising learning: The dialogue between cognitive, conative and affective constructs’, in O.J. Borch, A. Fayolle, P. Kyrö and E. Ljunggren (eds.) Entrepreneurship research in Europe: Evolving concepts and processes. Cheltenham, UK & Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing. Langer E. (1998) The Power of mindful learning. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley/Addison Wesley Longman. Lazzarato, M. (1996) ‘Immaterial labour’, in P. Virno and M. Hardt (eds.) Radical thought in Italy: A potential politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Text used here archived at [www.generation-online.org/c/immateriallabour3.htm] Lazzarato, M. (2009) ‘Neoliberalism in action: Inequality, insecurity, and the reconstitution of the social’, Theory, Culture & Society, 26(6): 109-133. Lopis, G. (2013) ‘The business of living: An entrepreneurial approach to everyday life’, Forbes, September 9. [http://www.forbes.com/sites/glennllopis/2013/09/09/thebusiness-of-living-an-entrepreneurial-approach-to-everyday-life/] Antti Saari and Esko Harni Zen and the art of everything article | 117 Maslow, A. (1970) Religions, values, and peak experiences. Middlesex: Penguin. McMahan, D.L. (2008) The making of Buddhist modernism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Miller, J. (2014) The contemplative practitioner. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Miller, P. and N. Rose (2008) Governing the present: Administering economic, social and personal life. Cambridge: Polity Press. Mäkinen, K. (2013) ‘Yksilöllinen potentiaali ja sukupuoli työelämävalmennuksessa’, Sosiologia, 2(50): 152-169. Obadia, L. (2011) ’Is buddhism like a hamburger? Buddhism and the market economy in a globalized world’, in L. Obadia and D.C. Wood (eds.) The economics of religion: Anthropological approaches. Emerald Group Publishing. Olsson, S. and M. Frödin (2007) Personligt entreprenörskap: Att få saker att hända. Arvika: Universe Imagine. Peters, M. (2001) ‘Education, Enterprise Culture and the Entrepreneurial Self: A Foucauldian Perspective’, Journal of Educational Enquiry, 2(2): 58-71. Prebish, C.S. (1999) Luminous passage: The practice and study of Buddhism in America. Berkeley: University of California Press. Proudfoot, W. (1985) Religious experience. Berkeley: University of California Press. Pyykkönen, M. (2014) Ylistetty yrittäjyys. Jyväskylä: Sophi. Queen, C.S. (ed.) (2012) Engaged Buddhism in the west. Wisdom Publications Inc. Rerup, C. (2005) ‘Learning from past experience: Footnotes on mindfulness and habitual entrepreneurship’, Scandinavian Journal of Management, 21: 451-472. Roth, H.D. (2006) ‘Contemplative studies: Prospects for a new field’, Teachers College Record, 108(9): 1787-1815. Rose, N. (1998) Inventing our selves: Psychology, power and personhood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ryan, T. (2012) A mindful nation: How a simple practice can help us reduce stress, improve performance, and recapture the American spirit. Carlsbad, CA: Hay House. Schumpeter (2013) ‘The mindfulness business’, The Economist, November 16. [http://www.economist.com/news/business/21589841-western-capitalism-lookinginspiration-eastern-mysticism-mindfulness-business] Sharf, R.H. (1995) ‘Buddhist modernism and the rhetoric of meditative experience’, Numen, 42(3): 228-283. Sharf, R.H. (1998) ‘Experience’, in M. Taylor (ed.) Critical terms for religious studies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Swiha (2014) ‘Holistic Entrepreneurship: Living your purpose’. [https://swiha.edu/holistic-entrepreneurship/] Sennett, R. (2006) Culture of the new capitalism. New Haven: Yale University Press. Shapiro, S.L., K.W. Brown and J.A. Astin (2008) Toward the integration of meditation into higher learning: a review of research. Center for Contemplative Mind in Society. [http://conference2009.tie.wikispaces.net/file/view/MedandHigherEd.pdf/28131906 6/MedandHigherEd.pdf] Siegel, D.J. (2007) The mindful brain. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. Simmons, R. (2014) ‘3 simple ways meditation will make you a better entrepreneur’, Entrepreneur, March 19. [http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/232270] ephemera: theory & politics in organization 16(4): 99-119 118 | article Suzuki, D.T. (1908) Outlines of mahayana buddhism. Chicago: The Open Court Publishing. Suzuki, D.T. (1957) Mysticism: Christian and buddhist. New York: Harper & Brothers. Suzuki, D.T. (1962) The essentials of zen buddhism. New York: E.P. Dutton & Co. Suzuki, D.T. (1969) The field of zen. London: The Buddhist Society. Toren, A. (2014) ‘3 eastern practices to tame “monkey mind”’, Entrepreneur, August 24. [http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/236581] Vandenberghe, F. (2008) ‘Deleuzian capitalism’, Philosophy & Social Criticism, 34(8): 877903. Vella, J. (2000) ‘A spirited epistemology: Honoring the adult learner as a subject’, in L.M. English and M.A. Gillen (eds.) Addressing the spiritual dimensions of adult learning: What educators can do. San Francisco: Jossey Bass. Virno, P. (2006) A grammar of the multitude. Helsinki: Tutkijaliitto. Virtanen, A. (2004) ‘General economy: The entrance of multitude into production’, ephemera, 4(3): 209-232. Virtanen, A. (2006) Biopoliittisen talouden kritiikki. Modernin talouden loppu ja mielivallan synty. Helsinki: Tutkijaliitto. Vogel, L.J. (2000) ‘Reckoning with the spiritual lives of adult educators’, in L.M. English and M.A. Gillen (eds.) Addressing the spiritual dimensions of adult learning: What educators can do. San Francisco: Jossey Bass. Vähämäki, J. (2004) ‘Controlling the multitude’, ephemera, 4(3): 233-245. Watts, A. (1958) The spirit of zen. New York: Grove Press. Watts, A. (1960) This is it and other essays on zen and spiritual experience. London: John Murray. Weber, M. (1930) The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. Translated by T. Parsons. London: Allen & Unwin. Williams, J. and J. Kabat-Zinn (2013) ‘Mindfulness: Diverse perspectives on its meaning, origins, and multiple applications at the intersection of science and dharma’, in M. Williams and J. Kabat-Zinn (eds.) Mindfulness: Diverse perspectives on its meaning, origins and applications. London: Routledge. Weir, D. (2011) American orient. Imagining the east from the colonial era through the twentieth century. Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press. Williams, R.J. (2011) ‘Technê-Zen and the Spiritual quality of global capitalism’, Critical Inquiry, 38(1): 17-70. Zajonc, A. (2006) ‘Love and knowledge: Recovering the heart of learning through contemplation’, Teachers College Record, 108(9): 1742-1759. Žižek, S. (2001) First as tragedy, then as farce. London: Verso. the authors Antti Saari works as a post-doctoral researcher in the Faculty of Education at the University of Tampere, Finland. His research interests include the uses of spiritual, especially Buddhist discourses in the government of education. He has also done research on the history of educational psychology in Finland, Germany and the US. Email: [email protected] Antti Saari and Esko Harni Zen and the art of everything article | 119 Esko Harni (Faculty of Education, University of Tampere, Finland) is currently working on his doctoral dissertation in which he is focusing on political and epistemic governance of entrepreneurship in late capitalism. He has also done research on political theory and political philosophy, especially on Michel Foucault’s and Giorgio Agamben’s political thought. Email: [email protected]