'The Anatomy of Our Discontent': From Braining the Mind to Mindfulness for Teachers

This paper offers an overview of contemporary inscriptions of mindfulness, their conditions of possibility, and examples of the braining of mind on which contemporary neuro-meets-contemplative turns are dependent. We examine key nineteenth-century events integral to the formation of Biologies Old, in which historic debates over "the death of God" in Western worldviews forge a space of finitude dedicated to fleshy materiality and the relocation of "bios." We also examine what emerges in the wake of such debates, including how Biologies New and a transcendence/immanence horizon continues to reverberate through popular, contemporary recommendations for mindfulness in teaching.