Religious, Spiritual, and “None of the Above”: How Did Mindfulness Get So Big?

Marguerite Agniel in a Buddha position with her legs crossed Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Photograph by J. de Mirjian, ca.1929. Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons

By Nalika Gajaweera / January 20, 2016

The ever-growing popularity of mindfulness—from corporate boardrooms to inner-city schools—has finally made my academic interest a conversation-starter at dinner parties. “Ah, the Buddha was talking about cognitive science 2,500 years ago!” as someone exclaimed after learning about what I do as an anthropologist.

The success of mindfulness in the marketplace is largely an outcome of its emergence as a kind of self-help psychology that has allowed the practice—a derivation of Theravada Buddhist meditation—to operate in non-Buddhist therapeutic settings for not particularly Buddhist goals. Its adoption by people who describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious” has prompted much popular and scholarly debate about what is “real Buddhism” versus “mere spirituality.”

Do the contradictions between self-help psychology and the transcendent goals of the Buddhist path render the mindfulness movement inauthentic?

As a researcher I find mindfulness most significantly propagated and practiced at Buddhist meditation centers, among people who identify as converts to Western Buddhism. From learning Buddhist Pali scriptures and taking the five precepts, to participating in long Vipassana meditation retreats and learning under the tutelage of Buddhist monks, Zen priests and lay Buddhist teachers, these individuals have deep and abiding commitments to Buddhism.

http://religiondispatches.org/religious-spiritual-and-none-of-the-above-how-did-mindfulness-get-so-big/