It’s no secret that mindfulness meditation and other Buddhist-based cognitive studies are gaining in popularity in the West, particularly in the U.S. But in bringing mindfulness to the masses, is something lost in translation? That is to say, are Westerners gradually stripping Buddhism of its religious roots?
Vince Horn, of the podcast “Buddhist Geeks,” ponders that question and raises several more in this Beliefnet essay.
A snippet: “Are we so embarrassed by certain components of Buddhism — the adherence to strict moral codes, the magical and mythical pantheon of Buddhist cosmology, the metaphysics of enlightenment, etc. — that we feel the need to throw them all out without further discourse? Or, can we hold the pain of knowing that all the amazing teachings that come out of the Buddhist tradition also come with things that we might not like or understand? … Can we really trust that things like the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction movement are carrying the full potential of the Buddhist tradition forward? Is it that by secularizing Buddhism we are running the very real potential of losing something of incredible importance, while trying to ditch what we consider the “non-essential?”
Horn’s essay reminds me of a David Brooks column from last year, in which he posits that, in the future, we’ll all be “neural Buddhists.” In his reckoning, you take a little bit of neuroscience add a dash of Buddhism (not the magic stuff though) and voila! you have Future Man.