I always find it weird how western "promoters" of Buddhism are so gung-ho on the meditation part, pretty much disregarding everything else.
Having met quite a few Buddhists (also my partner) who were raised by Buddhist parents, I'm yet to find a single one who meditates at all. That's not even that big of a part of "mindfulness".
After reading a monk's book (Essential Chan Buddhism by Guo Jun), I have a feeling it's all cargo-cultish in the west.
It's not just a Western thing. The likes of Goenka have made the case for Vipassana meditation as a universally beneficial secular practice compatible with a variety of religious beliefs and amenable to scientific study in India too. This approach inevitably attracts more attention and new adherents than more longstanding cultural traditions, rules and suttas.
I asked a friendly volunteer outside the Global Vipassana Centre (which emphasises the secular universal nature of its meditation practices, but also contains holy relics of the Buddha) how often he personally meditated. He paused for a moment, looked a bit sheepish and then said "not very often".
Is there any kind of documentation of how modern religions are experienced by normal practitioners? A book [edit: or, more realistically, a book series] would be great, but some kind of film documentary series seems to me like an even better fit. I've gone looking for that sort of thing in the past and come up empty-handed. I'm thinking interviews and a combo of descriptions or footage of any religious practices or services that aren't considered too secret or sacred or whatever to allow outsiders to see it.
It's easy to find teachings and scattered accounts of some elements, but I'd be very interested in this kind of thing even for relatively familiar-to-me things like various Christian sects (to be any good, this would surely need a bunch of entries for every major religion, including Buddhism, because there are so many difference in how they're experienced by different traditions or in different cultures)
Material about priestly or monastics experience of religions is easy to find, but the experience of lay practitioners and their views on the religion (which may differ a lot from what the priests or monastics say) seems harder to come by, especially any kind of systematic or cohesive treatment rather than just scattered pieces here and there.
The thing that fascinated me was his exploration of the realness of experience among practitioners and where that experience seems to comes from.
As a child of Christian fundamentalism who ran away as fast as I could, it was eye opening to start to see the basis on which many of these religions were founded, which religion manifesting as a symptom of something deeper within ourselves. Not a mystical or metaphysical deeper, but remnants of tens of thousands of years of evolution and humanity’s wrestling with consciousness and meaning.
There are many varieties of Buddhism. It is a mixture of eastern culture and knowledge in general, including many generations of empirical psychotherapy, religion, philosophy, etc. Some varieties of Buddhism, like some schools of Zen, do focus heavily (or entirely) on meditation practice. Scientific research suggests that meditation has a real effect on the brain.
To me it seems completely rational and expected that the west would be drawn to the varieties that don't carry as much religious dogma because that is more incompatible with western thought. Of course we can take some aspects from it which we find useful. So I don't find it weird at all.
Despite this, I still absolutely think that 'mindfulness' is often becoming bastardised and a lot of the value is being lost in the process of translation. People will of course try to take advantage of it and try to profit from it.
Your comment also makes me imagine picking a random barely religious American that never goes to church and using them as a model for 'real Christianity'
> There are many varieties of Buddhism. It is a mixture of eastern culture and knowledge in general, including many generations of empirical psychotherapy, religion, philosophy, etc. Some varieties of Buddhism, like some schools of Zen, do focus heavily (or entirely) on meditation practice.
Zen does not traditionally focus heavily nor entirely on meditation practise, for example it has a heavy amount of ritual and chanting. The idea of a return to Zen being just meditation is a modern resistance in the early 20th century by certain Japanese teachers (many of whom brought Zen to the west) who thought that the spiritual aspects of the tradition had been lost entirely to public service rituals (basically becoming "the people who do funerals" in Japanese society). I agree with those modern teachers, but it isn't representative of Japanese Zen in general, and certainly not of Chan, Seon, or Thien.
Overall there is no Buddhist lineage over a century old that I'm aware of that has its primary focus on meditation.
> Scientific research suggests that meditation has a real effect on the brain.
I don't see how that's relevant to the rest of your comment. It seems kind of like a subtle materialism insert.
> To me it seems completely rational and expected that the west would be drawn to the varieties that don't carry as much religious dogma because that is more incompatible with western thought. Of course we can take some aspects from it which we find useful. So I don't find it weird at all.
That's not really true, since all forms of Buddhism require some kind of "blind faith". For example, in Zen we have the three pillars of Zen practise: great faith, great doubt, and great endurance. Great faith means that we should have faith in our practise and Buddha-nature, even if we have not yet realised it directly. Letting go is an act of faith after all. There are purely faith-based sects of Buddhism, like Pure Land, or like Tibetan Buddhism (not well in my realm of knowledge) which generally has more faith required than Zen, and I think you'll be surprised how popular those traditions are in the west. I don't personally see western thought as being incompatible with dogma or faith at all
> Despite this, I still absolutely think that 'mindfulness' is often becoming bastardised and a lot of the value is being lost in the process of translation. People will of course try to take advantage of it and try to profit from it.
I agree, there is a lack of good teachers and instructions, but I want to point the finger more at the students than at the teachers. They don't want to learn, they don't want to practise. They want a quick release or an easy way out. If a doctor prescribes a mindfulness program to a patient struggling with anxiety, it's an absolute miracle if they stick at it for even 10 minutes a day for more than a year. Doubly so for the ethical principles, which are even harder to stick to (as I know from personal experience). The problem isn't so much that Buddhist principles are bastardised, it's more that very few people have a strong intent to follow them. That's why the faith based practises above are generally so useful for the laity: Pure Land Buddhism can be done by anyone at any time, you simply recite the nembutsu (namo amida butsu) whenever you remember. It isn't clear to me what an equivalently easy and straightforward practise would look like for someone who can't handle the faithful aspects
> Your comment also makes me imagine picking a random barely religious American that never goes to church and using them as a model for 'real Christianity'
I think the idea of equating a Buddhist who doesn't meditate to a Christian who doesn't go to church is a bit strange, since likely you think that it is somewhat essential for the latter to go to church, and therefore do you think that meditation is essential for Buddhism? I don't quite get this point
> Overall there is no Buddhist lineage over a century old that I'm aware of that has its primary focus on meditation.
Do you mean specifically in Japan? Because many of the Tibetan lineages have Dzogchen [1] or Mahamudra [2] meditation as their primary focus and go back a thousand plus years. There are even lineages of householder or itinerant yogis called Ngagpa [3] that have long traditions of meditation training, going back to Tilopa, Saraha, and the other Mahasiddhas of Bengal. I practice with a Tibetan Ngagpa from time to time (Dr Nida) [4] and have also gotten a chance to practice with a Baul teacher from modern Bengal [5], and it's interesting to note how even though the lineages have split in their outward appearances, there are quite a lot of similarities in their teaching of meditation.
Anyway, that's all to say that in many Tibetan Buddhist lineages the meditation practice has been an unbroken, primary focus of the teachings. It wouldn't be surprising if that wasn't the case in other traditions.
Oh, no need for apologies, I was just wanting to clarify a bit -- thanks!
Speaking of Theravada, I read a book recently that might interest you about some of the less known meditation practices in their history [1]. Some of the formulations the author writes about reminds me a lot of various Vajrayana methods and "signs" that are taught. The Thai forest tradition of Theravada was my first encounter with formal meditation practice and the first samatha technique I learned from it has a lot of overlap with things I later encountered in atiyoga. Which makes a lot of sense, the traditions are a lot more syncretic and interconnected than many modern teachers would lead you to believe.
Historically, it's because of imperialism. Buddhism, for a long time, had turned into a faith religion, suffered many close encounters with dying out completely in several regions, resulting in the 3 major traditions of Buddhism we see today, the earliest version of Buddhism died out long ago.
When Western imperial forces began to systematically take over regions of Asia for trade, the Buddhist monks in areas such as Burma/Myanmar felt that this was the second time their tradition would die out, and sought to preserve the parts that they felt were essential. In their case, it was the path of vipassana meditation, and though Buddhism didn't die out there, from then on it was strongly influenced by this more refined, less faith-driven teaching.
So when Westerners started to go over to these regions of Asia, this is what they were taught, not the religious faith of the local lay practitioners, which existed mainly to support the monks in their vipassana.
Having met quite a few Buddhists (also my partner) who were raised by Buddhist parents, I'm yet to find a single one who meditates at all. That's not even that big of a part of "mindfulness".
After reading a monk's book (Essential Chan Buddhism by Guo Jun), I have a feeling it's all cargo-cultish in the west.