{"id":4348,"date":"2016-01-27T11:40:12","date_gmt":"2016-01-27T11:40:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/crcc\/religious-spiritual-and-none-of-the-above-how-did-mindfulness-get-so-big\/"},"modified":"2024-08-07T23:18:13","modified_gmt":"2024-08-07T23:18:13","slug":"religious-spiritual-and-none-of-the-above-how-did-mindfulness-get-so-big","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/crcc\/religious-spiritual-and-none-of-the-above-how-did-mindfulness-get-so-big\/","title":{"rendered":"Religious, Spiritual and \u201cNone of the Above\u201d: How Did Mindfulness Get So Big?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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Religious, Spiritual and \u201cNone of the Above\u201d: How Did Mindfulness Get So Big?<\/h1>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n
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\n\n \n Commentary\n\n\n<\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n By<\/span>Nalika Gajaweera<\/a><\/strong>\n \n January 27, 2016<\/span>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n <\/div><\/div>\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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This post originally appeared on Religion Dispatches<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>” has prompted much popular and scholarly debate about what is “real Buddhism” versus “mere spirituality.”<\/p>\n

Do the contradictions between self-help psychology and the transcendent goals of the Buddhist path render the mindfulness movement inauthentic?<\/p>\n

Watch a video about Against the Stream:<\/strong><\/p>\n