Tags
law, Origen, religion, S.N. Goenka, Śāntideva, United States
As mindfulness meditation practices become ever more popular and widespread, their claim to be a “non-sectarian technique” takes on progressively greater importance, just as it does with yoga. By claiming their practices to be secular techniques, teachers not only can promote the practices to adherents of Abrahamic traditions; they can also aim to avoid the legal restrictions placed on “religion” –though they can then also be taxed, and even treated as a competitive sport.
But that’s not the only problem. The concept of “religion” is famously difficult to define, and I’ve often expressed my view that it hurts our inquiries more than it helps. Generally speaking, I think, the less we employ the category, the better. Unfortunately, that is not an option in a place like the United States – and probably most other places in the world – in which the concept of “religion” is enshrined into law. In particular, the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” And in the past few decades the US Supreme Court has taken this to mean that a “religious activity” cannot be taught in public schools – even as an optional elective. Thus the US law as it stands cannot exist without some sort of attempt, however bad it might be, to define “religion”.
What that means, in turn, is that the claims of mindfulness instructors to be teaching “nonreligious” techniques do not get a free pass: just because you say it’s non-religious, doesn’t mean it is. This becomes pretty clear with something like Goenka vipassanā courses, which claim to be a mere technique but include not merely quotes from the Buddha but chanting from Buddhist suttas, and request that practitioners refrain from any other religious practice while they are trying the “technique” out. None of this is a problem for the likes of the mindfulness program in Boston University’s IS&T, because BU is a privately funded institution and therefore is allowed to teach “religion” as it chooses; it even has a school of theology. But for public schools, including public colleges, it is a different matter: if mindfulness meditation is legally defined as a “religious” activity, then it cannot legally be taught in public schools. That is a major reason why its teachers have defined it as a secular technique – but your saying something isn’t “religious” is not enough to establish that it actually isn’t, according to US law. And so, entirely unsurprisingly, Christian groups are now suing schools that teach mindfulness. The main surprise to me is that it took them this long.
I am not particularly interested in the particular American legal issues involved in this challenge, including the legal definition of “religion”. More interesting and important to me – as a philosopher, a Buddhist, and a practitioner of mindfulness meditation – is this question: whatever the law says (in the US or anywhere else), should Christians, as Christians, be objecting to mindfulness practices in the first place? Including even ones that bill themselves as secular techniques? The fact that these practices have Buddhist origins shouldn’t be the issue. Rather, the question is: is there something about the practices themselves that would undermine a Christian’s Christianity by practising them?
The first point that comes to mind in answering that question is a distinction I drew between Buddhism and Christianity with respect to science: that the most important science for Buddhism is psychology, whereas for Christianity it is cosmology (including natural history). Buddhists have not traditionally believed in evolution or a Big Bang, but to adopt belief in these different cosmologies is not particularly problematic for Buddhists because they are somewhat orthogonal to the key Buddhist teachings. So one could conversely make the claim that because mindfulness practices are psychological in orientation, they are less at odds with Christian belief.
That is not the end of the story, however. For some cosmological elements do make a difference to Buddhism: a large portion of the Śikṣā Samuccaya describes the torments one might face in the hells, and if it turns out there are no hells, that would make a significant difference to Śāntideva’s outlook. And so too there is at least one psychological belief that is at the core of traditional Christianity. And that is the existence of a soul.
Early Christians followed the common Greek view that the soul (psychē) was a person’s essence; Origen established a view that has endured among Christians since then, that the soul is immortal. It is this immortal soul that can be saved or unsaved. And while I think the idea of an essential and immortal soul is not incompatible with mindfulness practice, it does at least stand in significant tension with it. I noted that Buddhists and qualitative individualists share the beliefs that any self which exists is divisible, mutable and heteronomous; one of the things that makes this shared view significant is it is not typically shared by Christians.
A key element to mindfulness practice is disidentification: one notices one’s thoughts and emotions as they surface, and observes them from a distance. In so doing, one comes to observe one’s mind, one’s self, as a divided entity, reducible into parts. One takes an approach which Augustine would have associated with his Manichean foes: where the soul is not one thing but the battleground for a struggle between good and evil intentions.
That doesn’t mean one can’t practise mindfulness meditation as a Christian – or even that mindfulness meditation must mean one ceases to believe in an immortal soul. But the mindfulness approach, which explicitly comes out of Buddhist non-self, is explicitly in tension with the unified immortal essence postulated by most Christians. I think Christians would do well to at least be cautious around it.
To be fair, most Christians – like most Buddhists – probably engage in practices that are even more theologically problematic without a second thought. That doesn’t mean that it’s a good thing for them to do so. If we are to take our traditions seriously, we need to think through practices that may stand at odds with them.
I’ve practiced Tibetan Buddhism for over 10 years, and recently did a 10-day Goenka Vipassana retreat. I was also raised Catholic, and still have some affinity to Christian cosmology. So I feel this is a good topic for me to respond. It does seem it is difficult to separate method from the framing (or context). So I am sympathetic to Christians and agree that mindfulness meditation may not be truly non-sectarian. There are Christian meditation techniques that are similar, but the emphasis may be on fullness more than emptiness. I suppose one could look at how would Buddhist parents feel about having their children practice a non-sectarian version of lectio divina? Not to mention the damage we do by separating these methods from their teachings. Seems like we’ve watered it down, and set a fire at the same time.
Maybe much of the answer to this question depends on exactly what is included within this practice of mindfulness. The Buddhist tradition itself states that, before the Buddha’s enlightenment, he was taught concentration (Shamatha) practices by a variety of spiritual teachers of his time, who presumably held a variety of views, including believing in a self as was (and still is) common in India. It is sometimes said that the Buddha’s innovation was in the added practice or attitude of Vipassana, where one pays close attention to the ephemeral quality of what is experienced in meditation. So it would prima facie seem that Shamatha alone is equally compatible with views of a self as with views of selflessness, merely inducing a quieter, more concentrated state of mind that can be interpreted in either way according to one’s philosophical pressupositions.
In modern times as well, a whole variety of spiritual traditions that postulate a self are known to practice meditative concentration, from Sufi meditation to Raja Yoga to various forms of Advaita-based paths. Youtube is teeming with modern gurus purporting to show you an experience of the eternal self within your own awareness, I think I remember seeing a video of the popular teacher Mooji doing just that.
So my best guess is that, as long as specifically Buddhist philosophical interpretations of experience are avoided, such as talk of selflessness or emptiness, mere mindfulness practice does not go beyond the kind of serene concentration that any spiritually inclined person might explore, regardless of their affiliation.
Indeed it would seem to me that the kind of intense content-less self-awareness that meditative concentration can lead to, can just about equally well be understood as a glimpse of selflessness (as one’s awareness disengages from the psychological self or constructed identity), or as a glimpse of one’s real self or soul. Many Buddhist meditation teachers nowadays don’t shy from giving this positive names such as “original mind”.
Amod, I agree with your point. While many Christians, Jews, and Muslims I personally know are comfortable with borrowing methods from Buddhism—and some even embrace hybrid religious identities in the way the Japanese fluidly mix Shinto, Confucian, Christian, and Buddhist elements—many are not. This is especially true for religious fundamentalists. For example, some Christian fundamentalists beleive that “emptying one’s mind” (as they construe meditation) creates a space where Satan can exert his influence. There are many elements of Western Buddhist modernism that cling to “secularized mindfulness,” including its emphases on compassion, present-centeredness, and non-judgment of experience. In a society where the separation of church and state remains a crucial and embattled fault line, there is an argument for be made for not bringing mindfulness into the public schools, no matter how beneficial the practice might be for today’s stressed-out students. I think this is in many ways unfortunate, but I don’t see any way out of this conclusion under present circumstances.
Instead of rationalising, let us cut to the chase.
Meditation could be defined as “thinking” which is anathema to those who preach that believing in a zombie is the essence of virtue.
Hence, intelligence is the enemy of Christianity which grasps every opportunity to defeat it.
This is unfair. I understand that attitudes toward evangelical, literalist Christianity — and particularly the merger in the last 40 years of evangelical Christianity and U.S. Republican politics — have bled over to impugn all of Christianity. However, there are many subtle expressions of Christian faith and much that Christianity has in common with Eastern religions. Just to give one example, the Christian Trinitarianism seems to have parallels in the Three Kayas of Buddhism and the unity of a “three personed god” seems to have a lot in common with the svabhavikakaya. These concepts also resonate with the Buddhist “three doors” (body, speech, mind) that underlie what Buddhists would call mistaken grounds for locating self.
Let’s resist the urge to use literalist, evangelical Christianity as a straw man to denigrate all Christians.
Does the following Bible verse (and others similar) apply only to evangelists?
Romans 10:9-10 “That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.”
If it applies to all Christians, it is you that is attempting a straw man diversion by alleging that which is false.
Please also note that I oppose Christianity (and all dogmatism) in the same way as one might oppose gambling or drugs without ill-feeling towards habitual gamblers or drug addicts. To me, Christianity is a vice peddled to take advantage of children, women and the immature as evidenced by the pedophilia and other scandals that comes to light from time to time. The Roman Catholic Church (possibly the most widespread Christian religion) is but one example.
Most of our social problems (greed, power lust, etc.) emanate from the concept of Self (mind, soul, etc.) which, to me, is a fantasy created by the imagination. Per my understanding, mindfulness (thinking) is language investigating itself to discover the personal meaning of words as opposed to that generally assigned to them.
By the above process, language is demoted from master to servant giving rise to the possibility of creativity and authentic understanding (intelligence) in place of imitation (the essence of conventional religion).
Also, the personal language thus created is the real Self which replaces the imaginary impostor (created during childhood) resulting in Enlightenment, Nirvana, etc. which, to me, is the practical purpose of philosophy or mindfulness.
The above explanation agrees in principle with the essential beliefs of Hinduism/Buddhism (also Plato’s cave, Kant’s Enlightenment, Wittgenstein’s fly bottle, etc.) but the concept of Self as language conflicts with the idea of an immortal soul rewarded or punished after death as preached by Christianity.
In their heart of hearts, I suspect that Christians know their religious narrative is ridiculous but because it is egotistical (despite all pretense to the contrary) one expects they will strenuously resist any threat to it.