From: http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/
Melanie McDonagh not only warns against divorcing meditation from its religious context, she’s skeptical of what it really teaches its modern practitioners:
Sitting concentrating on your breathing is a good way to chill out and de-stress, but it’s not a particularly good end in itself. Radiating compassion is fine, but it doesn’t obviously translate into action. Where’s the bit about feeding the hungry, visiting the prisoner, all the virtues that Christianity extols? Where in fact is your neighbour in this practice of self-obsession? Given a toss up between going to church, where you rub shoulders with the old, the lonely, the poor, and anyone who cares to pitch up, and a mindfulness session where, for about 25 quid a pop, you can mingle silently with congenial souls in flight from stress, I know which seems more good and human to me. Mindfulness may be the new religion — but it’s no substitute for the old one.
Meanwhile, Jay Michaelson takes note of the tensions running through last weekend’sInternational Symposium for Contemplative Studies (ISCS):
“We risk being swept up in a marketing mania that is orthogonal to objectivity,” said former Wellesley President Diana Chapman Walsh at the event’s opening keynote, arguing for rigorous “norms, procedures, and evidence” as a corrective to potential enthusiasm.
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