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Thread: Secular Buddhism (mindfulness)

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    Default Secular Buddhism (mindfulness)

    Buddhism has been popular in various forms among certain celebrities and tech elites, but the religion’s primary draw for many Americans now appears to be mental health. The ancient religion, some find, helps them manage the slings and arrows and subtweets of modern life. Many people are stressed out by the constant drama of the current administration, and work hours have overwhelmed the day. There’s something newly appealing about a practice that instructs you to just sit, be aware, and realize nothing lasts forever. Perhaps the comfort comes simply from knowing that the problems that bedevil humans have been around since long before Gmail.

    A few themes and ideas seem to unite the disparate experiences of the people I interviewed. The Buddha’s first “noble truth” is that “life is suffering,” and many of Buddhism’s newly minted Western practitioners have interpreted this to mean that accepting emotional pain might be preferable to trying to alleviate it.
    “Buddhism admits that suffering is inevitable,” says Daniel Sanchez, a 24-year-old in New Jersey. “I shouldn’t focus on avoiding suffering, but learn how to deal with suffering.”
    As she opened a book on Buddhist teachings, the teacher told the class that holding grudges is harmful. Resentment feels like clutching a burning stick and complaining that it’s burning us. And yet, being harmed by someone also hurts. So, the teacher said, the question was this: “What do I do with my mind if I feel like I’ve been harmed by someone?”

    Americans everywhere seem to be asking themselves variations on this very question:
    What do we do with our minds?
    There’s something newly appealing about a practice that instructs you to just sit, be aware, and realize nothing lasts forever. Perhaps the comfort comes simply from knowing that the problems that bedevil humans have been around since long before Gmail.

    another Buddhist teaching. The idea is to see your emotions and experiences—including anxiety or pain—as constantly changing, “like a weather system coming through,” he says. Everything, eventually, ends.

    ~~

    In addition to meditating every morning and night, Sanchez reads the Diamond Sutra and Heart Sutra, texts from the early Middle Ages, and listens to zen talks. The sutras are quite a departure from the normal content of psychotherapy, in which one might ponder what truly makes one happy. Buddhist thought suggests that one should not compulsively crave comfort and avoid discomfort, which some see as permission to hop off the hedonic treadmill.

    A Colorado life coach named Galen Bernard told me that Comfortable With Uncertainty, by the Buddhist nun Pema Chodron, has influenced his well-being more than anything else, except perhaps his very first experience on Prozac. He says the book and its teachings have helped him avoid labeling certain experiences as negative by default. For example, transitioning to a friendship with an ex-girlfriend after their breakup was painful for him at first, but Chodron’s and others’ writings helped him see that “it might seem like too much pain,” he said, “but actually it’s just an experience I’m having that … can actually be a portal to joy on the other side.”

    Buddhism carries with it a set of values and morals that Americans don’t always live by. Much like “cafeteria Catholics” ignore parts of the religion that don’t resonate with them, some Westerners focus on only certain elements of Buddhist philosophy and don’t endorse, say, Buddhism’s view of reincarnation or worship of the Buddha. Call them “buffet Buddhists.”


    Taken out of their Buddhist context,
    practices like meditation “become like a dry sponge,” McMahan said, “soaking up whatever values are around.” Traditional monks don’t “meditate for business.”
    This so-called secular Buddhism, says Autry Johnson, a Colorado bartender and tourism worker who meditates regularly, “is a little more accessible to people that wouldn’t primarily identify as Buddhists, or already identify with another religion or philosophy, but want to adopt aspects of Buddhist practice to supplement their current worldview.” (Indeed, many meditation centers emphasize that you don’t have to be Buddhist to attend sessions.)

    Buffet Buddhism may not be traditional, but its flexibility does allow its adherents to more easily employ the philosophy for an antidepressant jolt. Some people practice Buddhism and meditation as an alternative to psychotherapy or psychiatric medication, given mental-health care’s cost and scarcity: Sixty percent of counties in the U.S. don’t have a single psychiatrist. “I have pretty good health insurance,” Bernard said, “but if I want support, it’s a month and a half to see someone new. Having a resource that I can pop open is invaluable.”
    https://www.theatlantic.com/health/a...herapy/584308/

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    Crazy Cat Lady (04-08-2019), Guno צְבִי (03-10-2019)

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    I appreciate the contribution.

    This article primarily seems to dwell on some American's inclination towards the self-serving and self-absorbed; aka what can Buddhism do for me? How can it improve my personal life experience?

    I am still learning in a very rudimentary way the precepts of Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Confucianism, Judaism. But I am quite certain a fundamental tenet of all these faiths is an admonition to cultivate a sense of how to serve community, to cultivate character in the service of both self and humanity at large. And I am pretty sure the Buddha's five precepts of wholesome action speaks to just that exactly.

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    For me, as a Christian, meditation is a really good exercise to fight anxiety and nervousness. I also try to accept all people, not looking at their religious views

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    Quote Originally Posted by Siand1987 View Post
    For me, as a Christian, meditation is a really good exercise to fight anxiety and nervousness. I also try to accept all people, not looking at their religious views
    Kudos to you for your wisdom.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Siand1987 View Post
    For me, as a Christian, meditation is a really good exercise to fight anxiety and nervousness. I also try to accept all people, not looking at their religious views
    As a sock, how do you fight anxiety and nervousness?

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