The spike of popular interest in the mindfulness movement, with its enthusiastic endorsements among celebrities, politicians, CEOs and other movers and shakers, has made its champions extremely confident, even evangelical. Prophesying that the mindfulness movement has the potential to ignite a universal or global renaissance that would put even the European and Italian Renaissance into the shade, Jon Kabat-Zinn, the founder of Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR), is no modest innovator.Sparked by the unique confluence of science and the meditative disciplines derived from Buddhism, the global renaissance that Kabat-Zinn envisions promises to deliver much more than just stress reduction. This mindfulness movement, Kabat-Zinn proclaims in a recorded interview onInsights at the Edge, may actually be the only promise the species and the planet have for making it through the next couple hundred years.

Wow.

People who are drawn to mindfulness programs are there for a variety of reasons and in response to all sorts of promises, from pragmatic concerns to reduce stress-related disorders, to garnering better focus at work, and yes, even to bringing about world peace. But for some Buddhists, and we include ourselves in this group, there is a growing concern that the mindfulness movement has the potential to push to the margins contemporary Buddhisms dialogue with tradition, diminishing its capacity to serve as a challenge to materialist attitudes and values. The rapid mainstreaming of mindfulness has provided a domesticated and tame set of meditation techniques for mainly upper-middle-class and corporate elites so they may become more self-accepting of their anxieties, helping them to thrive, to have it allmoney, power and well-being, continuing business-as-usual more efficiently and, of course, more mindfullywhile conveniently side-stepping any serious soul searching into the causes of widespread social suffering.

Our concernshave nothing to do with complaints that Buddhism is being diluted or whether the mindfulness movement is an authentic and accurate representation of traditional Buddhist teachings, although those who venture to raise critical questions are often immediately pigeonholed as out-of-touch Buddhist purists. To be clear, we know of no one opposed to meditation being employed for reducing human suffering of any kind. But we do take issue with the troublesomerhetoric that the Buddhist tradition amounts to nothing more than an outdated set of cultural accretions. Author Sam Harris exemplifies this in his essay Killing the Buddha, when he characterizes the Buddhist religious tradition as an accidental strand of historyand tells those in the mindfulness movement that they no longer need to be in the religion business.Dan Harris, co-anchor of ABCs Nightlineand Good Morning Americaand the author of the best-selling book 10% Happier,decriesmeditations massive PR problem,code for shedding any associations with anything that smacks of Buddhism. This kind of deprecatory, at times hostile characterization of the Buddhist tradition betrays a terrible lack of understanding ofwhat it means to engage meaningfully with a religious tradition, and a nave belief in the unassailable authority of science as the sole arbiter of truth, meaning and value.

Science, however, is not the only game in town for questions having to do with human meaning, ethics and spiritual insights. Buddhism can and should engage in dialogue with Western modes of rigorous thinking, but that shouldnt be restricted to the domain of empiricism having to do with physical things and processes. To have a more balanced dialogue, we need to include, as Amedeo Giorgi, one of the worlds leading phenomenological theorists, points out, the qualitativehuman sciences(cultural anthropology, for example) as well as history, comparative religion, and philosophy.

Unfortunately, the current rhetoric hasnt enriched the conversation with tradition, because, to a large extent, the mindfulness movement seems actively uninterested in it. And the very logic of the movement provides no reason one should be interested.When mindfulness advocates deem it necessary to rhetorically engage in a war onthe Buddhist tradition, it is not just a matter of good branding. Rather, it amounts to an active attempt to dismiss the whole of tradition and replace it with, well, themselves.

Why has the mindfulness movement grown exponentially and gained increasing acceptance in modern culture? The reason is the science, Kabat-Zinn toldTime magazine. One of the foundational claims of the mindfulness movement is that science has proven that mindfulness is good for you. It is an idea expressed by mindfulness advocates that scientific studies have proven reliably that mindfulness has many benefits for improving physical and mental health, relationships, general well being, workplace efficiency, even sex. Neuroscientific studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of meditators brain states are frequently touted in the media as incontrovertible evidence that science has verified the efficacy of mindfulness. Whether its increasing the size of grey matter, shrinking of the amygdala, or quieting of the default mode network, reports of functional and structural changes in the brain (even if the neuroscientists themselves are more circumspect about the actual significance of their findings) have come to symbolize an official stamp of scientific legitimacy. Indeed, asProfessor Richard Hensonat the University of Cambridge points out, the pictures of blobs on brains seduce one into thinking that we can now directly observe psychological processes. In fact, Deena Weisberg and her colleagues found in their study The Seductive Allure of Neuroscience Explanations that even bogus and bad explanations for psychological phenomena, when couched in the language and dazzling visual imagery of neuroscience, are seen as more satisfying by most people.

It is, perhaps, not surprising that the mindfulness movement has turned to science for its authority. AsRichard J. Davidson, a pioneer in the emerging field of contemplative neuroscience, explains, There is a swath in our culture who is not going to listen to someone in monks robes, but they are paying attention to scientific evidence. It doesnt require sophisticated market research to figure out that branding mindfulness with the veneer of hard science is a surefire way to get the ear of the general public.

And it has, enormously. Branding mindfulness with the imprimatur of science is a common marketing strategy in a number of recent books in the mindfulness genre on theNew York Timesbest-seller list. Take the book Search Inside Yourself: The Unexpected Path to Achieving Success, Happiness (and World Peace), written by Googles top in-house mindfulness advocate, Chade-Meng Tan. Theinside front cover flapimmediately signals that the authority for mindfulness certainly cannot be the domain of bald people in funny robes. Rather it lies with the scientists in white lab-coats, as he cites study after study to back up his claims that mindfulness delivers greater happiness, prosperity, health and career success. And when it comes to mindfulness, he insists, everything can be completely secular. Mindfulness is, in his view, a way to have it all success and profits, wisdom and compassion all in the playful spirit of fun and joy.

Media-savvy entrepreneurshave become fond of denigrating Buddhism, viewing it as a culturally archaic and superstitious container in which the scientifically efficacious practice of mindfulness has been preserved. Dan Harris says, I always thought mindfulness practice was for people who live in yurts, or collect crystals as it turns out, there is all this science that says it can boost your immune system, reduce your blood pressure, and rewire key parts of your brain. These are all familiar tropes of the mindfulness movement: that science, in validating mindfulness practice, has liberated it from the flaky, foreign, irrational, outdated and spooky metaphysics of religious tradition.

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Mindfulness truthiness problem: Sam Harris, science and the truth about Buddhist tradition