This view holds that mindfulness is “Buddhist meditation without the Buddhism.” Thupten Jinpa Langri, the Dalai Lama’s long-time interpreter and a prominent scholar in his own right, chairs the Mind and Life Institute, which is on the forefront of the Buddhism-science dialogue. In a feature article for Tricycle, he says that he finds it problematic when mindfulness proponents “make the bigger claim that they have extracted the juice out of the Buddhist practices and what they have got is the essence, and what is left is all these mumbo-jumbo rituals that are useless. And this is where the problem is.” Taking issue with the mixed messages among mindfulness advocates, speaking on a panel at the “Mindfulness in Cultural Context” conference at McGill, he said, “Although I am aware that sometimes the presenters of mindfulness practices on the one hand want to argue this [mindfulness] has nothing to do with Buddhism, it is secular… but at the same time, they want to argue this is the essence of the Buddhist teachings. I’ve often told them, you know, you cannot have it both ways.”
Posted on: Tue, 16 Dec 2014 13:16:18 +0000
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