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48
LISELOTTE FRISK
The practice of mindfulness
From Buddhism to secular mainstream in a post-secular
society
Introduction
is paper will focus on the practice of mindfulness, which has migrated
from being part of a religion, Buddhism, to being an integral part of Western
psychology. Mindfulness is especially used in cognitive behavioural therapy
(Plank 2011: 200), but also in, for example, dialectical behavioural therapy
(DBT)1 and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT)2. In Sweden sev-
eral doctors, psychologists and psychiatrists use and recommend mindful-
ness for therapeutic purposes, and some, like Åsa Nilsonne, Ola Schenström
and Anna Kåver, have written well-known books about the practice (see, e.g.,
Nilsonne 2009 and 2011, Schenström 2007, Kåver 2011). Mindfulness is used
today in many segments of mainstream medical and therapeutic care.
Mindfulness is also used outside the mainstream medical and therapeutic
sector, in the area of personal development or spirituality, as well as in more
traditional Buddhist groups and innovative Buddhist groups such as vipas-
sana groups. One example is the group formed by S. N. Goenka.
e purpose of this paper is to investigate the migration of mindfulness
from a religious to a secular sphere, and to discuss whether mindfulness is a
religious practice or not. I will also discuss whether ‘religious’ is a meaning-
ful term in our contemporary society, and what the term ‘post-secular’ might
mean. My main sources have been a PhD dissertation in the history of reli-
gion at Lund University by Katarina Plank (2011) as well as books written by
1 is therapy was developed by Marsha Linehan, originally intended to help people
with borderline personality disorders, but has also been used for other kinds of prob-
lems (Plank 2011: 201).
2 ACT is developed by Steven Hayes, and the strategy here is to observe and accept the
emotions (Plank 2011: 202).
49
The practice of mindfulness
some of the medical doctors and psychiatrists who initiated the practice of
mindfulness in the US and in Sweden.
e paper is structured so that I will rst give a summary of the book Full
Catastrophe Living (1990) by Jon Kabat-Zinn, the publication of which started
the wave of using mindfulness for therapeutic purposes, and then I will re-
late some of the scientic studies conducted on the practice as pre sented in
the popular books about mindfulness. Aer that I will discuss the historical
background of mindfulness in Buddhism, and cultural and structural factors
which may have been important for the rapid adoption of mindfulness into
Western therapy. Finally I will discuss if and in what sense mindfulness could
and should be related to Buddhism, religion and post-secularity.
Jon Kabat-Zinn and mindfulness in a therapeutic context
Jon Kabat-Zinn, a medical professor who wrote his PhD in molecular biol-
ogy, published his popular book Full Catastrophe Living in 1990. Jon Kabat-
Zinn had a background in dierent Buddhist environments, having attended
courses by Western vipassana teachers such as Jack Goldstein and Joseph
Korneld, but also by the Zen master ich Nhat Hahn, as well as by dier-
ent Tibetan Buddhist teachers. From this experience, he attempted to isolate
a technique, mindfulness, from its Buddhist context (Plank 2011: 200–3). His
own standpoint was that the technique derived from Buddhism, but was not
part of Buddhism: the essence is universal, independent of any belief sys-
tem or ideology and therefore accessible to anyone. Yet, he writes, it is no
coincidence that mindfulness derives from Buddhism, as Buddhism has an
overriding concern for the relief of suering and the dispelling of illusions
(Kabat-Zinn 2009: 12–13). At the University of Massachusetts Kabat-Zinn
developed a programme to treat chronic pain and stress related diseases
called Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, MBSR. It consists of dierent
mindfulness and relaxation practices, as well as practices for cultivating a
mindful attitude in daily life. It contains a programme of 8–10 weeks, where
the participants meet once a week and receive instructions and practices, to-
gether with discussions about stress and coping strategies. e participants
are expected to practice at home (Plank 2011: 200–1). Patients referred to
this clinic may suer from, for example, heart disease, cancer, lung disease,
hypertension, headaches, chronic pain problems, sleep disorders, panic at-
tacks, stress-related digestive problems and skin problems (Kabat-Zinn 2009:
7). Kabat-Zinn identies his stress reduction programme as part of a new
50
LISELOTTE FRISK
branch of medicine known as behavioural medicine, which is based on the
conviction that mental and emotional factors may have a signicant eect
on physical health and the capacity to recover from illness and injury (p. 1).
e book Full Catastrophe Living is divided into ve parts. e rst part
describes the techniques of mindfulness used in the stress reduction pro-
gramme and relates some experiences by people who have followed it. e
techniques encompass sitting meditation, the practice of non-doing and
presence; attention on the breath; the famous ‘raisin experience’, which in-
volves eating a raisin with full attention; the body scan technique, which is
a relaxation technique aimed at ‘being in your body’; yoga postures; walking
meditation, and attentiveness in daily life. e second part presents research
ndings as a background for understanding how the practice of mindfulness
could be related to physical and mental health, and also presents a holistic
way, or a way of ‘interconnectedness’, of conceiving the human being and
life as a whole. In this section the loving kindness meditation—with roots
in traditional Buddhism—is also presented. One chapter presents evidence
suggesting that beliefs, attitudes, thoughts, and emotions can both harm and
heal the human being. e third part discusses stress—which is said to be the
popular name for the ‘full catastrophe’—and the fourth part suggests how to
utilise mindfulness in specic areas; for example what to do with physical
and emotional pain, as well as with fear, anxiety and sleep problems. e h
part gives practical suggestions for maintaining and using mindfulness in all
aspects of life. It is emphasised that it is important to nd time for formal
practice every day, but that also the informal ways of practising are important
(Kabat-Zinn 2009).
What is mindfulness according to therapeutic sources?
Plank refers to Christopher Germer (2005) in identifying three key con-
cepts in therapeutic mindfulness: 1) awareness, 2) of the present experience,
3) with acceptance (Plank 2011: 204). Kabat-Zinn emphasises paying atten-
tion to the present moment, including the full spectrum of our experiences,
the good, the bad and the ugly, to be at home in one’s own skin (2009: xxviii –
xxix). Dierent kinds of stress—or pain—cannot be avoided: they have to
be faced. Escape and avoidance is not a way to solution (pp. 2–3). e full
catastrophe of life—the enormity of our life experience—should, according
to Kabat-Zinn, be embraced, not resisted. Everything in life is temporary and
constantly changing (p. 6). ere is a way to learn to allow oneself to be in the
moment with things exactly as they are, without trying to change anything
(p. 20). Kabat-Zinn emphasises the importance of the non-judging attitude,
51
The practice of mindfulness
to be an impartial witness to the experience. You have to become aware of
the constant stream of judging thoughts and reactions to inner and outer ex-
periences that we are normally caught up in, and learn to step back from it
(p. 33). Acceptance means seeing things as they actually are in the present
moment. If you have a headache—accept it (p. 38). We should also learn to
let go of thoughts and feelings that the mind seems to want to hold on to
(p. 39). Kabat-Zinn emphasises the importance of practising every day (p.
141)—which diers from many other therapeutic contexts, where mindful-
ness may be practised only occasionally.
e Swedish psychiatrist Åsa Nilsonne is quite similar to Kabat-Zinn in
her writings—with dierent chapters in one of her books dealing with, for
example, thoughts, emotions, body, sleep, and people—and emphasises the
eect of mindfulness in increasing the quality of life, both for people try-
ing to make an ordinary life work, and for people with psychiatric problems
(Nilsonne 2011: 10–13). Nilsonne sums up the denition of therapeutic
mindfulness as an awareness of the present moment (p. 14), with four corner
stones; observation, description, non-judgement, and participation (p. 22).
Mindfulness as an evidence-based practice
ere have been a lot of studies on mindfulness, and there is a lot of evidence
that there are eects of the practice on many dierent kinds of problems. is
means that the practice of mindfulness has been legitimated by one of the
strongest institutions for legitimation in Western society: science.
I will give a few examples of some of the studies, as they are presented in
the popular books about mindfulness. e Swedish doctor Ola Schenström
refers, for example, to studies of Kabat-Zinn’s MBSR course, which show a
signicant reduction of symptoms such as pain and sleep problems. e phys-
ical symptoms decreased, according to the studies Schenström refers to, by on
average 30–35 percent, and mental symptoms like anxiety and depression by
40–50 percent. Most of the patients declared improved life quality aer the
course. Schenström also refers to studies showing a lot of positive results from
the MBSR course, including lower blood pressure, stress reduction, less pain
and fewer mental symptoms from chronic pain, the improvement of chron-
ic headaches, less pain and depression related to bromyalgia, less anxiety
and improved sleep for cancer patients, less inammation and fewer mental
symptoms for patients with rheumatic diseases, less stress and fewer symp-
toms for patients with multiple sclerosis, and fewer problems for patients with
irritatable bowels (Schenström 2007: 71–2). Schenström also refers to other
studies where DBT—in which mindfulness is an integral part—has been suc-
52
LISELOTTE FRISK
cessful in treating young patients with borderline personality disorders and
a self destructive behaviour, as well as studies showing that a combination of
cognitive therapy and mindfulness has reduced relapses into depression to
half in treated patients who have had three or more depressions (2007: 73–4).
Nilsonne also refers to several studies on mindfulness in dierent areas, some
of them apparently the same as the ones Schenström refers to (2009: 88–9).
ere are also a lot of recent popular books on how to use mindfulness
for dierent kinds of problems. Examples are the use of mindfulness in treat-
ing Asperger’s syndrome (Mitchell 2009), use of mindfulness in depression
(Williams 2008), mindfulness in teaching (Terjestam 2010), or how to give
birth with mindfulness (Engström 2010).
Mindfulness—the historic Buddhist background
The origin of mindfulness in Buddhism
Mindfulness is the English translation of the Pali concept sati, which is the
language of the early Buddhist scriptures. Sati is also the seventh limb in
the eightfold path, translated as ‘right mindfulness’. Plank writes that sati is
a complex and central concept in the eravada meditation practice, which
encompasses several dierent aspects and therefore is very dicult to trans-
late. Sati is referred to, allegedly, by the Buddha in Satipatthana Sutta and
Mahasatipatthana Sutta, and is there claimed to be the only way of achieving
the supreme goal, nibbana. Plank writes that the meditation process intends
to develop a realisation of the fundamental conditions of existence, and that
therefore the term vipassana (insight, realisation) is sometimes used when
satipatthana (foundation of mindfulness) is referred to (Plank 2011: 188–90).
According to Plank, the eravada scripture Visuddhimagga diers between
two main kinds of meditative orientations: concentration (samatha) and in-
sight (vipassana) (2011: 39). e purpose of vipassana is to provide realisa-
tion, or insight into the fundamental conditions of existence, an experience-
based understanding of how existence is in continuous change (anicca), how
this instability has no permanence (anatta) and how this results in dissatis-
faction (dukkha). e purpose of the meditation is to transcend the self con-
ception by seeing through its illusory solidity. It is used in both eravada
and Mahayana Buddhism (Plank 2011: 42). According to Plank, vipassana
meditation is based on interpretations of Satipatthana Sutta, and vipassana is
synonymous with satipatthana (2011: 38).
53
The practice of mindfulness
Plank describes and discusses sati as a much more complex process than
being ‘just mindfulness’ as in the contemporary therapeutic understand-
ing, and claims that this is a simplication on several levels. In the Buddhist
context sati is an important aspect of developing bodhi (awakening) and the
nal liberation (nibbana). Dierent frames of mind should, in traditional
Buddhism, according to Plank not only be accepted—as in therapeutic mind-
fulness—but also seen and understood, and be replaced with more construc-
tive ones. Sati in traditional Buddhism also has an important ethical dimen-
sion (Plank 2011: 188–98).
Modern Buddhism and Western Buddhism
Vipassana is the form of meditation which has spread most outside the
eravadan countries, and which has also been subjected to change by
Western meditation teachers. One example is the movement started by
S. N. Goenka, who started to teach vipassana in India at the end of the 1960s
(Plank 2011: 110).
Buddhism had, however, been subject to change and modernisation in the
traditionally Buddhist countries before that. e renewal of vipassana came
from Burma, where it became a mass movement for laymen during the twen-
tieth century, following Buddhist reform movements in the nineteenth cen-
tury all over Asia. e Buddhist revival was a response to the colonial powers,
and a way to conrm national identities (Plank 2011: 54–60). e wisdom of
the Buddha and of enlightenment was in several ways democratised (Plank
2011: 64). Central to this was the new Buddhist institution for laymen: the
meditation centre, oen situated in an urban context (Plank 2011: 38).
ese central characteristics of modernised Buddhism—the focus on lay-
men, meditation, and the urban meditation centres—were also important in
the Buddhist orientations which migrated to the West from the nineteenth
century onwards.
Western receptiveness: cultural and structural factors
Katarina Plank (2011: 144–8) describes how Buddhism in dierent forms
slowly migrated into Western cultures aer initial contacts made during the
sixteenth century. Buddhist texts were rst translated into Western languages
during the nineteenth century, and thus reached the broader public of the
West at that time.
At the beginning of the twentieth century the rst Europeans travelled
to Asia to be ordinated as Buddhist monks, marking another stage at which
Europeans became religious specialists and teachers of an Eastern religion.
54
LISELOTTE FRISK
Another institution, the eosophical Society, founded in New York in 1875,
came to be important for the spread of Buddhist-related teachings in the
Western world, as well as contributing to create a new and positive image of
Buddhism in the West. e purpose of theosophy was to nd ‘the essence of
all religions’, and in this mission it used elements from the Eastern religions,
among them Buddhism.
Until the middle of the twentieth century Plank describes eravadan
groups as being dominant in the West, but aer the Second World War also
Mahayana groups, especially from the Zen traditions, started to spread.
During the 1960s Asian teachers began visiting the West in larger numbers,
and more Westerners started to travel to the East to learn more about the
Eastern spiritual traditions.
Plank concludes that today two main kinds of Buddhism may be con-
ceived of in the West: diaspora Buddhism with Asian-born participants, and
a convertite Buddhism with Western-born participants. She writes that there
are oen barriers between these two kinds of Buddhism, relating both to lan-
guage and kinds of practices (Plank 2011: 144–8).
It is a well-known fact that Buddhism has attracted Westerners partly
because of the relative ease with which Buddhist perspectives can be re-
lated to secular and psychological ones. Buddhism diers in many ways
from Christianity, not requiring belief in a God or in theological doctrines.
Buddhism also supplies possible atheist interpretations and many theoretic al
elements about how the human mind works, based on the universal human
experience of suering and the problem of impermanence. is makes it easy
to relate Buddhist thought to psychological and therapeutic perspectives,
thereby also nding legitimation in the branch of psychology in Western sci-
ence (for a discussion of similarities and dierences between Buddhist per-
spectives and psychological ones, see, e.g., Imamura 1998).
One important route for Buddhism into Western culture was via the
Human Potential Movement, which started at the beginning of the 1960s.
e Human Potential Movement developed out of humanistic psychology,
which emphasised a belief in a positive human potential, a holistic view of the
human being, and a syncretism between science and religion, East and West.
e Human Potential Movement was practice-oriented, and used many kinds
of practices, both therapeutic ones and practices based in dierent religious
traditions. Buddhist perspectives and practices, like dierent kinds of medita-
tion and attention practices, thus found ways into the new human potential
culture, which was, at least partly, a secular one (Anderson 2004).
55
The practice of mindfulness
e 1960s and 1970s saw many imported and innovative new religious
movements arising in the West, with both Eastern and Western roots. One
of them was Transcendental Meditation, which came to the West from India.
With its roots in Hinduism—not Buddhism—Transcendental Meditation
represents a parallel attempt to conceive of a meditative practice with Eastern
religious roots as a scientic and therapeutic practice. Study of contempor-
ary mindfulness therapy can provide something of a déjà vu experience for
someone studying new religious movements of the 1970s. Transcendental
Meditation still exists in dierent countries all over the world, but today oper-
ates in a much more low key mode than during the heydays of the 1970s.
A quick look at their web page today demonstrates many similarities with
contemporary mindfulness. It is said there that the eects of TM have been
proved by more than 600 scientic studies in more than 200 research insti-
tutes and universities in about 30 countries all over the world. e eects
found include, for example, improved intelligence, better memory, increased
creativity, decreasing high blood pressure, improved sleep, improved relations
to others, less stress, and increased self condence (http://tm-meditation.se,
accessed on 20 November 2011).
Transcendental Meditation, however, never reached the mainstream in the
way that mindfulness has done today. One reason for this may be the dierent
kinds of leading gures in the two movements. In the case of TM, Maharishi
Mahesh Yogi gave the impression of being quite a traditional Indian guru,
with long hair and beard and Indian robes. Jon Kabat-Zinn, on the other
hand, is a Western medical doctor and a professor, working in the academic
environment. Besides, TM had some features which could be interpreted as
Hindu or mystical, like the mantras or the initiation ceremony, and also later
developments like the TM Sidhi programme (Frisk 1993: 163). Mindfulness,
on the other hand, is explained as simply ‘paying attention’, which seems more
secular and is easier to see through purely psychological lenses.
However, this is only part of the explanation for the success of mindful-
ness in the secular mainstream of contemporary Western society. ere has
also been a long work of preparation since the 1960s, which has resulted in
a cultural adaptation and habituation to Eastern thought and practices. e
ground was prepared for Jon Kabat-Zinn in the 1990s in another way than it
was for Maharishi Mahesh Yogi two decades before.
Although in one way Jon Kabat-Zinn may talk about mindfulness in secu-
lar terms, he does not hide the fact of the Buddhist connections, nor does he
refrain from practices such as the traditional Buddhist loving kindness medi-
tation. Åsa Nilsonne also writes about Buddhism in positive terms, and ex-
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LISELOTTE FRISK
plains, in a popular way, how mindfulness relates to Buddhism. Buddhism is
thus conceived of in a positive way by several mindfulness therapists. It could
even be that the conceived relation to Buddhism might increase the attractive-
ness of mindfulness for some people. It would be interesting to ask the ques-
tion as to whether the same practice with another more secular name, such as,
for instance, ‘attentional control training’, would have become so popular. e
relation to Buddhist traditions may give a scent and atmosphere around the
practice of mindfulness, which may increase the sense of meaning, identity,
and connection to a tradition, thereby also inuencing both the expectations
and the experiences of the practice in a positive way.
In spring 2011 I made telephone calls to some of the mainstream therap-
ists working with mindfulness in Dalarna, Sweden, to ask about how they
used mindfulness.3 Some of them asked me what I meant by mindfulness.
Questioned about what they meant by that question they then replied that
they knew of some therapists using some kind of relaxation as part of therapy
and calling it mindfulness although it was not mindfulness in a strict sense.
is indicates that ‘mindfulness’ may be an attractive catch-word, being used
also outside of ‘traditional’ therapeutic mindfulness practices. If the term
mindfulness is loosely used also, for example, for relaxation practices, this
may indicate that there are even more simplications in this area, altering the
meaning of mindfulness and further increasing its distance from the tradi-
tional Buddhist context.
But is mindfulness Buddhism?
Everyone agrees about the historical connection between therapeutic mind-
fulness and Buddhism. Reading Jon Kabat-Zinn, his own relation to and in-
spiration from dierent schools of Buddhism is quite clear. Kabat-Zinn writes
that it is no accident that mindfulness comes out of Buddhism, as Buddhism
has as its overriding concerns the relief of suering and the dispelling of illu-
sions. However, he says that mindfulness is just a particular way of paying at-
tention, and that its essence is universal, although it is most commonly taught
and practised within the context of Buddhism (Kabat-Zinn 2009: 12–13).
3 is study was part of the project ‘e Meditating Dala Horse: Globalized Contem-
por ary Religiosity in Local Expression and on New Arenas’, nanced by e Swedish
Research Council between 2008–11, and on which I worked with Peter Åkerbäck,
Stockholm University.
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The practice of mindfulness
Katarina Plank is one academic author who wants to emphasise the dif-
ferences between Buddhist ways of mindfulness and therapeutic ones. She
writes that the therapeutic practice of mindfulness involves both a decontext-
ualisation, a recontextualisation, a reinterpretation and a simplication in a
way that results in profound changes in the Buddhist practice of mindfulness.
She uses the concept of ‘mindfulness appropriators’, to indicate people who
use parts of Buddhist religious sources to strengthen their own views and to
legitimate their own position, but without a genuine interest in the religion it-
self (Plank 2011: 209–10). She summarises the criticism from some Buddhist
leading gures, pointing to the fact that mindfulness in therapeutic contexts
is used for worldly purposes—which results in conrming and cementing
the self—instead of realisation of the impermanence of the self and spiritual
awakening (Plank 2011: 216–27). us Plank seems to indicate that mindful-
ness in a therapeutic sense distorts genuine Buddhism, and in reality could
not be seen as part of the Buddhist tradition.
Anne-Christine Hornborg, another academic actor in the eld, on the
other hand, claims that no traditional religious practice, like mindfulness,
could be reducible to a mere secular technique. She writes that if a Christian
priest were to suggest oering intercessory prayer in a secular school, claim-
ing that it is merely a secular technique, nearly everyone would say that
this practice is impossible to detach from religion. is could, according
to Hornborg, be compared to a therapeutic and secular use of mindfulness
(Hornborg 2010). us Hornborg seems to argue for the ‘religiousness’ of
therapeutic mindfulness, however not saying much about the ‘Buddhistness’
of the practice.
e last few years have seen an academic discussion on the concept of
religion. ere is an increasing awareness that the boundaries of what should
be conceived of as religion or not are changeable, and may vary between dif-
ferent cultures, contexts and times. e concept and content of religion itself
has a strong Western bias, and has been constructed to a great extent based
on images and expressions of Christianity, especially the Protestant versions.
In other cultures there are not always clear counterparts to ‘religion’ as it has
been constructed and delimited in the West. Further, the borders of what
has been conceived of as ‘religion’ have been constructed in ways to make
some parts of the religious spectrum either excluded or devalued, based on
Christian norms and values. ere are normative distinctions between dier-
ent religious behaviours and beliefs, creating more or less concealed deni-
tions of what is a ‘genuine’ religion and what is not, thus marginalising and
privileging dierent orientations of the religious spectrum. Terms like ‘super-
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LISELOTTE FRISK
stition’ or ‘folk beliefs’ are examples of cultural expressions oen being con-
ceived of as having less religious value and not being ‘proper religion’ (Asad
1993, Orsi 2005, McGuire 2008).
e conclusion of several academics in the eld of religious studies is that
the cultural expressions which in some contexts are dened as ‘religious’ ap-
parently are just elements of cultural expressions as a whole, and that ‘reli-
gion’ has no special ‘essence’ about which it is possible to universally agree.
To return to the question of whether mindfulness for therapeutic purposes is
a religious practice or not, the denition of ‘mindfulness’ as religious or non-
religious totally becomes a question of how the concept of ‘religion’ is dened
in the actual context. It may be ‘in-dened’ or ‘out-dened’ according to taste.
In addition to the problem of how to dene ‘religion’, there is also a great
individual span as to how to conceive of the practice of mindfulness, and what
it might mean to the individual person. Individuals like Jon Kabat-Zinn and
Åsa Nilsonne seem to interpret their own engagement with at least some kind
of relationship to Buddhism, which may also—or may not—be the case with
other therapists as well as their clients. Mindfulness as a practice may relate
strongly, weakly or not at all to beliefs, emotional experiences, attitudes, val-
ues, inspiration, or sense of identity. us we may conclude that mindfulness
as a therapeutic practice may, for some people, relate to some spectrum or
some part of ‘religion’, but that this depends both on the individual and the
denition of religion used.
It is important, however, to acknowledge the fact that the practice of
mindfulness has deep roots in Buddhism, as well as the fact that the practice
has changed (and become simplied) in the secular and therapeutic envi-
ronments of the West—as all religious or religion-related elements change in
new contexts. We have a phenomenon with religious roots in a new secular
context, and it is quite natural that it also changes towards possible secular
interpretations.
Religion and post-secularity in the contemporary context
Based on empirical material—interviews and eld observations—from the
recent research project ‘e Meditating Dala Horse’, one impression is that
several people in the eld neither use the concepts of ‘religious’ and ‘non-
religious’, nor seem to make this dierence in their thinking and mental ori-
entation. Many people seem to practice meditation, or some other practice,
like for example, healing, Tarot, rebirthing sessions, yoga, or aroma massage,
59
The practice of mindfulness
not wondering if this should be considered a religious or spiritual practice or
not. It is just something they do, an activity which may or may not relate to
dierent beliefs, feelings or values, or, in some cases, may be considered just
a leisure activity for entertainment and fun. ere seems to be a transition to
an increasing importance of experiences, practices, and atmospheres, and less
importance of beliefs and organisations. Dierent aspects of what it means to
be human are investigated and experienced, without dividing these experi-
ences into the ‘religious’ and ‘secular’. In the same way, therapeutic mindful-
ness is probably in many cases just experienced, without any attempts to make
a distinction as to whether the experience is related to religion or not. Siv
Ellen Kra writes that the market of new religiosity is characterised by ‘hybrid
products’, by which she means that they are open to several interpretations,
with or without religious references, and that at least some of the functions
are secular. e spiritual part may be either completely or partly empty (Kra
2011: 78).
Tentatively, this tendency not to distinguish between religion and non-
religion is one of the traits which characterises our contemporary society, and
is what would make the notion of ‘post-secularity’ meaningful. Our culture
is neither religious nor secular, as the question of what is religion or not has
become meaningless. ‘Religion’ is a concept some people like to stamp on
some cultural expressions, but the term is dependent on the kind of denition
which is postulated, and does not answer to a dierence many people today in
reality make and use. If we need a term for this characteristic, ‘post-secularity’
may be one suggestion.
Conclusion
e practice of mindfulness has migrated from Buddhist contexts to Western
therapeutic contexts, thereby going through changes and simplications,
making it potentially subject to both religious and secular interpretations, or
being a ‘hybrid product’. In this article, it has been suggested that the dier-
ence between ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ is losing meaning and importance in our
contemporary society, and that it is precisely this element which characterises
a ‘post-secular’ culture. Previously conceived of ‘religious’ elements are now
spreading into many sectors of society, thereby changing, adapting, and los-
ing aspects that used to characterise ‘religion’. ese practices may be indi-
vidually interpreted and actively used as religious or not, depending on de-
nition and taste. Mindfulness is one example of such practices, but there are
60
LISELOTTE FRISK
many more examples which are widely used in contemporary society which
are nding their ways into mainstream. One example is yoga, which also has
an Eastern religious background, is used in many mainstream contexts today,
but may also be practised and used from many dierent perspectives. Other
therapeutic practices, such as rebirthing, Gestalt therapy, or coaching, may
or may not also include ‘religious’ elements. e denite point of this article,
however, is that attempts at making this dierence in our contemporary cul-
ture may have lost meaning, and that other terms than ‘religion’ may be more
meaningful to use.
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