Does Meditation Have to Be Religious?

When people hear about mindfulness meditation (Mindfulness Meditation, hereafter "meditation"), many people immediately think of one religion or another. In Buddhism especially, meditation seems to be an important spiritual practice. In reality, though, meditation isn't necessarily tied to religion at all. In recent years a great deal of scientific and psychological research has shown that even setting religion aside, the practice of meditation itself already does a great deal for both physical and mental health.[1] That is why many people now take up meditation with no religious background whatsoever, while a growing number of secular organisations are promoting meditation practice because they believe it benefits everyone's mental health.

So what exactly is meditation? In one sense, meditation is simply becoming a pure observer. While meditating, you focus your attention on a single thing. For beginners, one common exercise is to rest your attention on your own breath, staying aware of how you breathe.

As we concentrate, something interesting happens. We notice all sorts of thoughts welling up — the mind seems to drift to other things of its own accord, or gets swept up by them and carries our attention along with it.

So what can we do when this happens? In meditation, the most basic approach is to "watch" these thoughts, simply watching them. You don't grasp at them or force them away, and you don't let them take hold of you either; you just watch them, and then, slowly, draw your attention back to the breath.

What meditation does

A fair number of psychological studies have found that this kind of practice genuinely benefits our mental health. On one hand it can relieve stress and ease anxiety [2]; on the other, research shows that worrying and paying deliberate attention to one's own symptoms tends to make us more prone to psychological illness [3], whereas meditation can help us worry less and dwell less on symptoms relating to ourselves [4].

So it's hardly surprising that meditation has become such a popular subject of psychological research in recent years.

Meditation and philosophy

But meditation also has a great deal to do with philosophy. On one hand, since ancient times many schools of philosophy have placed great weight on meditation, regarding it as relevant to a wide range of philosophical questions. Indian philosophy, for instance, recognised early on that meditation was an important means of "letting go of the self" and a key way of freeing ourselves from suffering. Meditation was also passed down into China, where it was taken up by both the Confucian and Daoist traditions. One important discussion within Song and Ming Confucianism, for example, was whether meditation helps in cultivating moral virtue — and if so, exactly how it helps.

Beyond its links with ancient philosophy, meditation is also bound up with some modern philosophical questions. For instance: what is a human being? Why can humans meditate while animals cannot? This could be called an important question in "philosophical anthropology". So in exploring the foundations of meditation, we also deepen our understanding of "the human". On the other hand, philosophy often discusses questions of "freedom". What do we mean by "freedom"? When we examine what freedom means, we discover that, according to certain important philosophical theories, meditation is in fact one of the ways that can make a person more free. These discussions don't teach us directly how to meditate, yet they deepen our understanding of meditation all the same.

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Guest contributor Yim Chun-bong @ Corrupt the Youth reproduced with permission; content has been edited.

References

[1] For various studies, see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/?term=mindfulness. On the benefits of meditation for health, see Tomlinson ER; et al. (2018). “Dispositional mindfulness and psychological health: a systematic review”. Mindfulness. 9 (1): 23–43, and Keng, Shian-Ling; Smoski, Moria J; Robins, Clive J (2011). “Effects of mindfulness on psychological health: A review of empirical studies”. Clinical Psychology Review. 31 (6): 1041–56. These two articles.

[2] See Hofmann, Stefan G; Sawyer, Alice T; Witt, Ashley A; Oh, Diana (2010). “The effect of mindfulness-based therapy on anxiety and depression: A meta-analytic review”. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. 78 (2): 169–83.

[3] See Deanna Kaplan; et al. (2017). “Maladaptive repetitive thought as a transdiagnostic phenomenon and treatment target: An integrative review”. Journal of Clinical Psychology. 74 (7): 1126–1136., Ed Watkins (2015). “Psychological treatment of depressive rumination”. Current Opinion in Psychology. 4: 32–36. and Querstret, Dawn; Cropley, Mark (2013). “Assessing treatments used to reduce rumination and/or worry: A systematic review”. Clinical Psychology Review. 33 (8): 996–1009. These three papers.

[4] See Querstret, Dawn; Cropley, Mark (2013). “Assessing treatments used to reduce rumination and/or worry: A systematic review”. Clinical Psychology Review. 33 (8): 996–1009., Gu, Jenny; Strauss, Clara; Bond, Rod; Cavanagh, Kate (2015). “How do mindfulness-based cognitive therapy and mindfulness-based stress reduction improve mental health and wellbeing? A systematic review and meta-analysis of mediation studies”. Clinical Psychology Review. 37: 1–12. and Perestelo-Perez L.; et al. (2017). “Mindfulness-based interventions for the treatment of depressive rumination: Systematic review and meta-analysis”. International Journal of Clinical and Health Psychology. 17 (3): 282–295.