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Herunar  ·  3482 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Does Mindfulness Mean Anything?

I do agree that people often pay lip service to the spiritual elements of the cultural bits and pieces we've amalgamated, like yoga and meditation. And yeah, Western religions do tend to focus on dogma so it is pretty easy to see why the spiritual benefits of such practices are overlooked.

In fairness though, the Abrahamic religions do have spiritual sects to them - namely the Sufis in terms of Islam - but I think certainly in mainstream, modern practice the spiritual elements have become pretty diluted. Still, you'd be surprised as to how much that is the case in certain sects of Buddhism as well - the Tibetan school in particular prides itself on debating every little detail of the religion (to the point where, interestingly enough, crowds in Tibet gather to watch two scholars debate, much in the way we treat sporting matches in the West). There is, I think, a lot more similarity between Western and Eastern religions than than is often assumed (personally, I dislike sort of grouping them up in such broad labels - as a historian I'm a bit averse to it for a few reasons).

I think generally in a modernized Western society though, as you said, we look towards the practical and stay away from something that might be considered a bit too 'out there'