Mundane Meditation and Holy Riches

Modern forms of meditation such as found in Soto Zen, for example, amount to resetting the body into more of a parasympathetic mode which lowers anxiety thus putting an individual into more of a relaxed state of being.  Essentially, this kind of meditation amounts to stress (duhkha) management.

A person’s life consists of confronting stressors many times during the day which means the autonomic nervous system is constantly being activated many times.  The sympathetic ‘fight or flight system’ has to be reset many times by the parasympathetic system to bring the individual into a resting mode.  This is the so-called stress cycle.

Meditation is important for modern life with all of its burgeoning stressors.  Still, it is not the meditation that the Buddha used to attain enlightenment.  It does not bring the Buddhist adept to gnosis of the unconditioned, which transcends the carnal person.  It should be called ‘secular meditation’ or ‘practical meditation’.

It is fair to say that this kind of meditation which helps people cope with their day-to-day stress is the bread and butter of modern Buddhism especially in the form of Zen—not the Buddha’s meditation.  There is little spiritual virtue in lowering one’s blood pressure or heart rate to a normal stress free level.  Nor will such meditation help one answer koans which rest on the intuition of one’s true nature otherwise called kenshō.

I dare say that Buddhism has turned into a religion of stress relief.  It is especially prevalent in the practice of Zen.  This is not unlike prosperity theology, a religious belief among Protestant Christians, that financial well-being is the will of God.  Faith in God delivers prosperity and security.  Both boil down to the intrusion of the secular into the religious domain.