Where’s the Religion in Meditation?

Last updated on: April 29, 2015 at 7:28 pm by Guest Contributor

Where’s the Religion in Meditation? 2015-04-29T19:28:17-05:00 Guest Contributor

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by Sharon Lauricella

R3 Contributor

In the 1980’s, Wendy’s hamburger restaurants launched a marketing campaign featuring the slogan, “Where’s the beef?” The advertisement featured three senior ladies examining an exaggeratedly large hamburger bun with an equally exaggeratedly small meat patty inside, followed by the most irritated of the ladies exclaiming, “Where’s the beef?” Since the advertisement aired, the slogan has become an applicable exclamation in the US and Canada whenever questioning the validity or reliability (in non-statistical terms, of course) of a product, practice, or claim.

I’m reminded of this phrase as I continue my work in spiritual communication (as chair of the Spiritual Communication Division in the National Communication Association, I unabashedly promote this division). I recently took on the project of collecting and analyzing print news stories addressing the benefits and challenges of a meditation practice. I retrieved 764 articles in English from worldwide print sources between 1979-2014 which addressed meditation, the many benefits of the practice, challenges associated with finding time to do it, and the ever-present issue of getting past the myth that it’s for new age hippies who listen to too much Cat Stevens. I found articles from local newspapers in California to the Sydney Morning Herald and everywhere in between (including even the conservative hotbed of Texas and the Puritan stronghold of Massachusetts).

One of my many objectives was to consider the presence (or, as it turned out, lack) of religion in this collection of news articles over a 35-year period. The first part of the data analysis process was to consider the overall tone of each article in the data as either religious or secular. Religious articles addressed meditation as a practice within a specific religion, such as Christian contemplative meditation, Jewish meditation, or meditation strictly within the Buddhist context. (Some articles addressed meditation as a non-denominational practice, or one in which practitioners of any or no religion could participate — these articles were not considered religious in tone.) Secular articles were those in which the overall objective of the article focused on emotional or physical issues which would benefit from meditation, such as stress relief, reducing physical ailments (these ranged from psoriasis to cancer), or achieving a sense of “calm.”

The overwhelming majority – 87% – of print news articles about meditation over this 35-year period were secular in tone. In other words, if religion was the beef, there wasn’t much there.

Meditation has been called the new yoga, the new black (when it’s not orange), and according to one of the articles in the data, “the stars [celebrities] swear by it” (I’m groaning here). It’s no surprise to know that the number of news articles featuring meditation increased steadily over the 35-year period analyzed. However, meditation has deep roots in religious traditions, having been addressed in the Upanishads some 5,000 years ago, and is part of the framework of Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism. Many devout Jews and Christians hold that true prayer is meditation and contemplation, for having a “settled” mind is the vessel through which God can speak. Traditional Buddhists give the side-eye to the modern concept of “mindfulness,” arguing that it is watered-down Buddhist meditation for the unknowing masses.

If meditation has such meaningful roots in a variety of religious traditions, why, then, is the contemporary concept of meditation, particularly as shown through the media, so overtly secular?

My research suggests that a great deal of this is relevant to the plight of the contemporary human. We are a busy lot, working, tending to children and/or parents, climbing the corporate or tenure ladder, and stress is the predominant result. As readers of this blog, we are familiar with the impressive body of literature on the benefits of faith-based practices on health and wellness. We understand the benefits of a spiritual community and a sense of faith. Scientific research has got on the bandwagon and has begun to “prove” to Westerners that “alternative” treatments or therapies such as meditation are helpful to alleviating emotional or physical challenges, they increase gray matter in the brain (is that a good thing?) and more and more meditators are being hooked up to neurological machines to see what happens in the brain during meditation.

While scientific research on meditation proliferates, so too is the proportion of individuals who identify as “spiritual but not religious” (SBNR) – 37% of the American public (and growing). Also increasing is the proportion of the American public who do not identify with any religion (1/3 of American adults over age 30). If we know that the contemporary human is stressed out and exhausted, that a spiritual practice such as meditation can help, and that a great many Westerners do not identify with a religion or are SBNR, then presenting meditation as a non-religious practice may be a solution to getting more help to more people.

In other words, it’s an ancient religious/spiritual practice re-packaged and re-presented to a population that really, really needs it. It’s tough to give the hairy eyeball to something that we know can help, and even if it is in its purest form religious, not overtly promoting those roots just might be ok. Those who come to meditation seeking help, find it in this practice, and notice a difference will likely be those who also seek to know the practice’s religious/spiritual roots. This is part of the spiritual seeking process. I suggest that if one comes to meditation via the media’s overtly secular presentation, so be it, for the spiritual elements will come to be known as the practitioner is ready.

Where’s the religion? I argue that the size of the beef is less important in the case of meditation than in the case of the all-beef patty. Communication theorists, of which I am one, ascribe that what we see in the media is a reflection of what is happening in the popular and cultural forum. Here, meditation is overwhelmingly depicted as a secular activity. However, my work also shows that the media simultaneously presents meditation as a practice that can help with ailments including anxiety, depression, high blood pressure, and chronic pain, among a great many others. This clearly indicates that people are looking for relief. For thousands of years, meditation has been a practice that has provided just that. The “beef” of meditation is in the doing and the lived experience. The religious roots are inherent, and while the media may present meditation through the exaggeratedly large size of the bun, the beef is still present if willingly sought.

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