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I did a Vipassana retreat a few years ago. Definitely an incredible experience, and I could see directly measurable positive effects on my thinking, on how I made decisions, etc. afterwards (although the effect does wear off after a while if you don't keep meditating regularly). However, I feel I must mention some negatives as well. First, the course emphasizes many times that it is purely secular, but towards the end it slides into the more religious aspects of Buddhism (reincarnation and even some explicitly anti-scientific ideas). I feel that this can turn off a lot of the more analytically-minded/secular/atheist people, which is a real shame because Vipassana still makes a lot of sense without these religious aspects. Secondly, towards the end of the course there's real pressure in the lectures to accept Vipassana as the "one true way" to meditate, and I got a little bit of a cult-ish vibe from some of the returning students and especially from the volunteers. Not to the degree that it's going to be a problem for most people, but I can see how a small minority of "brainwash-susceptible" individuals, especially in a vulnerable stage in life, may throw themselves 100% into Vipassana after a retreat, instead of critically thinking about this powerful experience afterwards. So my advice: definitely do it if you can, take it seriously and give it your 100%, but don't turn off your critical thinking skills during the lectures or after the retreat. If you can do it, there's lots to gain.

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I can't stand people who say Buddhism is not a religion. In many, many, MANY ways Christianity is as much a philosophy as Buddhism is. People also don't realize that Buddhism in the West is specifically catered to Westerners who are sick of the dogma of the Abrahamic religions. Ironically, Buddhism is filled with the same dogma, but it's hidden in the West until you buy into it. I can't imagine it's entirely different from how Christian missionaries approach developing countries.

Not saying that Buddhism is "bad" - not at all. But it is in no way as secular, or as peaceful, as Westerners think it is. It has a long and torrid history of violence, as well as dogma.

I just wish people recognized Buddhism for what it is - a religion.

(Buddhist here)

Could I see quotations about the history of violence? Buddhism has by far the lowest score of violence of all five big religions of the world. Not to mention that when that violence did happen (zen priests blessing kamikazes during WW2, myanmar riots these days...) it has been condemned as explicitly not-buddhist by the wider Buddhist world (for violence has no place in the Buddha's thought).

As for it being a religion, well yes it is, however it is not a theistical religion that explicitly asks you to believe in a vengeful, retributing god.

The Buddha describes how reality works (karma - from a certain action an appropriate consequence will follow, and there's nothing fixed or permanent, just conditions giving rise to other conditions) with the important corollary that if you want to be happy, then do actions that are ethical because "good" consequences will follow from those. This is what we call a "philosophy" in western thought.

It only becomes a "religion" when one believes that one too, could be like the Buddha, becoming something that's much higher than what one is right now. One doesn't have to believe this bit however, one could very well follow the Buddha's teachings (and meditation, which is an integral part of) just to become a happier human being.

I think the key point shockzzz makes is: "it is in no way as secular, or as peaceful, as Westerners think it is" (Just look at what is happening in Burma right now or Sri Lanka)

Satan and Jesus are walking down the street. They see man in front of them picking up small piece of truth. Jesus says "Satan! That man has realized the Truth! There is nothing you can to do to stop him now!" Satan smiles cunningly at Jesus "Yes, he has realized the Truth. And now I am going to help him organize the Truth!" As a secular Buddhist the key issue for me is that whenever Buddhism becomes popular main religion, it will will more or less dilute into something very different.

In Zen Buddhist tradition there are many autobiographies and stories from over thousand years of Zen Buddhism. They tell the story of constant struggle between community/authority and actual praxis. Either authorities want to embrace Buddhism and dilute and disfigure it into common religious formula, or they prosecute it. Buddhism as a religion seems to be in the state constant decay and needs periodic reforms to get back into basics.

The history of Thai Forest Tradition is good example of how there was need for reform in Buddhist monastic tradition in a country where Buddhism is everywhere in well organized and accepted form.

Just like many people have committed violence claiming to be Christians, so have people committed violence claiming to be devout Buddhists.

Wikipedia has a light page on the topic.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism_and_violence

Not mentioned in the above link is the Tibetan serfdom controversy.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom_in_Tibet_controversy

Regarding you second point, I am not sure I see the value of saying "Buddhism is not a religion if you ignore the religious bits"... you might well say that about any religion. There are plenty of secular Muslims and secular Jews for example, but that does not make Islam or Judaism any less of a religion.

>Just like many people have committed violence claiming to be Christians

if you read even just a bit of 2000 years history of Christianity, you'll see that violence in the name of God and Church and toward the infidels/heretics/etc. has all this time been considered a virtue of a good Christian. Not that Christianity is any special here. The base of any religion is division between "good" and "bad" and fostering the feeling of superiority in "good" and hatred toward the "bad". In particular "<Religion> of peace" for any value of <Religion> is an oxymoron the same way as "white black".

Regarding you second point, I am not sure I see the value of saying "Buddhism is not a religion if you ignore the religious bits"... you might well say that about any religion.

Key difference is, the founders and leaders of Judaism and Islam claim to have believed in God. The Buddha did not. A lot of us identify a deity as being core to the idea of being a religion.

That's not to say that sects haven't developed and diverged from the initial beliefs, perhaps in order to build their own communities (or empires). But these are later developments than the teachings set forth by Siddhartha Gautama.

When you talk about a community, it is unreasonable to expect each one being a perfect representation of the whole. For a comparison between communities you need to look at the scale. Compare the scale of the violence in history of Christianity and Buddhism and you get the larger picture.

> Could I see quotations about the history of violence? Buddhism has by far the lowest score of violence of all five big religions of the world. Not to mention that when that violence did happen (zen priests blessing kamikazes during WW2, myanmar riots these days...) it has been condemned as explicitly not-buddhist by the wider Buddhist world (for violence has no place in the Buddha's thought).

Buddhism is mostly peaceful, but there is currently a buddhist army (The DBKA) and 2 buddhist terrorist groups (the 969 movement, and Bodu Bala Sena)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Karen_Buddhist_Army

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/969_Movement

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodu_Bala_Sena

Here's a news report of buddhist violence: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25866350

> for violence has no place in the Buddha's thought).

There are plenty of buddhist leaders who've said that violence is acceptable.

This wikipedia article starts by listing many of the buddhist doctrines against violence, and then gives examples of many times when buddhists have turned to violence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism_and_violence

Buddhism has by far the lowest score of violence of all five big religions of the world. Not to mention that when that violence did happen [...] it has been condemned as explicitly not-buddhist by the wider Buddhist world (for violence has no place in the Buddha's thought)

I want to address this comment because it's a key objection from Buddhist Apologists.

Every small religion is going to score low on the "violence meter." That's because Buddhism wasn't politically successful. China went Communist and took over Tibet, and Buddhism lost in India.

And for those that condemn violent actions - OF COURSE! Everyone does that! Muslims overwhelmingly condemn ISIS, American Christians condemn wars and domestic terror, and many Jews condemn Israel's military behavior.

Many of the popular religions can be interpreted to be peaceful or violent. Blame the people, not the religion.

> Every small religion is going to score low on the "violence meter."

How is the fourth largest religion in the world a "small religion"?

But does buddhist scripture, teachings or lore advocate violence in the same way islam or even christianity do? I thought it was all about not harming any living being. Jihad, martyrdom and stoning infidels and such on the other hand are legitimate concepts of islam. Not to mention the violent god of the old testament.

edit: words

It's nearly impossible to verify that because:

1) Most of Buddhist scripture is not translated to modern languages

2) There is so much of it. Which Buddhist scriptures? Zen? Theravada? Tibetan? Tantric? It's hard to say which text is representative of Buddhism as a whole. Some people say all of them are (except when they disagree).

I'd encourage you to wonder if that's the right question to ask. In terms of International war and politics, do the words themselves matter more than how they're used?

In most cases, Buddhists kill others in the name of compassion. It is compassionate to kill a misguided (or Muslim) person and give them the chance to reincarnate as a Buddhist. To me, that's more fucked up than justifying murder by twisting the definition of something like Jihad.

Intent matters.

I believe the core tenets of buddhism to be more about hacking your mind and body with certain lifestyle and practice (meditation etc) and living without infringing on others. The fairytales are extra baggage.

The difference between for example islam is that there are some seriously bad ideas (by socially liberal western live-and-let-live standards) in that scripture. Islam is an inseparable part of the culture in muslim majority countries hence it is bound to influence actions and attitudes to some degree.

Interesting. I can't stand the bible for more than two pages. That and the few historical aspects of European culture (missionaries, inquisition,...). The few bits I heard about Buddhism are much more poetic and abstract. I'd like to see the bad arbitrary / absurd part of Buddhism now.

Penguin Classics publishes a book called Buddhist Scriptures that does a pretty good job of exploring the breadth of Buddhist thought. There's no room for it to be a good single-volume reference to all of Buddhism—it's just too diverse and has too many important works for even a substantial fraction to fit—but it's a good way to get an idea of the lay of the land. It's very diverse, and I'd say the majority of it in practice easily fits in a Western definition of religion. Pure Land even comes off as a cousin to Christianity, in its insistence that saving ourselves isn't likely and that we should devote our practice to praying (more or less) for intersession at death by a specific Buddha, who will take us to paradise (again, more or less).

I can't stand people who say Buddhism is not a religion.

It is definitely a religion. But I'd like to add the remark that the earlier writings in particular (those attributed to the Buddha and those of early Zen masters) focus mostly on meditation practice and ethics and are quite agnostic about other (e.g. existential) questions.

Which earlier writings? The Pali Canon, which is the earliest, is FILLED with theistic notions.

Zen came wayy after, which was more or less predicated on earlier Japanese Buddhism that integrates a great deal of Shinto beliefs.

These are not agnostic.

Buddhism can not be accurately understood by simply looking at the whole of Buddhism and its teachings. Buddhism was created in a society where Hinduism was the norm, and it is the changes (the “diff”, if you will) which Buddhism introduced which are the interesting bits. What we may see as strange and religious will make more sense if you compare it to what Hinduism had and what the change which Buddhism introduced was trying to accomplish.

It would be interesting to “rebase” Buddhism on western culture, but I can’t think of anything which would fit this description.

Maybe I misunderstood what you are saying, but there is nothing exceptional in Buddhism origin. Every religion is based, or is a reinterpretation of an existing tradition : Islam on Judaism and Christianity, Christianity on Judaism, Judaism was probably influenced by Zoroastrianism and Egyptian tradition. It is turtles all the way down.

I was certainly not trying to imply that Buddhism is in any way exceptional. I was trying to explain why Buddhism seems strange and religious to people who did not grow up in a Hindu society.

For example, many people believe that Buddhism teaches reincarnation. But Hinduism also has reincarnation, and Buddhism simply chose to alter the concept, and it is this alteration which is the interesting bit. Buddhism can only be properly understood as a reaction to Hinduism, not by coming to it fresh and reading about the eightfold path or whatever – that way it will only come across as weird.

Hinduism as it exists today didn't exist in the Buddha's time. There were sects of Brahmans who practiced varied ritual folk religions with contradicting beliefs and ideas. Actually, at the time of the Buddha, there was a lot of debate between Brahman clans about what happens after death. There were arguments for reincarnation, which Buddhism clarifies as rebirth without an eternal soul, as well as for eternalism (ie you go to heaven forever if you're good) and annihilationism (ie you die and that's it, no more existence), both of which the Buddha explicitly refuted.

Buddhism did not spring fully-formed from the mind of Siddhartha Gautama. Buddhism, like Hinduism, grew slowly in reactions to one another.

Yeah, maybe, sort of.

Today, large chunk of Buddhism (well Mahayana (Chinese buddhism) and Vajrayana (Tibetan buddhism) at least) is practiced in societies where there was never Hinduism in the first place.

So it mixed with the local religions instead and what we get in China, Japan, Korea is mix of local religious traditions and Buddhism.

Theravada ("Sri Lanka and company" buddhism) seems to me closer to the "actual" original Buddhism, but really I was never in any Theravada majority place for a longer time, so I don't know

Vipassana is actually quite a new tradition, as is for example Japanese zen as we know it now (from what I can gather, it was sort of a reaction to Meiji reforms in Japan that violently separated Shinto and Buddhist traditions, not that long ago).

> Vipassana is actually quite a new tradition

Hmm, no not really.(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vipassan%C4%81)

It's dealt with in a couple of the Pali suttas afaik.

One can interpret certain suttas as showing the Vipassana noting technique, but it's not explicitly pointed out in an instructional way, so it's hard to say if it's not a later interpretation of the text used to justify a newer practice that developed in Burma and Sri Lanka.

The explanation Goenka gives is that the technique of noting was passed down from teacher to teacher all the way back to the Buddha, but of course every tradition says this about every technique so it can be hard to verify.

Religions are were created by organizations of followers, with made living out of the teaching. Later these organizations developed itselfs into what we call now corporations or big government (actually, governments became bloated and corrupted due to deflation of Catholic churches).

Buddhism, my friend, has many branches and sects. The original teaching, which is more or less accurately preserver in Dharmapadda of so-called Pali canon is a philosophic doctrine, losely based on Upanishads, narated in an easy to understand, poetical way - a bunch of metaphors familiar to a village folks.

This doctrine has no notions of rituals, idol worship, mantras, tantras, mandalas, monasteries or other kind of social hierarchy. These were almost 1000 years later inventions (the era of Indian writings dated back to 6th to 8th century AD - thousand years after Buddha's death, and associated with places like Nalanda "university" in Bihar).

All that lately written nonsense usually referred to by using the umbrella term Mahayana (with implies, of course, better than older teachings). These writings were translated into Tibetan in the first wave of translation, about 7th AD.

The second wave, which is associated with the mythical guru Padmasambava and his so-called tantric Buddhism - a profound tribal (non-arian) influence of primitive deity worship - Tantra - could be considered only as a farce.

The branch of teaching adopted and developed in China has been already distorted by Mahayana writers, but, strictly speaking, it is closer to the Pali Canon than the texts translated into Tibetan during the second wave.

So, which one you are refering to as Buddhism religion? Which set of rithualized idol worship which has been imported popularized in US in 60s and 70s?

I can't upvote this enough. You made the point way better than I did above.

I'm talking about any of the Buddhist religions. Many of the claims you make here can be made of the Abrahamic religions as well.

And, I call bullshit that you know what's in the Pali Canon. The vast majority of it is still in ancient Tibetan. You have no evidence to prove that there isn't dogma within it, nor is there any conclusive evidence that the "original" Pali Canon was all philosophy.

That's like saying the "real Bible" that Jesus heard from God was not the "actual Bible" that was written down. Perhaps the "real Bible" was only philosophy, and we humans added the dogma.

Plus - the existence of Buddhist dogma in ancient India is abundantly clear. Just go to a museum or Google it! What do you think those people are doing when they're bowing to the Buddha!?

You're also kind of an asshole to say Tantric Buddhism is a farce. Who are you to say something like that? I'm just stating a blatant fact that the Buddhist religions are indeed religions. Nothing more, nothing less.

Again - I'm not suggesting that Buddhism is bad. I think there are many beautiful lessons to be learned as you eloquently allude to. If you, as a person, connect with the Dharma, no one can take that away from you. Once you find a Sangha, it is profound and incredible. My goal is to clear misconceptions of the Buddhist religions, which many Westerners have.

With religions, isn't it all relative? I can't think of a single religion which is not violent. Maybe people think highly of Buddhism because they think it is relatively less violent than other religions?

Well one difference is that Gautama was an atheist. That makes it different almost all other major religions. Another difference is that he kept on emphasising on practice and self experience (to improve one's life) than theory/intellectual-discussion and blind belief. Also self observing and believing only that much which one experiences himself and take it step by step. This is unlike asking someone to just believe and accept something as a fact.

>I just wish people recognized Buddhism for what it is - a religion.

There was no one ordained by him or any religion proclaimed by him on his name. Around his words later there is a whole religion of buddhism that came up with many different kind of practices and rituals. You could follow none of that (this religion and its rituals) and just live by the principles by which Gautam Buddha "lived" himself and could have a better life.

I don't think it's fair to say Guatama was an atheist, at least in the common-use definition of the word. He doesn't teach about an almighty creator God, but there are plenty of unimaginably powerful, vast, supramundane beings that he interacts with in the Buddhist canon that your average atheist would deny the existence or possibility of.

You're engaging in some very slippery semantics.

To say Gautama was an atheist is to push onto history a distinction that had yet to be invented. He was very much a participant in the spiritual / religious frameworks of the time, and rejection of certain aspects of those frameworks does not necessarily make you an apostate or unreligious or atheistic.

> There was no one ordained by him or any religion proclaimed by him on his name.

Jesus ordained nobody either. Nor did he ever proclaim a religion. All that came later.

If Buddhism isn't a religion, Christianity isn't either. Buddhism has teachings, mythology, places of worship, specific means of prayer, (meditation, anybody who says meditation isn't prayer has never really prayed) holy books, priests, and a thriving metaphysical dialogue. It walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, water rolls down its back like a duck.

> Jesus ordained nobody either

Well, catholics say differently. "And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church."

So, Jesus ordained 0 or 1 people, depending on your choice of tradition.

A brief search also pointed me to a thread where Catholics believe Jesus ordained all 12 apostles. To me it seems like after-the-fact justifications, but you have to learn to live with this kind of non-rigor when studying religion.

One of the important differences between Christianity and Buddhism is the concept of monotheism in Christianity. According to Christianity, there is only one god and to accept Christianity, one has to reject rest of all. The way Buddhism was received in far East, without replacing their existing belief system shows the tolerant nature of the religion. This is why many Japanese claim to follow multiple religion - the idea unimaginable in the Christian countries.

Well of course there are a lot of dogmatic elements in both, but I still think they´re not comparable. It´s hard to call yourself a christian without at least accepting the bits about Jesus dying for mankinds sins. Already at that point you´re heavily invested in dogma. Also the religious violence regarding buddhists don´t really have a clear line from the doctrine (except perhaps zen buddhism which doesn´t really emphasize compassion). In the case of christiany there are clear lines between doctrine and behaviour. God in the old testament clearly hates gays for example. The violence from buddhist from what i´ve read is more just regular tribalism, it´s not like it´s doctrine-inspired.

There´s a lot of research going on about mindfulness / vipassana and what ever is true about it is of course not buddhist. Just like algebra isn´t muslim because the inventors of it were muslim. Real knowledge / facts transcends these cultural contingencies.

There is such a thing as secular Buddhism: http://secularbuddhism.org/

Although many people practice it as a religion it doesn't have to be practiced as one. For example one can attend a meditation workshop and learn Theravada or Mahayana techniques in a non sectarian environment free from any ceremony, dogma or iconography. Unlike the Judeo-Christian faiths there is no litmus test for who is a buddhist and who isn't one.

Exactly how I feel about it. I am pretty critical and have a knack for spotting hypocrisy, which there was enough to find of, at least in the center where I was (Bavaria, Germany, they are so attached to rules there, no amount of Vipassana can take that away).

One anecdote: Mr. Goenka ends every day with 'May all beings be happy.' Imagine my surprise when the server said we could not pet the stray cats that were walking around, to prevent them from coming back all the time, because they didn't want to take care of them.

Some of these contradictions started to annoy me, and almost made me leave, until I realized on day 5 that this is all part of the meditation, more or less. I wasn't there for them, I was there for my own development, and so I had to accept the reality as it is, stop comparing and focus on the experience. All externalities are not relevant, and the ability to not let your mood be influenced by things outside your control is exactly what is developed there. So every contradiction or irritation became a challenge, to strengthen my discipline.

I had an interesting conversation on the last day with a Buddhist. He also didn't like the 'one true way' part of it. He became a Buddhist mainly because his teacher told him honestly that his way was just one of many that one can follow.

And although Mr Goenka says it's the one true way, he also continuously says that you should not take his (or anyone else's) words for granted, but that you should experience and decide for yourself, and that whatever you do, decide on a path to follow and stay with it, because if you start a new path all the time, you will never reach the end of the road.

>Imagine my surprise when the server said we could not pet the stray cats that were walking around, to prevent them from coming back all the time, because they didn't want to take care of them.

That seems like an ethical approach to me. Once you start feeding and messing with wildlife, you interrupt their natural habits and processes. Many animals have starved to death because some "do gooder" decided to feed them, thus raising their populations to an unsustainable level, then he gets bored of it, and now their babies cant get enough calories and starve.

Not to mention the potential of passing on or catching some virus or bacteria from touching feral or wild animals or the slim, but real, potential to get a rabies bite.

Well, it wasn't wild life and it's not about feeding. There were 2 cats, who perfectly took care of themselves (saw them catching bugs multiple times), and sometimes they came to the people, stroking their bodies along their feet. If an animal does that, it's normal to pet it and it's not harmful or unethical at all.

Nobody had to feed them, or take care of them, they just came for attention sometimes.

It's also quite dangerous if you haven't taken physical preparations beforehand. To sit on the floor 6-8 hours a day with a weak westernised body, used to sitting in a chair, is dangerous. If your not super fit and have great core strength, the muscles around your spine simply can't hold you for that long and you collapse into the skeleton, which can lead to injury. Traditionally, Vipassana would have rigorous physical training before the meditation, now in the westernised setting, we just go from sitting at desk 8 hrs a day for decades, to sitting on the cushion.

Furthermore, the endocrine system can get really messed up when you sit for that long over a number of period of days. When the body doesn't move, things stagnate and cause problems (just look at all the research coming out about the dangers of prolonged sitting)

However if one is physically fit & ready to begin, then great things can happen!

It's not like you have to sit 10 hours a day without ever moving. The longest streak is about 1 hour, and only from day 5 there's two times a day a sitting with determination. Nobody's asked to force it, if it really hurts, then just move. Every hour there's a 5-10 minute break to walk around and stretch the legs.

As I knew there would be sitting with determination later in the week, I trained my body and mind in the first days by sitting still as long as I could.

Yeah, I guess I'm more addressing those Type-A personalities who might be reading this thinking "I'm gonna go do this and kick ass, taking the practice to the maximum limit my mind will let me"... then going in and ignoring their pain through sheer willpower then coming out in a lot of trouble.

Yes- nice to see I'm not the only one who felt this way! It's an amazing experience but some of the cultish aspects bothered me as well. I understand that they want you to focus on the Vipassana way of meditating during the retreat but pushing it as the "one true way" felt contradictory.

I did like 14 courses over the years.

I understand what you mean with religious talks and I can understand your point of view. Tho, first, Goenka explicitly sates that whatever part of the theory, you don't like, take it out, as long as the practice is in tact. From a scientific point of view, the practice is tested to work very well. Only on my personal level, it works very well in alignment with the mental body-mind model I developed over the years, but it not a published scientific model, at least yet.

Unfortunately, that your physical model does not have a model for rebirth like information exchange does not mean there exists none. Hey, if you think in the standard model, your model has be proven to never predict absorption lines correctly apart from all the other problems it has. Not all 4 general believed facts on a black hole can all be true at the same time. Lots of unexplained phenomena even counterfactual.

The model I adopted explains general and special relativity, all known quantum mechanical effects, rules and energies and predicts some more, the periodic table, stable and unstable isotops, all chemical bonds, absorption lines, has a correct arrow of time, irreversible processes and is ultimately reversible, explains much more cosmological phenomena then your model, quasars, pulsars, binary pulsars, cepheids of type II, globular clusters, and and and

Uses much stricter energy conservation, stricter logic while having fewer assumptions.

And yes, it also has predicted phenomena not existing in your model at all, called ring photons. One or many photons entangled with: start<->end, building a very stable ring with 2 bits of information. Those can build up loop in loop structures encoding very dense informations in a very quite stable structure. And know what, those rings are predicted to be emmited in 3 amino acids we humans use, so - I see things a bit different now, scientifically :)

But I don't see those fields as some indestructible object, and more like fragments that flow around. But without understanding the model it will not make much sense for you.

Luckily, when I did vipassana, I was in a group that did not insert much religion in weekly practice or retreats. Sometimes, there were separate reading groups for people who were interested. But practice was only sitting, walking, sitting, and then the opportunity to tell about your experience if you wanted to.

I think another problematic aspect (besides religious dogma) is the hierarchy that exists in some communities. While I definitely think that it's important to be guided by an experienced meditator, some leaders are (unjustly) put on a pedestal (even more when they are from the east). This leads to people accepting practice (or even sexual abuse in some cases) without critical thinking.

Wow that is interesting! I have many respected secular friends who have done it and highly recommended. I've being waited listed, but have not done it yet.

Sorry to hear that was your experience in the end. Seems like the people who are preaching may be diverting from the essence of the practice. From what I understand Vipassana predates buddhism. Has not thing to do with religion rather a practice to observe our own internal thoughts without outside influence.

sounds somewhat similar to a "slow induction/sucking into swamp" way the Scientology consumed (in all senses) one my colleague some years ago. If it looks cult-ish, if it sounds cult-ish ...

>but towards the end it slides into the more religious aspects of Buddhism

Well, its a religious practice. This is like joining a Catholic choir and being surprised all the songs are about Jesus, and all the talk of melodies and harmony take a backseat to devotion.

As a meditator, I think this push to strip it down and reduce it to just a "stress remover" is counter-productive and will end in situations like yours where you feel the "anti-scientific" (whatever that means) aspects attacked you. The reality here is that meditators, especially teachers, can't divorce the emotional, spiritual, ethical, and even supernatural parts of their practice for Western consumers who just want a "fix me" weekend to go back to their busy, complex, and stressful lives. The larger point is to fix/change yourself so you don't constantly need "recharge" retreats.

I think there's been this failed experiment in the last 100 years to strip people of spirituality either by force (Communism) or by shame (Western Determinism/Materialism). As an lower-case atheist and non-religious person, I find it all incredible bleak and have been, over the years, working my way closer to the "softer" parts of Buddhism. I'm pretty much an agnostic with maybe some weak spiritual views now and its a good place to be. I don't think you can really expect Buddhists to strip Buddhism from meditation. They find too much value in it the same way I do. Secular/scientific "stress busting" techniques don't work compared to holistic life changes that yes include weird spiritual stuff and counter-modern ideas like living for the moment/experience and not giving into attachment, materialism, emotions, etc. We tried just deep breathing, we tried every psychological fad, we tried drugs, etc. They just don't seem to work very well compared to a serious change in lifestyle as described by Buddhism or some school of mediation/Eastern thought.

I see people stuck on endless skinner boxes on ipads and consoles. I see people fighting and killing themselves at shitty, stressful jobs (yours truly included), etc. I see conflict all the time and the inevitable race to a Nash equilibria that makes everyone unhappy. Samasara looks real to me, even if you interpret it as a metaphor. I don't think its cultish to point out alternatives to the Western idea of "being productive," or to add some "woo." Frankly, I'm not convinced some "woo" isn't real. No, I'm not sending money to Sylvia Brown, but I won't be a dismissive asshole when people talk about reincarnation, or how they think Vipassana or Kundalini brought them close to some important spiritual experience, etc. Funny how we dismiss these experiences, but ask any geek about LSD and he'll ramble one for hours how its pretty much spiritualism in a can and everyone nods in lockstep. Perhaps we're a little too dismissive of the soft parts of Buddhism in the West.

We in the west are very diverse. There are lots of people in America and Europe who are very attracted to the "soft parts" of Buddhism. Especially secular people who started meditating out of desperation and found that the most attractive instructions were Buddhist. Quite a few of them end up doing a Goenka retreat, because they're free and they're advertised as secular and nonsectarian—although they also claim an unbroken teaching lineage descending from Gautama Buddha.

I think the momentum of soft Buddhism is strong enough to warrant some healthy critique. What does it actually mean to align oneself with an ancient and foreign religious tradition? What's the relation between meditation and Buddhism, and what are the good reasons to not be a Buddhist? What is Buddhism, even? How well does it actually work? And so on.

Nobody expects Buddhists to strip Buddhism from their meditation. But the phenomenon here is the scores of Western people who become Buddhists, or quasi-Buddhists, mostly because they like to meditate and are seeking some source of meaning, truth, and devotion. It's an extremely interesting phenomenon, and I'm a quasi-Buddhist myself in just this way (took precept vows at a Zen center, have gone to multiple meditation retreats, have read plenty of Buddhist literature, visited some rural Thai temples, etc).

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