[PraetorianGourd]

I wouldn’t distill an entire region of the globe down to wanting money, power and status. Nor would I say that wanting those things, especially money, requires an inflated ego.

The stereotype of the noble destitute is overplayed. Wanting to be able to provide for my family and have financial security can be noble as well. It’s how one accomplishes those things that can be unethical.

Perhaps mindfulness helps someone stay grounded so that their focus on money doesn’t inflate their ego?

But seriously please don’t use stereotypes even if the stereotyped is of a group that is commonly thought of as in power.

[thewarrior]

You’re being a little unfair to the commenter here.

The western interpretation of meditation is that the rat race can stress you out so meditate once in a while so you can keep running. Hence the name mindfulness based stress reduction.

This can help a lot of people but this was not what the Buddha was about. Buddhism goes far deeper and it’s understandable why they want to sell a more sanitized version. I can’t imagine a corporation paying for a spiritual practice that would make their employees question if working their lives away was really worth it.

The Buddha wanted us to transcend ourselves. To realize the illusory nature of most of our conceptions of ourselves. It’s not an app or a success technique. It’s something beyond all such ideas.

[Falandafa2021]

Thank you for explaining much better than myself friend :)

As a practitioner of a Buddhist practice (see my username), meditation is about developing and mastering concentration the mind. The Buddha taught Meditation with out precepts (or living a moral life properly aligned with the universe) was in vain. This is this the reason the Buddha stressed precepts on how one should live as ultimately a mind focused on the material world and self interest will never have the stillness of one living a life of virtue for others which is why many people find meditation so awesome until they try to still there minds and blame the practice for this inability like in this article.

The problem I see is the framing of meditation into the portrait of modern society.

[Falandafa2021]

You are right it is not just the western culture was mainly using the stereotype to prove a point specifically that moving up in a materialistic society is antithetical to what true meditation and spiritual practice aims at which is beyond the material world.