[bowsamic]

The Buddha never taught that those aspects are optional and every tradition has preserved them from India to China to Japan, until now! Why are we special that we can forgo all of the religious trappings? We aren’t

Of course the teachings must be made to appeal to westerners. This does not mean totally gutting them

People who won’t accept anything spiritual or religious don’t need this practise. In Buddhism we don’t try to convert, for some people it is simply not their time

[titanomachy]

I think there is a difference between accepting spiritual and religious practices.

The illusion of self can be observed directly. Perhaps it's even an inevitable conclusion of sufficiently intense introspection. I'd consider observing this to be a spiritual practice.

The metaphysics of realms of reincarnation, hungry ghosts, etc. is religious thought (and it was the dominant worldview when Siddhartha was born). These are not ideas that I can discover independently through introspection; if I believe them it's because someone told me to.

We might be talking past each other, though: if you're saying that the benefits of meditation are inherently inextricable from a Vedic worldview, I don't agree. But if you are just saying we haven't yet figured out which parts of the religion are actually necessary, then I agree. I personally learned meditation in a fairly Buddhist context, and naturally there are parts that resonate with me and parts that don't.

[bowsamic]

> The metaphysics of realms of reincarnation, hungry ghosts, etc. is religious thought (and it was the dominant worldview when Siddhartha was born)

Actually, he mostly invented them, they aren’t present in Vedic texts afaik. Also, he did perceive it independently: his insight became so great that he could see his past lives, and he taught that we can too if we follow the 8fp