[noufalibrahim]

I appreciate the point you're trying to make. However, my general experience of attempts to take "useful" parts of of religion and then sanitise them for secular mass consumption is that they're at best useless and at worst harmful.

Sure, there might be some proximal benefits to (say) meditation but these are things that were done in a larger (often spiritual) context and I'm not sure that pulling them out of that is wise.

[ufocia]

Don't kill and don't steal seem pretty useful and are embedded within many if not all secular laws.

[paulryanrogers]

Sometimes with massive caveats like stone adulterers and homosexuals.

[praptak]

Effects of meditation are there regardless of the religious context.

Although you are right in that the deeper stages (say as described in "The Mind Illuminated") may not make much sense without at least some spiritual foundation.

[physicles]

I sympathize. As someone who used to hold essentially fundamentalist views, I'm now deeply suspicious of anything supernatural. When I left, I didn't even try to smuggle out any of the good parts.

However, there's now tons of secular support for meditation. Sam Harris, a neuroscientist and one of the most anti-religion and anti-supernatural people out there, is basically leading the charge. I think that says something.

[noufalibrahim]

Interestingly, my main disagreements with the approach came primarily from the way Harris (and to a smaller degree Alain deBotton) attempted this.