In their article, Monteiro, Musten and Compson (
2015) explored the criticisms regarding the proliferation of contemporary mindfulness programs by attempting to represent the positions and concerns of the traditional Buddhist community. They noted that traditional Buddhists have raised alarms over the proliferation of mindfulness programs primarily because such contemporary applications have significantly diverged from canonical definitions of mindfulness as derived from the vast corpus of traditional Buddhist texts and practices. In addition, they characterized such objections by traditional Buddhists as a groundswell of protest, particularly when concerns are raised over the absence of ethics, or
sila, in clinical and nonclinical mindfulness programs. They also touch on issues pertaining to a clash of worldviews between religion and science, as well as the teaching of secular mindfulness programs in corporations and the military. …