I'm so glad you wrote this article. And I find it ironic that after 2,000 years of "woo woo" dogmatic belief-based scriptural abrahamic religion in the West, the inheritors of that legacy can't seem to open their imaginations up enough to consider that other cultures don't actually come with that kind of baggage, and that "rituals" and philosophy might actually serve a purpose (such as implanting intentions into the subconscious, or train the energy-body to accommodate stronger levels of motivation that can handle the rigors of meditation).