Wonderful criticism! Though in my defense I should probably justify the choices I made in this article:
- Bhavana seems to be the term used for a common, "lower" level contemplation, at least in Buddhist literature such as Kamalashila's, as opposed to the more specific Dhyana (Pali: Jhana) which refers to "true" meditation in which something is actually deeply investigated through absorption. The concept of Dhyana in all its depth and fullness is likely unimaginable to most in the modern world, and certainly encompasses way more than a 1:1 translation to the word meditation. I chose Bhavana because it seems like a more general term, like meditation. That isn't to say Dhyana isn't important, just that the term meditation is not worthy of being equated to that.
- Modern "secular" meditation for America is very much an extraction/appropriation from mindfulness practices, devoid of all their sacred contexts. I linked to the website on Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, which is basically mapping the dryest aspect of Buddha's teachings, which was adapted for an Evangelical or Hyper Materialist-Atheist audience just to somehow get their stress down. The argument here arose from my choice of the word "modern," which for me is Euro-American modernity as that is the environment I live in, but of course what is "modern" would be different for other nationalities.
- As you are probably aware, Hindu sampradayas have suffered greatly in the last millennium owing to disruptions from foreign invasion and colonialism. There is incredible wealth within the surviving traditions, but in terms of a larger scale and university-level organization of that contemplative knowledge in a way that rivals the West, and is empirically replicable, I find the Tibetan preservation of Indian Mahayana to be the only competitor. Of course it's Hindu civilization in all its wonderful pluralism and depth that gave rise to Buddha Dharma in the first place, but in terms of experiential psychological treatises that do not require a living Guru to interpret and guide, Buddhism seems to have more accessible texts and a more empirical approach in which the whole spiritual path is mapped out. Though I do hope that the treasures of Hinduism (literal seeds for an ecologically harmonious civilization) sprout into a vision for human modernity that gives an alternative to the reductionist and disenchanted mess American cultural influence has made.
