Buddhism was founded 2500 years ago with some of its practices, such as mindfulness and meditation, being adopted by the first world countries in the West but unfortunately most these practices are not genuine as they were adopted without the very significant religious context attached to them. Actually it bears similarity with orientalism which has been altered by the western culture and applied new conceptions to health, philosophies and business fields[1] in order to make it compatible to with their lives.
Meditation and mindfulness have been scientifically proven to be useful as they improve well-being, promote calmness, and help people reduce mental stress[2]. The practice of mental culture (bhavana) can widen the mind to different human experiences, natural phenomena, life and the universe therefore increasing wisdom. With increased wisdom, one will have greater awareness of all forms of life and better understanding of one’s own thoughts, feelings, and motivations.[3] “The belief in objectivity, coupled with positioning white people as outside of culture (and thus the norm for humanity), allows whites to view themselves as universal humans who can represent all of human experience.”[4]
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They believe that the west tends to misappropriate the many cultures of different religions and societies and turns them into one of their own in order to make it acceptable. Currently, in the west, it is thought to be quite privileged to dress as a ‘Native’, ‘Asian’, ‘African’ to look fashionable as once they were deemed uncivilised and used as a claim to legitimize colonization. To separate meditation from Buddhism makes the western community look oblivious and negligent to believing that a person’s cultural identity forms one of the most important and most vulnerable parts of who they