With 100,000 people in Washington this week for a major meditative Buddhist ceremony, a question arises: Is meditation a religion?
As On Faith explored last week, millions in the West, including many Kalachakra participants, have adapted Buddhist practices such as mindfulness, meditation or study of the Dalai Lama’s teachings, without taking on the full trappings of orthodox Tibetan Buddhism.
And meditation is booming in this country. The National Institutes of Health’s most recent data shows 9.4 percent of Americans meditated in the last year. That’s up from 7.6 percent five years earlier.
One of the region’s biggest meditation groups, the Insight Meditation…
