Ask a room of people whether mindfulness is religious and you will get at least three answers. Some will say it is pure Buddhism with the labels removed. Some will say it is simply attention training, as secular as going to the gym. And some will say it depends on how it is taught. In my experience, the third group is closest to the truth.
Understanding where mindfulness came from does not mean you have to adopt anyone’s beliefs. It does help you make an informed choice about how you practise, and it explains why the question keeps coming up in schools, workplaces and places of worship.
Sati: the Buddhist origin
In early Buddhist texts, sati means something like remembering to stay present: keeping your attention on what is happening now rather than drifting. The British scholar T. W. Rhys Davids is usually credited with first rendering it in English as "mindfulness" in 1881. In Buddhism, "right mindfulness" is one of the eight parts of the Noble Eightfold Path, the practical path towards the end of suffering.
One of the key teachings on the subject, the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, or "Discourse on the Foundations of Mindfulness," describes four areas to pay attention to: the body, feelings (whether experiences are pleasant, unpleasant or neutral), the state of the mind, and mental qualities and phenomena (dhammas). Importantly, in its traditional context, mindfulness was not taught as a standalone technique. It sat alongside ethics, generosity, wisdom and a whole understanding of why we suffer.
The secular turn: mindfulness goes to hospital
In 1979, Jon Kabat-Zinn, a molecular biologist with a long personal meditation practice, founded the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. His eight-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course was designed for patients with chronic pain and stress-related conditions, many of whom had no interest in Buddhism. He taught the practices in plain, everyday language and left out religious terms and rituals.
Kabat-Zinn has written openly that MBSR was grounded in Buddhist understanding, but presented in a way that would make sense in a medical setting and to people of any faith or none. That decision is a large part of why mindfulness spread into hospitals, universities, schools and offices around the world, and also why people still debate whether something important was left behind.
So, is it religious today?
It depends on the setting. Mindfulness taught in a Buddhist temple, alongside chanting, teachings and ethical vows, is clearly part of a religious practice. Mindfulness taught in a hospital programme or a workplace course, focused on attention and stress, generally is not, in the same way that yoga in a gym is not the same as yoga in an ashram, even though they share a history.
A helpful way to think about it is to look at what is actually being taught and asked of people in a given setting, while also honouring where the practice came from. Both things can be true at once: a practice can have deep religious roots and also be offered, respectfully, in a form that people of any background can take part in.
Respecting the roots without being bound by them
People of many different faiths, and of none, practise secular mindfulness comfortably. If you have questions about how it fits with your own beliefs, a trusted teacher or leader in your community is the best person to ask. It is also worth acknowledging, with gratitude, that these practices were developed and preserved by Buddhist communities over many centuries. Many Buddhist teachers warmly welcome the wider interest in mindfulness, and many also gently encourage practising it together with the kindness and ethical care it was traditionally part of.
If you are curious, reading a little about the original teachings can enrich a secular practice without asking you to convert to anything. And if you belong to another faith, you may find that your own tradition has its own long history of contemplative attention, which is the subject of the next article in this series.
