Is There a Place for God in Secular Mindfulness Meditation?

What does secular mean? Can you attend a secular mindfulness program if you believe in “God”? And will doing so be counter or helpful to your “Religious Faith”?

Photo by Marc-Olivier Jodoin on Unsplash

When teaching mindfulness meditation in a secular context, I often encounter situations where people struggle with the nuanced understanding of secularism.  Frequently, I am asked whether individuals who are Christian, Muslim, Jewish or hold other beliefs can attend the sessions, as there is sometimes a misconception that these practices are exclusively Buddhist.  Additionally, some participants come to the sessions with a preconception and intention that they will be learning Buddhism or engaging in Buddhist practice when attending secular mindfulness practice. 

These are common misconceptions when it comes to secular mindfulness as an intervention and practice to promote physical, psychological, and I would also include spiritual well-being. 

In fact, historically, when Jon Kabat-Zinn identified the potential that the Buddhist contemplative practice of mindfulness had at improving well-being, one of his original intentions was to create a mindfulness program that could be attended by persons from diverse backgrounds regardless of their religious beliefs or histories ( (Kabat-Zinn, 2003; Kabat-Zinn, 2011). 

Kabat-Zinn (2011) points this out explicitly how, although the practices were taken from Buddhism, his aim was to separate and make a distinction between mindfulness practice and Buddhist beliefs.  

Although not without its criticism, this was a significant step to re-contextualize mindfulness practices within mindfulness programs like Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) to be “secular,” devoid of religious beliefs or connotations, making them applicable in different contexts beyond their original religious affiliation. Understanding this intention can help clarify the place of God in secular mindfulness meditation.  

Crane and colleagues (2017), in an article on what defines mindfulness-based programs, commented on how these are structured to be:

Based in science and contemporary approaches to managing mental and physical health and supporting well-being; that they are suitable for delivery in mainstream public institutions across a range of settings and cultures; and that they are maximally accessible to people with diverse values and religious affiliations. (p. 991)

But what does “secular” mean and imply? 

Contrary to common misconception, secular or secularism does not mean a rejection or exclusion of religion.  It actually embodies inclusivity, allowing space for all faiths to exist in a space of mutual respect where one does not impose itself on another or force an individual to practice it (Hagglund, 2019).

This means that there is indeed a place for "God" in secular mindfulness meditation, but it also acknowledges that interpretations of "God" can vary widely among individuals. This diversity of belief underscores the importance of interfaith dialogue, where different perspectives can be shared and understood, fostering a more harmonious coexistence.

This considering that similar to Buddhism, all major contemplative traditions had practices that were aimed at centring oneself and cultivating mindfulness as a quality of awareness.  This even within theistic traditions.   

To name a few within Christianity, the practice of attention, “prosoche,” as the continuous remembrance of “God”, was highly emphasised by early Christian mystics (Christie, 2012; Hadot, 2016).  One such practice was “melete” or “meditation”, consisting of choosing a word or short phrase from scripture as a point of focus and reciting it continually, similar to a mantra and returning to reciting the phrase whenever the mind wanders away (Johnson, 2013; Wortley, 2006).  Contemporary, this is more known as centring prayer. In the video below, Father Thomas Keating talks about this.

Islamic contemplative tradition has a similar practice, “muraqaba”, aimed at developing concentration. One technique is through “dhikr,” repeating the name of “God”, and whenever the mind wanders away, returning to repeating the “dhikr” (Ernst, 2011; Rice, 1964; Stoddart, 2012).  Below are two videos talking about this: one by Shankar Nair, Assistant Professor in Religious Studies and the other by Dr. Mufti Abdur-Rahman ibn Yusuf Mangera, a Muslim scholar.    

While in Jewish contemplative tradition, letters within the Jewish alphabet hold a spiritual significance, and they have practices using the breath and visualisation related to the spiritual meaning of the letters within the words (Halevi, 1991; Kaplan, 1985).  For example, one practice uses the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, “alef”, visualising it, keeping your focus on it and again when the mind wanders away, bringing your focus back to visualising the “alef” (Kaplan, 1985).  Below are two videos where Rabbi Yitzchak talks about Jewish meditation using breath and the other where Rabbi David Bassous talks about meditation on the letter “aleph” and its meaning.

So broadly speaking, meditative, contemplative practices from different traditions could be considered as various self-administered techniques used to train attention by returning our attention to a particular object of focus when our mind wanders as a method for seeking inner transformation (Eifring, 2014; Eifring, 2013a; Plante, 2010).  

So, the central pedagogical component within meditative, contemplative practices, both secular and non-secular, is that directly or indirectly, they all emphasise the sustained systemic training of attention primarily directed towards the cultivation of mindfulness as a quality of awareness as a central pedagogical component both for the teacher, student or lay practitioner (Micallef, 2023).  This is the underlying theoretical model common to all mindfulness-based programs.

Keeping all this in mind, secularism, in its truest sense, is about creating a neutral space where various religious beliefs can coexist without one dominating the other.  It ensures that public institutions and discourse remain open to everyone, regardless of their religious background as a principle.    Therefore, this principle also applies to secular mindfulness-based programs, the clue to this being the label secular.