Western Mindfulness is Just a Budget Version of Indian Spirituality
Riya Kumari | Jun 10, 2025, 22:34 IST
( Image credit : Pixabay, Timeslife )
Okay, so imagine this: You walk into a trendy café in LA, and before you can even order your oat milk matcha, someone in yoga pants whispers, “I’m so into mindfulness right now. Like, I just did a silent retreat in Big Sur and deleted Instagram for, like, a whole day.”And you? You're just sitting there, trying not to roll your third eye.
Somewhere between a yoga mat and a Spotify meditation playlist, something ancient got diluted. It lost its roots and gained a rebrand. It started wearing neutral-toned linen and speaking in hashtags. Mindfulness, as it’s packaged and sold in the West today, is not new. It's not revolutionary. And it's definitely not original. It’s borrowed. Selectively. Casually. Sometimes ignorantly. And often, profitably. But here’s the thing about wisdom: it’s not a product. You can’t simplify thousands of years of spiritual practice into a guided audio with ambient music and think you’ve touched the soul of it.
The Truth No One Says Out Loud
Mindfulness in the West is marketed as self-care. But in India, spirituality was never about “care”—it was about understanding. Yourself. Your ego. Your fears. Your mind. And then going beyond all of it. We didn’t sit still to become more productive.
We didn’t meditate to sleep better. We sat because we understood that to be human is to suffer—and somewhere in the silence, there is clarity. We were never trying to escape the chaos. We were trying to see through it. That’s the fundamental difference. One is coping. The other is awakening.
The Subtle Theft
You’ll find mindfulness apps using Sanskrit mantras, but without the Sanskrit context. You’ll see people burning sage and palo santo, wearing beads they don’t know how to use, quoting the Gita in captions without reading it. This isn’t reverence. It’s aesthetic convenience.
When you remove the soul of something and keep only the surface, it stops being sacred. It becomes lifestyle. Western mindfulness didn’t evolve from ancient practices. It was extracted from them—trimmed of discomfort, emptied of depth, and reshaped to fit capitalist wellness.
The Silence That Knows
Spirituality, in its true form, isn’t something that makes you feel instantly better. It makes you confront what you’ve been avoiding. That’s why it can’t be sold in 30-day challenges or packaged into morning routines.
Indian spirituality taught that suffering is not the enemy. Your attachment to comfort is. It asked us to look inward not for affirmation, but for dismantling. To go into silence not for peace, but for truth. Western mindfulness avoids discomfort. Indian wisdom teaches that discomfort is the doorway.
This Isn’t About Superiority. It’s About Integrity.
Let’s be clear: this isn’t about saying India is better. This is about asking for something simple—respect the depth of what you borrow. You can drink from the well. But don’t pretend you dug it.
If you chant “Om,” know that it isn’t a sound. It’s a vibration that symbolizes the entire creation—birth, life, death, and rebirth. If you practice yoga, know that its goal isn’t a toned body. It’s stillness of mind, discipline of self, and union with the divine. When you know where something comes from, you use it with care. When you don’t, it becomes costume.
The Quiet We Forgot
We live in a world that’s louder than ever. So mindfulness seems necessary. But don’t confuse silence with depth.
Real silence—the kind Indian spirituality talks about—isn’t about escaping the noise outside. It’s about making peace with the noise inside. And that’s not something an app can teach you. That’s something only presence can.
You don’t have to be Indian to honor Indian spirituality. You just have to be honest. Don’t sell people peace when what you’re borrowing is a path. Don’t reduce a lineage into a logo. Mindfulness isn’t the enemy. Shallow mindfulness is. Because when we take something sacred and make it simple, we may gain convenience. But we lose the very thing we came looking for—meaning.
The Truth No One Says Out Loud
We didn’t meditate to sleep better. We sat because we understood that to be human is to suffer—and somewhere in the silence, there is clarity. We were never trying to escape the chaos. We were trying to see through it. That’s the fundamental difference. One is coping. The other is awakening.
The Subtle Theft
When you remove the soul of something and keep only the surface, it stops being sacred. It becomes lifestyle. Western mindfulness didn’t evolve from ancient practices. It was extracted from them—trimmed of discomfort, emptied of depth, and reshaped to fit capitalist wellness.
The Silence That Knows
Indian spirituality taught that suffering is not the enemy. Your attachment to comfort is. It asked us to look inward not for affirmation, but for dismantling. To go into silence not for peace, but for truth. Western mindfulness avoids discomfort. Indian wisdom teaches that discomfort is the doorway.
This Isn’t About Superiority. It’s About Integrity.
If you chant “Om,” know that it isn’t a sound. It’s a vibration that symbolizes the entire creation—birth, life, death, and rebirth. If you practice yoga, know that its goal isn’t a toned body. It’s stillness of mind, discipline of self, and union with the divine. When you know where something comes from, you use it with care. When you don’t, it becomes costume.
The Quiet We Forgot
Real silence—the kind Indian spirituality talks about—isn’t about escaping the noise outside. It’s about making peace with the noise inside. And that’s not something an app can teach you. That’s something only presence can.
You don’t have to be Indian to honor Indian spirituality. You just have to be honest. Don’t sell people peace when what you’re borrowing is a path. Don’t reduce a lineage into a logo. Mindfulness isn’t the enemy. Shallow mindfulness is. Because when we take something sacred and make it simple, we may gain convenience. But we lose the very thing we came looking for—meaning.