It's nice to see a renewed public interest in meditation driving the trend of new meditation apps, but I feel that most of the apps miss the point. The act of meditating is marketed as an individualistic, prescriptive activity for stress and anxiety; it is absent any of the spiritual content that (for me) makes it potent.
To elaborate, I personally didn't get much out of meditation until I starting using it to sit with concepts like impermanence, non-attachment, and oneness from the Zen tradition.
By contrast, apps like Headspace are selling themselves like "feeling anxious? Try our app!" and getting corporate sponsorships for employers to give subscriptions to their employees, like a commodity to pacify a stressed out workforce.
But who knows, maybe it's still a net good in that it might introduce more people to the practice. And maybe some of the apps get deeper into the practice than the ones I used.
> By contrast, apps like Headspace are selling themselves like "feeling anxious? Try our app!" and getting corporate sponsorships for employers to give subscriptions to their employees, like a commodity to pacify a stressed out workforce.
These don't sound like complaints about anything the app itself lacks, they sound like complaints that it is successful at marketing.
To elaborate, I personally didn't get much out of meditation until I starting using it to sit with concepts like impermanence, non-attachment, and oneness from the Zen tradition.
By contrast, apps like Headspace are selling themselves like "feeling anxious? Try our app!" and getting corporate sponsorships for employers to give subscriptions to their employees, like a commodity to pacify a stressed out workforce.
But who knows, maybe it's still a net good in that it might introduce more people to the practice. And maybe some of the apps get deeper into the practice than the ones I used.