{"id":11453,"date":"2024-05-14T08:52:27","date_gmt":"2024-05-14T12:52:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/?p=11453"},"modified":"2024-05-14T08:52:27","modified_gmt":"2024-05-14T12:52:27","slug":"transcendental-meditation-lawsuit-and-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/2024\/05\/transcendental-meditation-lawsuit-and-more\/","title":{"rendered":"“Transcendental Meditation” lawsuit, and more"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Yesterday, Religion News service (RNS) posted an article titled “Lawsuit alleges religious coercion through meditation in Chicago Public Schools.”<\/a> The story tells about a former student in a Chicago public school who is suing the Chicago public schools and the David Lynch Foundation for engaging in religious instruction in a public school by teaching “Transcendental Meditation.” I put “Transcendental Meditation” in quotation marks because it’s a trademarked term for a specific form of meditation, originally taught in the U.S. by the self-styled Mahareshi Mahesh Yogi (birth name not known for certain). The RNS story is definitely worth reading, because the reporter makes clear the difference between teaching about<\/em> religion, which is allowed in public schools, and actual religious instruction, which is not allowed in public schools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The article also led me to the TM-Free Blog,<\/a> which presents a critical view of “Transcendental Meditation.” This blog makes it clear, among other things, that “Transcendental Meditation” is a religious movement \u2014 I’d characterize it as a New Religious Movement based on Hinduism. Also of interest, a 2022 post alleges that “Transcendental Meditation” has links to right-wing politicians in India. And there’s a link to a document produced by the “Transcendental Meditation” folks titled “Introduction to the Holy Tradition,”<\/a> which is worth reading by anyone interested in religious texts produced by New Religious Movements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another link from the article led me to a Penn State news release titled “People with anxiety may strategically choose worrying over relaxing”<\/a> about a psychological study showing that persons with anxiety disorder or major depressive disorder may experience negative effects while using relaxation techniques \u2014 this is another study in a growing body of research showing that the benefits of relaxation techniques do not work equally well for all persons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, Religion News service (RNS) posted an article titled “Lawsuit alleges religious coercion through meditation in Chicago Public Schools.” The story tells about a former student in a Chicago public school who is suing the Chicago public schools and the David Lynch Foundation for engaging in religious instruction in a public school by teaching “Transcendental … Continue reading ““Transcendental Meditation” lawsuit, and more”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[1099,524],"class_list":["post-11453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion-people-places","tag-transcendental-meditation","tag-meditation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11453"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11454,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11453\/revisions\/11454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}