In recent years, “mindfulness based psychotherapy” has emerged as a lucrative business with its own brand of tech-savvy, scientific gurus and a literature that relies heavily on psychotherapeutic language for the transformation of Theravāda Buddhist meditation into a secular, Western idiom. My purpose in this article is to take a fresh look at some of the earliest rigorous psychological research on vipassanā meditation. I argue first that the perspective articulated in those publications embodies an understanding of Buddhist meditative practice that is considerably more nuanced than the perspective of contemporary psychotherapeutic discourse aimed at behavioral and affective change. Second, I argue that in conflating vipassanā-bhāvanā with psychotherapy, we effectively excise the soteriological heart of Buddhist meditation, the great, sacred mystery of the transcendent (lokuttara) embodied in teachings on no-self (anatta). When this excision is complete, Buddhism becomes something less than a religion, something less than what it is.
