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Notes -
I think it appeals to a range of groups: it avoids the financial and medical problems of anti-depressants etc., while also not requiring practitioners to confront their self-defeating thoughts and behaviours. As an approach to stress, anxiety, depression etc., it thus has the "benefits" of exercise and other methods that (I think) seem to work primarily through distraction rather than resolving cognitive problems. And it distills what Westerners usually like to think that the East is about:
(Jefferson Starship, "Ride the Tiger")
Spiritual, but without the burdens of actually and definitely believing in spirits, miracles, and all the other things that everyday Buddhists in the actual East have told me are the key features of Buddhism. No, it's really about living in the moment and finding yourself - a low cost American road trip, with incense.
Less cynically, it seems to have also become a term for engaged, purposeful, focused ways of living, which are probably conducive towards happiness.
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