In my view, the questions you pose and the tack you take here are like beacons on the distant shore of current meditation rhetoric. As you know, I, too, am deeply interested in the question of whether a „’natural meditative stability’…shorn of its transcendental ornamentations“ (however we may end up understanding such a practice) can take hold in such a acquisition-driven society. When I taught meditation from a classical Buddhist perspective–with its promises of this and that special cognitive/affective state (and a steady state, at that, in spite of the cardinal principle of irreversible impermanence), I had between 30 and 50 regular attendees. Ever since I began on this new course of a stripped-down, non-grandiose, unflinching, un-Buddhist, indeed, Beckettian approach, I am lucky to get ten people. But I will continue this course. What we need, though, is to thicken the discussion that you started here. I’m not sure how, exactly; but you are showing us a promising vista. Thanks.
Der Unbuddhist 
Matthias,
In my view, the questions you pose and the tack you take here are like beacons on the distant shore of current meditation rhetoric. As you know, I, too, am deeply interested in the question of whether a „’natural meditative stability’…shorn of its transcendental ornamentations“ (however we may end up understanding such a practice) can take hold in such a acquisition-driven society. When I taught meditation from a classical Buddhist perspective–with its promises of this and that special cognitive/affective state (and a steady state, at that, in spite of the cardinal principle of irreversible impermanence), I had between 30 and 50 regular attendees. Ever since I began on this new course of a stripped-down, non-grandiose, unflinching, un-Buddhist, indeed, Beckettian approach, I am lucky to get ten people. But I will continue this course. What we need, though, is to thicken the discussion that you started here. I’m not sure how, exactly; but you are showing us a promising vista. Thanks.
Glenn