Of course ritual is an art form. Different from theatre, the performers and the audience/consumers are not separated. Like all art (indeed all indirect effort) it was used by religions a lot, but arts are eventually secularized and when that happens it is usually good for the art. You can make your own rituals, especially with the kids, and at weddings and funerals. The frankincense is over there, have fun.

Less obviously, all of that is true for meditation.

The intentional, deliberate design of conscious experience, which happens to be where all art cashes out. Its canvas is that non-obvious web of personal connections between “self and non-self representations” that filters perception and ideation.

Like all art (indeed all indirect effort) meditation finds therapeutic use, and when that happens it is usually bad for the art, but good for the patients, who matter more (says one of them). We don’t expect Mr Baker’s laudable overcoming of his trauma to replace Beethoven. Let’s not expect Jenny’s meditation on anxiety to represent all of what meditation can do, either.

The secularization of meditation is overdue, so in an accident of history, it is already being medicalized while a few old men on mountains still think it uniquely expresses the Cosmic Order.

In my own artsy meditations, I lean on poetry a lot, but that’s only an artistic choice. Music may be a more powerful weapon, dance certainly is.