Mindfulness meditation is not a religion or a religious attribute. Practicing mindfulness meditation will not make of you a slave to a sect or destroy your life. Yes, meditation is used and talked of in many religions, but reading and writing, singing or playing an instrument is used as well. There are people who distrust meditation as centuries ago there were people who distrusted books and the skill of understanding them. Books were mystical and very suspicious. And now nobody would treat a skill of reading and writing as something suspicious or dangerous, because it is simply a skill, a skill that is used by everybody in spite of their religious, political or cultural background. I can say the same about mindfulness meditation. It is simply a skill- a tool that helps to broaden perspective on life and open our awareness; it gives inner calm, better concentration and reduces stress. And like writing and reading it needs to be learned and practiced. It is an activity that needs training. It needs to be done regularly. Understanding it is in doing it. You need to experience it with you own body and mind to conceive the meaning of it. Yes, it can be used by religious people as well as atheists to simply help them grow, develop and be happier.