Do these apps truly promote Buddhist ideals or are they a product of a lucrative consumer industry?

As it is practiced in the U.S. today, mindfulness meditation focuses on being intensely aware, without any sort of judgment, of what one is sensing and feeling in the given moment. Mindfulness practice has been shown to counter the tendency in many of us to spend too much time planning and problem solving, which can be stressful.

Mindfulness practices, as pursued by the Buddhist apps, involve guided meditation, breathing exercises and other forms of relaxation. Clinical tests show that mindfulness relieves stress, anxiety, pain, depression, insomnia and hypertension. However, there have been few studies of mindfulness apps.

The current popular understanding of mindfulness is derived from the Buddhist concept of sati, which describes being aware of one's body, feelings and other mental states.

In early Buddhist texts mindfulness meant not only paying attention but also remembering what the Buddha taught, so that one could discern between skillful and unskillful thoughts, feelings and actions. This would ultimately lead to liberation from the cycle of birth and death.

For example, the Buddhist text "Satipatthana Sutta" describes not only being mindful of breath and body, but also comparing one's body to a corpse in a cemetery to appreciate the arising and ceasing of the body.

"One is mindful that the body exists, just to the extent necessary for knowledge and awareness. And one remains detached, grasping at nothing in the world," the sutra reads.