I firstly encountered zen meditation then I learn about mindfulness which originates from it. There is also some critique of mindfulness from Buddhists community. Mainly that it's used often to "become happy" or "become a better worker" and that it's deprived of and, actually, sometimes used in a completely contradiction of the original source with it's ethics and morality. If someone uses mindfulness to be a mindful jerk or a mindful tyrannical boss - I don't want meditation to serve such goals. Another thing is that for example beeing present may be used as an escape of thinking about your problems "ok, I'll just focus on my breath/washing dishes/etc".

I personally don't know what to think about this. I think mindfulness could be great, but it should be thought pretty careful and by very well trained people. I also think that it should not be sold as "happiness pill" or anything like that. Even Buddhists say that meditation is not really for everyone and sometimes it can even cause mental problems (e.g. for schizophrenics). You can discover pretty nasty things about youself, life or world while meditating. If you meditate for 20 minutes a day and then you come back to work, wandering about useless stuff it's not enough. This business thing is also quite sleazy and seems to suffer many pathologies. "Evidence is also emerging of underqualified teachers presenting themselves as mindfulness experts", some of them may have even more life problems than the participants, but hey, they finished five-months paid course so they are "entitled" to teach mindfulness. I think that's a very bad way to spread meditation. In buddhist societies, you have to have a really balanced life & healthy, settled mind to become a teacher and it takes years to become one. It's also free in most zen societies to learn meditation and take part in meditating sessions (most of participants pay small donation, but they are usually volountary).

Despite doubts, I think it's still good that zen meditation somehow transplanted to western culture. You may even say that mindfulness is some kind of "novajana" since, buddhism transplanted to different cultures always merged with them, so that now it merged with western, rational and secular way of thinking.