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Legitimate Mindfullness/Meditation resources?
Priest
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I'm hoping there's a person who cruises through here and actually has some experience. I'm trying to find some reading that isn't the hippie/naturopath/homeopath/self-help bullshit. I'm having trouble cutting through the noise though as any search term I attempt yields similar results. Essentially I can't find trustworthy sources on the matter. Anyone have advice on where to start with reputable individuals / books?
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10% Happier by Dan Harris is a great book to read. It's a skeptical take on meditation and a little bit of his life story. It is a quick read though.
The answer to this question is a bit complicated, as it depends on what you're looking for, and why. You specify what you're not looking for (generally, unfounded claims or unscientific reasoning), but there's a lot of stuff around the area of meditation and mindfulness. It will be easier to point you in the exact direction with a bit more information.
Are you interested in learning about it for practical reasons, as in, are you looking for something that tells you how to do it? Or are you interested in learning about it from a more academic stand point; are you trying to find a less biased account of what it really is? And which kind of thing are we talking about here? Christian contemplative prayer? The Buddhist practices of Sati/Smrti and Jhana/Dhyana? Their Hinduism equivalents? The attempts to secularize these techniques? The meditations of Descartes or the Stoics? "Meditation" is a bit of a generic word that refers to many things. Mindfulness on the other hand, as a practice rather than an idea, is something of a modern buzzword. Here we could be talking about Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) or just the expanding industry of Mindfulness(tm) based products. There are also the countless practices that don't quite fall in to any tradition, being idiosyncratic and syncretic (especially common among your "hippie/naturopath/homeopath/self-help" types). If the spiritual angle is what you're after, keep in mind that here in the "West" you're mostly going to encounter meditation through alternating trends of philosophical perennialism and a Martin Luther-esque search for the "original" and "authentic" form of things.
However I'm going to assume, based on your discomfort with hippie/naturopath/homeopath/self-help bullshit, you're more interested in the secularization attempts and things like MBSR. To that end, I would warn you that, at least in my humble opinion, the science is still out. There is a lot of excitement about it's compatibility with cognitive science, but I believe (to paraphrase a professor on the topic) a lot of that is due the religious community being excited about scientific justification for their beliefs and the scientific community being surprised meditation is a skill and not just complete bullshit. There is also a lot of motivation for a scientific basis to mindfulness claims: it's already a billion dollar industry ranging from mindful accounting to mindful dentistry, with plenty of people willing to sell you books/beads/cushions/seminars/retreats/apps etc to fix your stress/depression/addiction/ennui/anything.
As for the tone in a lot of the books, I would agree with Darlan that you will have to be prepared for a certain amount of "bullshit". Some of these books are literally trying to write about experiences that are intended to result in or approach ineffable experience. At that point the best option is often to wax poetic. Ultimately, I think you'll be best off if you maintain the skeptical and critical eye you've been using so far, no matter what form you read about.
If you have trouble starting you can try a guided meditation (CD, probably some on youtube - though commercial breaks would be counter-productive), but they may have musical accompaniment or imagery you find silly or off-putting.