The benefits of mindfulness meditation, increasingly popular in recent years, are supposed to be many: reduced stress and risk for various diseases, improved well-being, a rewired brain. But the experimental bases to support these claims have been few. Supporters of the practice have relied on very small samples of unrepresentative subjects, like isolated Buddhist monks who spend hours meditating every day, or on studies that generally were not randomized and did not include placebo control groups.

vile:

I'm glad to see meditation getting attention. I recently started meditating after reading Waking Up by Sam Harris and 10% Happier by Dan Harris. Both are well worth the read (I recommend the audiobook versions, both of which are narrated by the author).

Waking Up goes into the science of meditation, drugs, and the illusion of the self. There is also a great deal of discussion about the eastern religions (primarily hinduism and buddhism). Sam Harris gets a lot of flack from the philosophical community, because he makes claims without engaging with the current philosophical literature, but he mostly keep this book in the domain of his own study (neuroscience).

10% Happier is more biographical. Dan Harris talks about his journey from the beginning of his career to the time of his writing the book.

posted 2986 days ago