Author: Stephen

Consultant in Applied Neuropsychology. My professional activity includes, Mind Training, Mentoring, Nondual Meditation, Research and Writing

The Role of Refuge in Mindfulness Practice

Refuge – A Buddhist concept missed by meditation scientists

Why the Absence of Refuge Undermines Western Mindfulness

Western psychology has embraced mindfulness as a panacea, an intervention linked to reduced stress, treating clinical depression, and even improving cognitive function. However, despite its popularity, the lack of robust evidence for its clinical benefits has led many practitioners and scientists to speculate on why the presumed effects of traditional meditation have not been translated into clinical practice.

One of the key elements of traditional meditation, often missing from Western mindfulness, is the concept of Refuge. Refuge is a foundational concept in many meditation traditions, orienting the practitioner’s mind within a broader spiritual and relational framework. In Buddhist meditation, mindfulness is not a standalone technique; it arises within the context of the Refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma (the Buddha’s teachings), and the Sangha (the community of practitioners). Taking Refuge in these three elements provides an existential grounding and generates confidence in the meditation practice.

The precise nature of Refuge can vary according to the practitioner’s experience and Buddhist school within which the meditation is practised. However, in almost every case, it provides a mindset that serves as a stable base for meditation. Without Refuge, the act of mindfulness risks becoming an attentional exercise, uncoupled from many of the mental processes present in Buddhist meditation. There is growing unrest among some practitioner-scientists about the decontextualisation of mindfulness from traditional forms of meditation; that is, in Westernising and commodifying meditation, the benefits of traditional practice may have been lost.

Segall (2001) argues that when stripped of its Buddhist theoretical frameworks, Western mindfulness loses its transformative potential, becoming susceptible to institutional agendas and materialist objectives.1 Khong (2012) also highlights the limitations of detaching mindfulness from its Buddhist theoretical frameworks.2

Refuge in mindfulness practice
Refuge – The foundation of mindfulness practice

The absence of Refuge is likely to impact cognitive processes and mechanisms able to mediate wellbeing in several ways:

Firstly, a lack of existential orientation: Refuge provides a holistic and spiritual telos, enabling a sense of direction towards awakening and compassion. Without these processes, Western mindfulness tends to privilege mundane, dualistic awareness, overlooking its transcendent and ethical purposes.

Isolation and individualism: The concept of Sangha offers a broader sense of community and collective purpose. The tendency of mindfulness to focus on individual, solitary needs disrupts the balance between self and other, which is central to most nondual Buddhist meditation.

Cognitive reductionism: Buddhist Refuge engages the whole person in context, emotionally, ethically and spiritually. Western clinical meditation methods typically privilege the extrinsic brain network, overlooking mental processes rooted solely in the intrinsic system.

Commodification: The absence of Refuge enables the reconfiguring of mindfulness as a health product, enabling the technique to be co-opted by corporations and institutions, including the military. This shift reshapes the mental processes used in meditation, reinforcing systemic stressors rather than challenging them.

Refuge and the commidification of meditation
The commodification of meditation may have limited its health benefits

The commodification of meditation may have limited its health benefits compared to both traditional practices and scientifically validated interventions. Taking the bigger picture into account, these concerns are the tip of an iceberg.

There is growing disquiet about the cost of the ‘mindfulness experiment’. Estimates of the global bill for the scientific investigation of mindfulness from the 1970s to date range between £1 bn and £5 bn. Several billion more represent the cost of the proliferation of the technique and the investment in training teachers and providing wider support materials. Most scientists working in this field would agree, practising mindfulness brings a degree of relaxation equivalent to and sometimes slightly greater than hundreds of other mundane human behaviours, like art or gardening.

Refuge is a concept rooted in a dual/nondual tension. An issue that is ignored by almost all meditation scientists. The psychological sciences generally present consciousness as a dualistic enterprise. For psychologists, even a preliminary understanding of Buddhism’s theoretical foundations requires a reimagining of mindfulness to access the health benefits of traditional meditation methods. On the balance of evidence, Western versions of traditional meditation are oversimplified and entirely uncoupled from the original curative network that so attracted Western academics from the 1930s onward.

The results of 90 years of meditation research have demonstrated that focusing solely on technique has been a significant error. Integrating elements of Refuge, even from a secular perspective, is likely to restore depth and direction to meditation methods. For example, a starting point for the reintroduction of Refuge could include: The use of transdisciplinary research to establish the cognitive components present in traditional Refuge and to develop the relevant theoretical framework. Encouraging practitioners to understand the concept of Refuge and apply the theoretical framework to their own conditions. Framing mindfulness within a broader narrative of healing, ethical living and growth. Developing secular practices that can cultivate interdependence, compassion and shared community.

Khong has convincingly argued that the maturation of Western mindfulness requires a return to its roots, not to replicate religious forms, but to realign the Westernised practice with the original mental processes that may hold robust potential rather than the marginal benefits that most reliable, optimistic studies present.

The concept of Refuge reminds us that dualist presence alone is not transformative, not on the spiritual nor the clinical levels.  Its absence from Western practices, even in a secular form, evidences the current limitations in how psychology understands and engages with mindtraining originating in non-scientific domains.

References:

Khong, B. S. L. (2021). Revisiting and Re-Envisoning Mindfulness: Buddhist and Contemporary Perspectives. The Humanistic Psychologist, 49(1), 3 -18.  

Segall, S. Z. (2021). Mindfulness In and Out of Context of Western Buddhist Modernism. The Humanistic Psychologist, 49(1), 40-55.

Can Mindfulness Reduce Anxiety? Reviewing Current Research

From a neuropsychological perspective, there are plenty of reasons to presume that mindfulness should be able to reduce the effects of anxiety in participants. We know that regulating breathing and calm introspection almost always lowers heart rate, blood pressure, skin conductivity and other biological signs of stress and anxiety. Mindfulness practice has been shown to reduce activity in the amygdala, the brain’s fear and threat detection centre, thought to correlate with dampening hyper-reactivity to perceived stressors. There is also evidence that regular mindfulness practice boosts activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, improving executive control and emotion regulation. However, research in this field has been hampered by poor experimental studies and a lack of robust replication.

Can meditation and mindfulness treat anxiety
How much progress has been made in understanding if mindfulness can solve the anxiety crisis?

A recent randomised controlled trial titled “The Effects of Mindfulness Meditation on Nursing Students’ Stress and Anxiety Levels” by Rhoda Owens and Dawn Denny of the University of North Dakota College of Nursing and Professional Disciplines promised to deliver some much-needed rigour to our data about the effectiveness of mindfulness.

The study was a pretest/posttest randomised controlled trial (RCT) with 145 nursing students as participants. The basic experiment aimed to measure the effectiveness of weekly virtual mindfulness meditation recordings compared to control recordings on nursing information. Data was collected in the experiment through self-reported Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) and Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7). The results were analysed with a two-way mixed ANOVA. The researchers concluded that ‘mindfulness meditation can reduce stress and anxiety levels in nursing students.’ and that ‘This can improve students’ overall mental and physical well-being.’ Despite the upbeat claim, there were several missed opportunities to create robust findings in this experiment.

In common with almost all previous mindfulness papers, the study lacks adequate detail on participant adherence to meditation recordings. Were sessions tracked or self-reported? Simply put, if we do not know whether participants followed the virtual mindfulness training, can we trust the data? Control conditions are a significant challenge in mindfulness experiments, and this study illustrates why. By using recordings of nursing information, students in the control group would have engaged different cognitive processes than the mindfulness experimental group. For students who are poorly performing or anxious, the nursing recordings could have been stressful or triggering. In this experiment, an active placebo, such as an alternative form of relaxation, may have provided a more effective control (however, the literature generally illustrates that when other forms of relaxation are used as experimental controls in mindfulness studies, little effect is visible).

The total number of participants suggests about 73 people in each condition, which means the experiment was underpowered, given the confident claims made. No blinding procedures were used; participants likely knew their group assignment. Typically for a mindfulness study, it appears to be a short-term effect under investigation, with no follow-up data. The narrow participant pool is also likely to limit the generalisability of the study. In terms of the theoretical framework, no attempt is made to identify causality or describe how specific elements of mindfulness training impact different parts of the brain to reduce anxiety.

This paper offers methodological improvements compared to many earlier anxiety studies, but it falls well short of robust evidence. The critical analysis provided in this blog article must be seen in the context of the progress of meditation research and practice over the last 50 years.

Can mindfulness reduce anxiety
Have scientists been watching the right things?

There are over 35,000 mindfulness and meditation studies published in the peer-reviewed literature at an estimated cost of £5 bn. The total spent on delivering mindfulness training globally is incalculable, but is likely to have cost billions more. Since the 1970s, mindfulness research has been criticised for its failure to deliver clear evidence of its benefits. The most frequent issues reported in research reviews include a lack of appropriate controls and blinding measures, over-reliance on self-reported data, no confirmation of participant engagement and overconfidence in preliminary unreplicated data.

Taking the long view of meditation and mindfulness research, very little clinical or scientific progress has been made over the last forty years. The same errors are being repeated, despite attempts to improve scientific approaches. The question that the psychological sciences need to be asking is why, despite billions of pounds of investment, we cannot provide robust, replicated evidence to support the claims made for mindfulness.

If you have any thoughts about the role of mindfulness in reducing anxiety, or mindfulness research in general, post your comments below or send us an email.

Can Medicalised Mindfulness Evolve?

Could Mindtraining for Life be the long-awaited new dawn for contemplative science?

Most meditation scientists agree that significant progress is needed if contemplative practices are to meet the claims made for their benefits over the last 70 years. Medicalised mindfulness has established a role as a practice that can reduce stress, anxiety, and, in some instances, cognitive dysfunctions. While its clinical applications, especially in protocols like Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), have gained some traction, a growing body of critique highlights its limitations: conceptual vagueness, inconsistent outcomes, and detachment from its philosophical roots.

Robust correlations between regular spiritual meditation practice and improved happiness and wellbeing continue to be observed in peer-reviewed literature and society more generally. Psychology has been attempting to harness the curative power of spiritual meditation for over 70 years.1 It seems that whenever meditation and mindfulness are converted to mechanistic practices, and subject to empirical evaluation, most of the health and wellbeing benefits simply dissolve. In experiments, we frequently see modest changes used as ‘evidence’ that medicalised meditation and mindfulness work (an estimated 97% of mindfulness experiments lack adequate controls).

What will medicalised mindfulness evovle into
Religion and science remain ontologically incompatible

It’s probably not possible or desirable to prescribe religious practices as health interventions; that’s not how the spiritual path works. However, there is evidence that secular forms of meditation could still play a significant role in tackling the mental health crisis unfolding across many advanced economies. Medicalised meditation has consistently failed to establish the active cognitive components present in traditional meditation training. In my own private practice, Mindtraining for Life (MfL), we use rationales consistent with nondual Buddhism and psychology, and the benefits to clients’ happiness, wellbeing and success are clear.

Of course, MfL is one of several emerging frameworks that appear to offer a more structured, cognitively rigorous alternative to medicalised meditation. Its unique element is its integration of profound nondual knowledge outside of an explicitly Buddhist context.

If the mindfulness project has failed, what will replace it?
Science has failed to understand the relationship between meditation and consciousness.

At its core, MfL reframes mental resilience not as a passive state of “non-reactivity,” but as an active, trainable skillset grounded in attentional control, cognitive flexibility, and strategic self-regulation. Unlike medicalised mindfulness, which often relies on Westernised dualistic meditation, materialistic concepts of self and other, and ambiguous notions of “present moment awareness,” MfL emphasises goal-directed mental rehearsal, cognitive reframing, emotional regulation, and a basic training in nondual compassion. These techniques are not only more objectively measurable than current medicalised equivalents but also more compatible with neuropsychological models of executive function and emotional regulation.

From a scientific standpoint, this shift matters. Medicalised mindfulness has struggled with reproducibility, standardisation, effect size variability across populations and the concept of nonduality. Meta-analyses reveal modest benefits despite the creation of hundreds of mindfulness variants. Moreover, reliance on fragmented understandings of introspective phenomenology makes mindfulness impossible to standardise across clinical trials and other experiments. MfL’s protocols can be broken down into discrete cognitive tasks, such as attentional switching, scenario visualisation, nondual progression, and resilience scripting; these are likely more amenable to both behavioural and neuroimaging studies. By focusing on individual client needs as a starting point, MfL has retained the holistic and curative value of traditional nondual practices, complemented by reliable neuropsychology. From this platform, a degree of standardisation and operationalisation is likely. Another way to think about this, is in terms of a bottom-up model for contemplative science. After more than a decade of research in this field, I’m certain medicalised meditation needs a more reliable theoretical framework. By creating successful secular equivalents of nondual practices on a one-to-one basis, then scaling them up, we may be seeing the science of meditation turned on its head.

Another advantage of MfL lies in its philosophical neutrality. Medicalised mindfulness often inherits Western interpretation of Buddhist metaphysics (e.g., non-self, impermanence) without critical examination. It then seeks to place these concepts within psychology’s dualistic framework, leading to ontological confusion. Mindtraining sidesteps this by focusing on cognitive processes rather than spiritual insight. This makes it more accessible to diverse populations and more adaptable to transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary research.

Time to try a new approach to contemplative science

Importantly, mindtraining also addresses a key critique of mindfulness: its tendency to individualise systemic stress. By equipping individuals with tools to observe first and then strategically engage with psychological suffering, thus mind training fosters agency and contextual awareness. This aligns with contemporary models of psychological resilience, which emphasise dynamic interaction between person and environment.

In summary, while mindfulness meditation has opened the door to contemplative science, its medicalised form may have reached a conceptual plateau. Mindtraining, as exemplified by the WfL model, offers a promising evolution, one that is cognitively precise, empirically tractable, and philosophically grounded. For scientists and clinicians seeking robust and scalable interventions to work with, it may be time to shift their focus from passive awareness to active mental agility.

1 Morris, Stephen Gene (2024) The Scientific History of Mindfulness: 1938 to 2020. University of Kent,. (doi:10.22024/UniKent/01.02.106240) (KAR id:106240). https://kar.kent.ac.uk/106240/

Dr Stephen Gene Morris is a Consultant in Applied Neuropsychology and the founder of Mind Training for Life.

What Meditation Should You Choose?

The Most Important and Least Asked Question…

I’ve highlighted 100 of the most widely used forms of meditation below; however, please take a moment to read the explanation and context first.

At the start of my journey with meditation, I thought ‘meditation’ was just one thing, one practice, one method. But while, by definition, there is a general collection of behaviours we think of as ‘meditation’, the differences between practices can be unimaginable. Take the case of mindfulness meditation. In its original Buddhist form, it is a basic traditional practice directly connected to the spiritual path. There are, however, many forms of ‘mindfulness’ in different Buddhist traditions, some suitable for beginners, while others are regarded as advanced practices. Mindfulness meditation was reinvented by Western scientists as a form of medicalised therapy in the 1970s. We now have at least 50 different forms of mindfulness being used in Western clinical settings, each with a slightly different configuration that affects meditators in different ways. For almost all meditators, whether spiritual or secular, young or old, novice or experienced, the key issue when looking for a method is to be clear about your meditation goals and use a practice that can help you reach your objectives.

To learn more about the challenges and opportunities associated with the scientific appropriation of mindfulness, click here. To understand what the secularisation of meditation means to people practising meditation, read this article on the Mindtraining website.

I’ve catalogued over 500 distinct forms of meditation in my own research; the 100 listed below are among the most popular. For each method listed, there are dozens of variants. Some of those included have been scientifically validated, other techniques are unknown to psychology. Take these descriptions as relative and do some research before you commit to any meditation teacher or practice.

Core Meditation Techniques – Defining Practices

  1. Mindfulness Meditation – Split between traditional Buddhist and Western medicalised forms. Observing thoughts and sensations without judgment in the present moment.
  2. Focused Attention Meditation – Concentrating on a single object like breath, a candle, or a mantra.
  3. Open Monitoring Meditation – Maintaining awareness of all aspects of experience without fixation.
  4. Loving-Kindness (Metta) – Generating feelings of love and compassion for self and others.
  5. Vipassana – Insight-oriented observation of bodily sensations to develop self-awareness.
  6. Samatha – Calming the mind through focused attention, often on the breath.
  7. Zazen – Seated meditation from Zen Buddhism emphasising non-thinking and posture.
  8. Kundalini Meditation – Awakening energy at the base of the spine using breath, movement, and mantra.
  9. Transcendental Meditation (TM) – Using a personalised mantra to transcend thought.
  10. Mantra Meditation – Repeating sacred sounds or phrases to quiet the mind.

Yogic & Hindu Meditation Methods

  1. Yoga Nidra – Deep relaxation meditation conducted in a sleep-like state.
  2. Trataka – Gazing at a fixed point (e.g. candle flame) to develop concentration.
  3. Nada Yoga – Meditating on sound, either external or internal auditory experiences.
  4. Chakra Meditation – Focusing attention on energy centers to align body and mind.
  5. Tantra Meditation – Using ritual and visualization to integrate spiritual energy.
  6. Bhakti Meditation – Devotion-based meditation through prayer, chant, and surrender.
  7. Japa Meditation – Repetition of mantras using mala beads for counting.
  8. Raja Yoga Meditation – Combining ethical living, concentration, and absorption.
  9. Atma Vichara (Self-Inquiry) – Asking “Who am I?” to realize true self or consciousness.
  10. Sahaja Meditation – Effortless awareness focusing on spontaneous attention.

Buddhist Meditation Approaches

  1. Tonglen – Taking in suffering and breathing out compassion.
  2. Shamatha-Vipassana – Pairing calm abiding with profound insight.
  3. Walking Meditation – Practising mindfulness while moving slowly and deliberately.
  4. Dzogchen – Resting in the nature of mind, spontaneous presence.
  5. Mahamudra – Recognising awareness itself as the path and goal.
  6. Analytical Meditation – Reflecting intellectually to penetrate Buddhist teachings.
  7. Visualisation of Deities – Mentally constructing divine forms for transformation.
  8. Five Aggregates Meditation – Contemplating the components of personhood to dissolve illusion.
  9. Six Elements Meditation – Reflecting on earth, water, fire, air, space, and consciousness.
  10. Death Meditation (Maranasati) – Contemplating mortality to deepen presence.

Psychotherapeutic Meditation & Modern Adaptations

  1. Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) – A Controversial clinical approach to managing stress through mindfulness. The dominant form favoured by health and social policy organisations and businesses.
  2. Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) – Combines mindfulness with CBT to prevent depression relapse in limited cases.
  3. Acceptance and Commitment Meditation – Noticing thoughts while committing to values-led action.
  4. Body Scan Meditation – Progressive awareness of bodily sensations.
  5. Somatic Experiencing Meditation – Tuning into internal body signals to release trauma.
  6. ACT-Based Present Moment Meditation – Grounding in sensory awareness and defusion techniques.
  7. Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) Mindfulness – Cultivating nonjudgmental present awareness in emotion regulation.
  8. Compassion-Focused Meditation – Generating warmth toward self and others to counter shame.
  9. Interpersonal Mindfulness – Bringing awareness to real-time relational interaction.
  10. Reflective Meditation – Allowing thoughts to arise while exploring emotional resonances.

Esoteric Meditation Methods & Energy Based Practices

  1. Qi Gong Meditation – Coordinating breath, movement, and intention to cultivate life energy.
  2. Taoist Inner Smile – Sending smiling energy to internal organs to promote healing.
  3. Astral Projection Meditation – Guiding consciousness beyond the physical body.
  4. Crystal Meditation – Using crystals to amplify specific energies and intentions.
  5. Light Meditation – Visualising inner or external light for healing or illumination.
  6. Reiki Meditation – Channelling universal energy through hands or mind for self-care.
  7. Kabbalistic Meditation – Contemplating Hebrew letters, names of God, or Tree of Life.
  8. Merkaba Activation Meditation – Awakening geometric energy fields for ascension.
  9. Third Eye Meditation – Focusing between the brows to develop intuitive insight.
  10. Aura Cleansing Meditation – Visualising the purification of personal energy fields.

Technology Enhanced Meditation Techniques

  1. Binaural Beats Meditation – Using audio frequencies to synchronise brainwaves.
  2. Guided Imagery Meditation – Listening to narrated journeys to evoke relaxation or insight.
  3. VR Meditation – Immersing oneself in virtual landscapes to deepen sensory engagement.
  4. App-Based Mindfulness – Practising structured sessions via digital platforms.
  5. Neurofeedback Meditation – Real-time monitoring to enhance brainwave states.
  6. Sound Bath Meditation – Experiencing healing vibrations through instruments like gongs or singing bowls.
  7. AI-Guided Meditation – Interactive sessions with responsive virtual facilitators.
  8. Subliminal Audio Meditation – Listening to layered affirmations below the conscious threshold.
  9. Digital Detox Meditation – Mindfully disengaging from screens and digital noise.
  10. Eye Mask Meditation – Sensory deprivation to intensify inward attention.

Cultural Based & Devotional Meditation

  1. Christian Contemplative Prayer – Meditative silence in God’s presence.
  2. Hesychasm – Repetitive Jesus Prayer to enter inner stillness.
  3. Islamic Dhikr Meditation – Repetitive remembrance of divine names.
  4. Sufi Whirling Meditation – Physical rotation to induce spiritual ecstasy.
  5. Jewish Hitbodedut – Speaking spontaneously with God for inner clarity.
  6. Native American Vision Quest – Solitary reflection in nature to seek guidance.
  7. Shamanic Drumming Meditation – Entering altered states through rhythmic beat.
  8. African Ubuntu Meditation – Reflecting on interconnectedness and community spirit.
  9. Hawaiian Ho‘oponopono – Repeating forgiveness phrases for reconciliation.
  10. Vedic Fire Ritual Meditation – Meditating on the flame as a transformation symbol.

Specialized Meditation & Hybrid Techniques

  1. Sleep Meditation – Relaxation practices to support restful sleep.
  2. Gratitude Meditation – Focusing on positive experiences and appreciation.
  3. Goal Visualization Meditation – Envisioning desired outcomes to prime action.
  4. Stoic Reflection Meditation – Contemplating virtue, mortality, and control.
  5. Emotional Release Meditation – Allowing feelings to arise and dissolve mindfully.
  6. Productivity Meditation – Grounding and setting intentions before focused work.
  7. Decision-Making Meditation – Clarifying values and options through reflection.
  8. Micro-Meditation – Quick resets throughout the day for clarity.
  9. Habit Formation Meditation – Embedding new routines through intentional repetition.
  10. Creative Flow Meditation – Tapping intuition to support artistic expression.

Nature Based Meditation – Connected

  1. Forest Bathing (Shinrin-Yoku) – Immersing attention in natural environments.
  2. Sun Gazing Meditation – Safely gazing near sunrise/sunset for energy absorption.
  3. Ocean Meditation – Synchronising breath with wave rhythms.
  4. Mountain Meditation – Visualising grounded presence and strength.
  5. Rain Meditation – Listening to or imagining rainfall to induce calm.
  6. Earth Element Meditation – Connecting with soil and grounded energy.
  7. Sky Meditation – Embracing expansive awareness through open sky imagery.
  8. Animal Observation Meditation – Mindfully watching animal behaviour to mirror presence.
  9. Campfire Contemplation – Reflecting in silence near flickering flames.
  10. Seasons Meditation – Noting changes in internal and external cycles.

Meditation for Cognitive Enhancement

  1. Meta-Cognition Meditation – Observing one’s thinking patterns consciously.
  2. Neurosculpting Meditation – Rewiring thought through mindfulness and neuroplasticity.
  3. Synesthesia Meditation – Exploring cross-sensory imaginative states.
  4. Reverse Engineering Meditation – Analysing actions to understand their motivations.
  5. Memory Palace Meditation – Visualising spatial locations to encode information.
  6. Intuition Calibration Meditation – Fine-tuning inner signals for decision-making.
  7. Language Awareness Meditation – Observing mental language formation.
  8. Time Perception Meditation – Altering awareness.
  9. Mind Training Meditation – Changing brain function and structure.
  10. Emotional Regulation Practice – Mediating emotions with the Executive Function.

Why Everything You Know Might Be Wrong: Duality, Nonduality and Integration

An Introduction: Part 1 is here

Perhaps the biggest question in science is: What is the nature of human consciousness? This blog post doesn’t seek to resolve this issue but rather discusses known limitations in our models of consciousness and highlights the threats and opportunities of not knowing what consciousness is. Using the Scientific History of Mindfulness as a case study, this short article (and the subsequent series of postings) will illuminate a number of weaknesses in how the psychological sciences make sense of the world. In particular, the failure of psychology to recognise common mental processes essential to consciousness, such as nonduality. Not understanding how the mind works with duality/nonduality has been an extremely costly mistake in psychological research and practice. Limitations in current models of consciousness signpost potential problems in much of what we know about ourselves and those around us.

Put simply, consciousness is how you make sense of everything: awareness of yourself and the world around you. It’s what lets you think, feel, remember, and perceive. It includes your thoughts, emotions, sensations, and experiences. Each of us holds a different way of seeing the world. Think of consciousness as a self-generated prism through which we engage with everything. We share some perspectives with others around us, but each of us essentially has a unique view. If our view of the world is fundamentally distorted, it is because the prism through which we see the world is distorted. To many people, distortions can appear as truth, as objective reality, even when they are subjective. As individuals are also responsible for creating knowledge systems, such as psychology or physics, distortions in consciousness can bleed into ‘objective’ and ‘rational’ thinking.

The belief in science
The unseen relationship between science and belief

In common with all academic disciplines, psychology is based on a series of beliefs about the world that are relative and partial; we call these beliefs ontology. As such, psychology can only offer ‘truths’ based on the rules of psychology rather than actual lived experience (although the two can often coincide). Knowledge that might fall outside empirical psychology, such as beliefs, emotional reasoning, subconscious mental processes or direct human experience, is often inaccessible to experimental psychology. Therefore, if we take the rules of science as ‘truth’, anything that does not conform to scientific norms has to be ignored, devalued or translated into scientific terms.

The idea that experimental processes are limited or flawed would present major problems for industrialised societies. So perhaps it’s not surprising that many traditional knowledge systems and religious concepts are disregarded by Western science, not because they don’t work but because science cannot evaluate them. Techniques from Traditional Chinese Medicine, such as acupuncture, are sometimes adopted by Western clinicians because they are effective. However, the technology is given low status because science cannot understand their underlying theoretical frameworks. In this way, vast swathes of human knowledge and techniques are dismissed because science just doesn’t have the tools to evaluate them.

What happens when two knowledge systems collide?

When you look at the scientific history of mindfulness from a transdisciplinary perspective, several problematic issues are visible in the way scientists treat religious knowledge in general and Buddhist knowledge in particular. By transdisciplinary, I am referring to an academic approach whereby we use all relevant knowledge to better understand what’s actually going on around us. Sometimes, a contrast in how different knowledge systems treat a behaviour, such as meditation, reveals the strengths and weaknesses of the respective systems. In the West, there is a convention that Buddhism is a belief system and, by contrast, the psychological sciences are a form of objective knowledge. Psychology is based on a belief (ontology), as is Buddhism. Science tests its hypotheses through a rational evaluation process, as does Buddhism. However, psychology is a dualistic system that creates dichotomies and artificial divisions that facilitate simplistic ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ conclusions, even to complex questions. Buddhist ontology, particularly in the Mahayana and Vajrayana traditions, is nondual, meaning it resists simple dichotomisation in favour of more inclusive understandings of mind and matter. The use of mindfulness in Buddhism is rooted in a sense of cause and effect. Ironically, in psychology, mindfulness experiments often rely on correlations rather than causality to explain the benefits of the practice.

The Buddhist concepts underpinning mindfulness are typically ignored or rejected by scientists, in part because psychological sciences are embedded in dualistic ways of knowing, whereas Buddhism tends to the nondual. A major problem for psychology is that human consciousness engages with dual and nondual awareness as well as the integration of both. A challenge in investigating consciousness is that we have to use consciousness to evaluate itself. If the ontologies used as the basis for the psychological sciences are nondual the product of experiments can only produce nondual insights, offering only partial understanding into the human condition. Scientists and clinicians began using religious knowledge and methods in the 1950s because of the healing potential of nondual insights. Over time, Western forms of meditation and mindfulness have removed these nondual elements because they cannot be seen or evaluated by empirical investigation. Science has failed to recognise that something profound (although abstract to dualistic investigation) is likely present in religious forms of meditation.

Experimental methods need to be fit for purpose

A crisis in Western mindfulness research identified a lack of scientific progress, despite 50 years of experiments costing billions of dollars. Yet almost no credible research has been undertaken to try to understand why the project has been relatively unsuccessful. However, because of the status of psychology in Western materialist societies, the transformed (nondual) nature of mindfulness is accepted as ‘truth’; even though the ontology of the psychological sciences reflects neither Buddhist knowledge nor the human condition. Without accepting limitations in the theoretical framework of psychology, we can expect the problems seen in the mindfulness project to be repeated. There is also little hope that dualistic approaches will ever be able to make sense of a human consciousness, which is, in part, nondual.

This is introduction to a series of posts which discuss, using mindfulness as a case study, the role of dual and nondual awareness in understanding the world around us. For Part 1 in the series click here.

How Psychology Misunderstood Mindfulness and What We Do Now

Part 2: Evolution, not Revolution

This is part 2; part 1 can be found here.

Part 1 describes the processes through which mindfulness has been converted from a religious to a scientifically validated practice. On this page, I outline the implications of treating religious and scientific knowledge as congruent. This ‘congruence’ is an ‘imaginary’, an illusion created where scientific communities abandon rational thinking in favour of other motivations. Once the imagined form of mindfulness is created, it can be absorbed into psychology. The evidence suggests that the psychological sciences may need to reevaluate their underlying theoretical frameworks and reconsider how non-scientific knowledge is treated, particularly concepts and techniques originating in religious traditions.

If science and religion, in general, have incompatible theoretical frameworks, how was Buddhist mindfulness ‘transformed’ into a Western medicalised practice? The reality is that a few scientists and clinicians simply claimed that religious meditation and psychology were complementary. They provided no evidence or scientific explanation to support this position. They also appeared to lack the knowledge and experience necessary to make reliable generalisations about religious thought and practice. By focusing on meditation methods, not the underlying cognitive processes, psychologists could not evaluate the innate value of the traditional approaches for health benefits. In this way, psychology appropriated and relocated meditation techniques they never understood.

Western psychologists avoided meaningful, rational investigation of traditional meditation, preferring to ‘imagine ‘ what the techniques were from Western dualistic perspectives.

Why is this important? Science can measure the physiological effects of meditation, such as how it affects heart rate and blood pressure. However, because of the uncertainty regarding the boundaries between belief and science, early meditation and mindfulness experiments rarely progressed beyond a preliminary stage. Further, some psychologists overreached themselves by claiming they understood the essence of Buddhist meditation. These errors were compounded because the wider scientific community accepted unevidenced claims about the congruence between belief and science. These problems mean that much of the £5bn invested in researching meditation and mindfulness added little meaningful scientific value. Secondly, the actual curative potential of traditional meditation has been ignored. Primarily because researchers focused on meditation methods rather than the underlying mental processes engaged with by traditional meditators.

Before 2000, many scientists believed that they ‘instinctively’ understood traditional meditation without needing any meaningful training or research. Perhaps being part of elite academic institutions allowed them to feel they had the right or ability to subordinate religious thought and practice to dualistic scientific understanding. In relocating mindfulness, they stripped it of its most important cognitive components. Still today, many Western forms of meditation lack mental processes such as compassion, intention, and other concepts central to traditional meditations. Even where scientists attempted to ‘evolve’ mindfulness into a more compassionate or focused practice, the meditation nearly always remained dualistic and, therefore, distant from its original form.

Compassion for oneself and others is central to most Buddhist practices.

The fate of Western mindfulness, to have become a stripped-down dualistic version of a traditional practice, is not unusual. We have seen such approaches in relocating acupuncture, yoga and other traditional healing technologies. A subtle but observable pattern is documented in the History of Science of scientists reconfiguring nondual knowledge to sit within dualistic frameworks. As with mindfulness, this approach can lead to the original technique being misunderstood, mistranslated or distorted.

The problems evidenced in the ‘mindfulness revolution’ have complex causes, not least of which are decades of low-quality and often unreplicated research. However, the failure of scientists to recognise the presence of nondual thought and practice is also a significant concern. As a case study, mindfulness reveals a profound limitation in the psychological sciences and our understanding of the human mind. We experience life through a number of different mental states, including dual and nondual awareness. Science tends to privilege duality, which is adequate for most scientific disciplines but fails to fully explain human consciousness and experience. Duality became the default theoretical model for descriptions of human mental states, the ‘lingua franca’ of the psychological sciences. As such, non-dual concepts and practices are abstract to most psychologists and often considered superstitious or childlike. This worldview relies on evaluating nondual phenomena with dualistic instruments.

The presumption that dualistic approaches deliver ‘truth’ while nondual insights are irrelevant or inferior is possibly a continuation of the colonial mindset. Western ways of knowing are frequently assumed to be the ‘gold standard’ against which non-scientific thought and practice can be measured. There is little evidence that scientists thought Buddhist meditation methods were worth studying in their own right. Analysis indicates that the psychological sciences reduced Buddhist meditation to the terms they understood and could measure. In this way, the opportunity for scientists to identify different forms of consciousness, mental processes and health treatments in meditation was lost.

I’m sure many meditation scientists acted in good faith, but their inability to realise they were encountering different rather than inferior knowledge systems has been a costly mistake. This limitation was only possible because of a phenomenon called incommensurability. Incommensurability is the belief that one’s perspective of the world is an objective reality. The scientists first encountering Buddhist meditation may have been entirely unaware of nonduality. Presuming that their dualistic outsider view of Eastern religious practices was complete and informed. This is not simply an issue rooted in cultural misunderstandings; incommensurability likely limits encounters between science and Western spiritual practices. For example, the value of early esoteric Christian teachings was judged against the dualistic values of science and evaluated accordingly. Today, dualistic science is held to be the dominant knowledge system, and many alternative ways of understanding and experiencing the world have been subordinated without any systematic study or rational evaluation. There are almost no signs that the scientific community are aware of the potential value of non-scientific knowledge being lost.

This is part two of a six-part series. The Introduction is here.

Why the ‘Mindfulness Revolution’ Failed: Understanding the Boundaries Between Science and Religion

Part 1: Going Back to Basics: Dual and Nondual

Perhaps as much as $5 bn has been spent by scientists investigating the benefits of meditation and mindfulness over the last 50 years. Over 30,000 scholarly studies, primarily scientific, have been published in the peer-reviewed literature. In 2010, mindfulness enthusiasts and entrepreneurs announced the arrival of a new age of understanding through the ‘mindfulness revolution’. However, credible reviews of meditation research demonstrate that Western scientific understanding of mindfulness practices is, at best, preliminary. Further, almost no progress has been made in understanding what traditional Buddhist forms of meditation are, let alone how they work on the psychological level.

Scientists and clinicians initially appropriated religious meditation methods because of evidence that, in their original forms, they could provide profound health benefits. In the 1950s, long before the ‘Mindfulness Revolution’, psychologists were using Buddhist meditation to treat intractable mental health conditions. Since the early 1980s, Western scientists and clinicians developed hundreds of new versions of mindfulness. The best of these diverse forms can provide a degree of relaxation, often equivalent to or slightly more significant than a placebo effect. Unfortunately, the hope that mindfulness could be a powerful technique to treat and cure problematic mental health has evaporated.

Scientists gambling on a mindfulness miracle
Has the £5 bn mindfulness gamble paid off?

Today, the scientific understanding of mindfulness is fragmented, with growing scepticism about its benefits from many sections of society. Mindfulness is most frequently seen as a ‘welbeing’ intervention and is often taught by trained volunteers rather than psychologists or therapists. However, hyped claims of mindfulness’s benefits, supported by big business, politicians, and social policy, have ensured mindfulness’s popularity and longevity. Mindfulness has even been earmarked as a tool to keep people working and consuming when their material conditions are being eroded, a dramatic departure from the original purpose of Buddhist meditation.

The scientific history of mindfulness raises many problems. The most crucial issue is to consider how scientific engagement with religious meditation led to less rather than more understanding of the practices. By researching this question, we have started to gain much more insight into the fundamental nature of Buddhist thought and practice and the problems that arise when the boundaries between religion and science are altered.

No one factor can explain why thousands of scientists, spending a vast fortune in research funding, have made so little progress. Many studies have been critical of the scientific investigation of meditation. However, they often see the solution to the ‘mindfulness crisis’ as producing more, better-quality experiments. Fortunately, several academics have begun to question the nature of the relationship between science and religion, especially Buddhism.

In essence, the scientific method is part of a dualistic knowledge system based on certain principles, such as empiricism (all ‘true’ knowledge comes from sensory experience and empirical evidence) and reductionism (complex behaviours can be understood by isolating and understanding individual elements of the behaviours). Buddhism is divided into very different knowledge systems, most of which are explicitly and implicitly nondual. For example, Mahayana Buddhism is set in a theoretical framework where emptiness (all things are empty of intrinsic nature or existence) is held to be the underlying nature of reality. So, in any meaningful way, experimental psychology cannot understand Buddhism because they do not share the same frames of reference (ontology and epistemology). Psychology can see the effect of meditation but is unable to understand what it is.

Just to be clear, psychological science can measure the psychological and physiological effects of meditation. But it cannot currently understand what spiritual meditators do, the underlying cognitive processes, or what their spiritual goals are. Similarly a spiritual practice is unable to calculate the speed of light or the atomic weight of an element. By definition, different knowledge systems are incompatible because they address different human needs in different ways.

Dr Stephen Gene Morris

The second part of this article can be found here.

How to Make Sucessful New Year’s Resolutions

Why Do New Year’s Resolutions Fail? A Scientific Perspective

Why Do New Year’s Resolutions Fail? A Scientific Perspective

As the clock strikes midnight on December 31st, hundreds of millions worldwide enthusiastically embrace New Year’s resolutions. These promises are often made with the sincere intention to enhance well-being, happiness, and success. Although research shows that nearly 83% of resolutions can be challenging, there’s good news: adopting an informed and systematic approach can significantly empower you to take charge of your life and achieve your goals. Resolutions are a fantastic opportunity for personal growth, and incorporating meditation and mind training can wonderfully elevate the quality of your life. Let’s explore the main reasons why New Year’s resolutions might stumble and how nondual meditation and mindtraining can make a huge difference in your transformation.

Lack of Perseverance and Continuity

The vast majority of New Year’s resolutions are centered around the exciting beginnings or positive endings of activities and behaviors. In neuropsychology, we often refer to this as the ‘all or nothing’ mindset. While this approach sets high expectations for goals, embracing incremental improvements can be transformative, where each partial success is a step forward. In reality, reducing the amount of alcohol or junk food we consume is a significant victory worth celebrating. By building on this progress and viewing it as a triumph rather than a setback, we open ourselves up to the possibility of achieving our goals with confidence and enthusiasm.

The Psychology of Habits

At the heart of the issue is the psychology of habits. Habits are deeply ingrained behaviours that are hardwired into our brains through repeated actions and reinforced by the reward system. According to Dr. Wendy Wood, a psychology professor at the University of Southern California, about 40% of the actions people perform each day are habitual. Other research suggests that the mechanisms supporting ‘free will’ are complex and cannot be mediated by simplistic gaol-setting. Changing these deeply embedded habits requires significant effort and consistency, which is challenging for many. As such, supporting resolutions with habit-changing techniques like mind training and meditation will dramatically increase your chances of success.

Unrealistic Expectations

One of the primary reasons resolutions fail is that people set unrealistic goals, often unrelated to their actual abilities and motivation. Put simply most humans don’t learn enough from previous mistakes and continue to underestimate the challenge of change. Resolutions are best supported with a considered objective approach, maintained by ongoing commitment. New Year’s promises often lack specificity and attainability, making them overwhelming. For instance, resolving to “lose weight” without a concrete plan or achievable milestones can quickly lead to frustration and abandonment. Research shows that setting SMART goals—Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound—can significantly increase the likelihood of success.

Lack of Immediate Gratification (The Dopamine Problem)

Meditation and mindtraining can train humans in patience and perseverance. Humans are wired to seek immediate gratification, a concept deeply rooted in our evolutionary past and neurobiology. New Year’s resolutions often involve long-term goals, such as losing weight or saving money, which do not provide immediate rewards. This lack of instant gratification can demotivate individuals, causing them to revert to their old habits that offer quicker satisfaction. The brain’s reward system, which releases dopamine when we achieve something pleasurable, plays a crucial role here. Immediate rewards trigger this system effectively, whereas distant goals do not. Unless you understand that impulsive wishes can be mediated by mental training, goals and objectives are always at risk.

Willpower and Cognitive Load

Although an oversimplification, neuropsychologists claim willpower is like a muscle that can be exhausted. Some studies have shown that the more we use our willpower, the more it depletes, making it harder to maintain self-control over time. This concept, known as ego depletion, may mean that after a long day of resisting temptations, individuals are more likely to give in. Additionally, the cognitive load of modern life—with constant demands on our attention and decision-making—further drains our mental resources, leaving little energy for new habits. Nondual forms of meditation typically lead to a reduction in the mechanisms that exhaust mental capacity and the concept of ‘temptation’.

Environmental and Social Factors

Meditation and mindtraining are good methods for regulating our inner and outer worlds, aligning our aspirations with our lived conditions. Our environment and social circles greatly influence our behaviour. If someone resolves to quit smoking but is constantly surrounded by friends who smoke, their chances of success decrease significantly. Similarly, environments that do not support new habits—such as a household full of unhealthy snacks for someone trying to eat healthier—can sabotage resolutions.

Lack of a Concrete Plan

At its heart, traditional forms of meditation allow a systematic approach to mind and matter, aligning goals with behaviour. Many people make resolutions without a clear plan for achieving them. A study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology found that individuals who made explicit plans for their resolutions were 10 times more likely to succeed than those who did not. Planning involves breaking down goals into actionable steps, anticipating obstacles, and developing strategies to overcome them. Without such a plan, resolutions often remain vague aspirations.

Conclusion

The failure of New Year’s resolutions is a multifaceted issue rooted in the complexities of human psychology, behaviour, and the environment. By understanding these scientific explanations, individuals can better prepare to set realistic goals, create actionable plans, and foster supportive environments, increasing their chances of success. Remember, change is a gradual process, and persistence is key. Celebrate small victories along the way, and don’t be too hard on yourself if setbacks occur. After all, each day is an opportunity for a fresh start. Nondual meditation and mindtraining methods are among the most powerful tools we have to help shape behaviour and reach meaningful goals.

What is the Nondual View, and Why is it Important in Meditation?

A startling finding emerging from the groundbreaking Scientific History of Mindfulness is the failure of Western science to recognise the nondual nature of traditional forms of meditation. Experienced meditation practitioners may have been taught about the nondual view or nondual meditation methods, which are pivotal to many meditation traditions. However, most Westerners’ consciousness is dominated by explicitly dualistic frameworks. The ability of people rooted in a dualistic awareness, including scientists, to understand a nondual worldview is problematic, even if they have received instruction and training. One possible explanation for this problem is the concept of incommensurability found in Thomas Kuhn’s writings. A controversial term, incommensurability, describes how changing to alternative ways of knowing is problematic once we have been trained in a particular understanding of the world. Further, someone who is schooled in a specific understanding may not even know that they have been cognitively conditioned to see the world from one particular dualistic perspective.

A characteristic of the dualistic mind is that it believes its conscious experience is an objective reality. This misunderstanding is experienced by Western meditation scholars and scientists, even today. Many highly intelligent and well-intentioned academics make claims about the nature of traditional forms of meditation from a dualistic perspective without ever having recognised the role of nonduality in meditation methods. This problem is not restricted to modern materialistic societies but is present wherever people foster a ‘belief in self’ as an objective reality. Thus, many traditional meditation students train for years, or even decades, to appreciate that their consciousness can be either dual, nondual, or even an integration of the two.

Typically, humans flit between dual and nondual forms of consciousness without knowing or detecting the difference.  In this brief introduction, the critical thing to remember is that we all have access to dual and nondual ways of knowing; both are integral to the human experience. However, it is highly problematic to recognise and then cultivate a consistent nondual view without training and guidance. It is not possible to provide a comprehensive explanation of dual or nondual consciousness in this article, but I have written about these issues elsewhere.  So here, I will attempt to use simplified approximations to introduce this subject.

In a typical Western materialistic society like the UK today, most people spend significant time in dualistic consciousness.  We could characterise the dualistic state in many ways; as a starting point, let us simply regard it as the point of view where one believes, as truth, the conscious and subconscious impulses generated by our brain.  

We can all find examples of our irrational thoughts and baseless concerns that we recognise as meaningless. However, many of us accept unfounded opinions and erroneous perceptions as ‘reality’. While our thoughts and ideas often seem meaningful, the views of others can seem meaningless or even ridiculous. Without nondual awareness, our identity is partly made up of fabricated constructs with no reality other than what we attribute to them; I’d suggest this is the dominance of emotion over reasoning, although it is obviously an oversimplification. So, for example, thinking that others are responsible for your mental state (you make me angry) is usually an expression of dualism, as is the default belief that our wishes and goals are somehow more important than the wishes and goals of others. 

By contrast, a nondual view distinguishes between reliable mental phenomena and transient, unreliable thoughts and feelings. Once a stable and systematic nondual view is achieved, we can establish relative freedom in thinking, speaking and acting. This freedom is often associated with the happiness and stability observed in nondual practitioners. So, from a nondual perspective, we make the presumption that the thoughts and feelings of others may be just as important and meaningful as ours. A note of caution; the nondual view is typically achieved by abandoning limiting concepts, an exercise that usually requires a significant amount of time, effort and training. I will stop the preliminary definitions here for now and briefly discuss what these concepts mean for meditation practice.

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In traditional meditation, people often begin at the beginning; if they have a reliable teacher and methods and are diligent, they can progress.  However, until a practitioner realises which mental phenomena arising in their consciousness are transient and meaningless, all meditation can be seen as relative. That means your practice is relative to your mental state and other causes and conditions.  A practitioner with some modest experience of the nondual should be able to transcend belief in mundane phenomena, knowing their relative unimportance.  That is not to say that a nondual practitioner may have arrived at a transcendent mental state; it is simply that they understand the limitations of their own worldview.  That, in a nutshell, is my view of why the nondual is essential to progress beyond a preliminary stage in meditation practice.  Without nondual awareness, the inner world of our consciousness remains uncertain. While much Buddhist meditation is not explicitly nondual, it all, by its very nature, increases the ability of the student to understand nonduality. Nonduality is a central pillar in many spiritual and philosophical traditions, but it is mainly invisible to the psychological sciences; I wonder why…?

The Legacy of Mindfulness: Has Science Failed to Understand Buddhist Meditation?

Western forms of mindfulness were based on ‘imaginaries’ of Buddhist thought and practice. This problem has increased uncertainty over the mindfulness concept. However, by translating and reducing nondual religious practices to dualistic scientific ideas, the actual healing potential of traditional meditation may have been misunderstood or overlooked.

The Missed Opportunity of Mindfulness: How Science Failed to Understand Buddhist Meditation

Has science missed the point of meditation?

Credible challenges to the reliability of mindfulness research have led to many attempts to explain how Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and Mindfulness-Based Interventions (MBIs) developed. In particular, how mindfulness was adopted by health and social policy in the UK ahead of robust evidence for its benefits. Originally, MBSR was promoted as a fusion or bridge between Buddhist and scientific knowledge. Although few scientific studies repeated this trope, it has been influential in giving MBSR spiritual authority to support preliminary scientific claims. One of the most important reviews of the ‘bridging hypothesis’ was published in 2006. Mechanisms of Mindfulness was a paper by Shauna Shapiro and others for the Journal of Clinical Psychology and illustrates major problems in how science understands and treats religion.1

MBSR was a paradigmatic concept that set the trajectory for many of the 30,000 peer-reviewed mindfulness studies published since 1981.2 Psychology can easily measure the empirical effects of meditation, changes to heart rate, blood pressure, and oxygen consumption, for example. However, research has illustrated that rather than ‘bridge’ science and Buddhism, mindfulness researchers failed to establish a coherent theoretical framework from either perspective. The idea that MBSR did not reflect Buddhist thought and practice is not new; dozens of academic papers have sought to explain what is missing from the mindfulness paradigm. Of these Mechanisms of Mindfulness may illustrate the profound limitations in how science understands Buddhist thought and practice.

Meditate without intention or compassion.

The first point to make is that Mechanisms of Mindfulness took a favourable view of mindfulness’s potential health benefits; it was not a ‘critical’ challenge.

Over the past 20 years, the majority of research has focused on clinical intervention studies to evaluate the efficacy of mindfulness-based interventions such as the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program. This line of research has primarily addressed the first order question “Are mindfulness-based interventions effective?” These studies have led to promising data suggesting that MBSR is an effective intervention for treatment of both psychological and physical symptoms. p. 374

However, the main issue the paper raised is that MBSR created a conceptual vacuum in which treatment was delivered. That is, in the previous quarter of a century, mindfulness was being used without a clear scientific understanding of what it was or how it worked.

However, an equally important direction for future research is to address the second order question“How do mindfulness-based interventions actually work?” p.374

This uncertainty confirms that MBSR was not established using scientific or Buddhist rationales. However, Shapiro and her co-authors went further, claiming that key elements of Buddhist mindfulness (intention and compassion) were removed in the creation of the Western versions of the practice:

When Western psychology attempted to extract the essence of mindfulness practice from its original religious/cultural roots, we lost, to some extent, the aspect of intention, which for Buddhism was enlightenment and compassion for all beings. p. 375

Surprisingly, MBSR lacked the foundational elements, concepts, and methods of the Buddhist traditions it claimed to have had congruence with. When researchers pointed out these limitations, some mindfulness advocates, such as Jon Kabat-Zinn, doubled down on the unevidenced claims that MBSR reflected Buddhist values. Ignoring the criticisms of Buddhist scholars, Kabat-Zinn suggested his writings had synthesized, to some extent, the Buddha’s wisdom:

My intention and hope was that the book might embody to whatever degree possible the dharma essence of the Buddha’s teachings put into action and made accessible to mainstream Americans facing stress, pain, and illness. p. 282. 3

Despite the controversial nature of such a statement, the idea that MBSR and MBIs reflected Buddhist practices persisted. The failure of the scientific community to push back against unevidenced claims of Buddhist congruence was a major contribution to the crisis in mindfulness research. Lacking a stable theoretical framework, mindfulness was neither ‘scientific’ nor ‘Buddhist’. It was used pragmatically to demonstrate correlations between meditation and health rather than explain how it worked.4 Criticisms of the scientific quality of mindfulness research are widespread. The main issue raised here is the freedom with which religious thought and practice is presented in peer-reviewed literature.

By making unevidenced claims about Buddhist mindfulness, MBSR and MBIs were built on theoretical uncertainty. Perhaps even more problematic is the ease with which Buddhist thought and practice were adapted and misrepresented in the search for new health interventions. There are important issues here about the subordination of religion by science, which can lead to misunderstanding in the wider society. However, the great loss is that by manufacturing an imaginary of mindfulness rather than developing a comprehensive understanding, we know very little about the benefits of traditional forms of meditation. Most Buddhist meditation methods tend to a nondual view, while science is essentially dualistic. In reinventing meditation through a dualistic lens, the richness and potential benefits of nondual meditation have been removed from contemporary practices.

References

  1. Shapiro, Shauna L., Linda E. Carlson, John A. Astin, and Benedict Freedman. “Mechanisms of mindfulness.” Journal of clinical psychology 62, no. 3 (2006): 373-386.
  2. Morris, Stephen Gene. “The Scientific History of Mindfulness: 1938 to 2020.” PhD diss., University of Kent,, 2024. https://kar.kent.ac.uk/106240/
  3. Kabat-Zinn, Jon. “Some reflections on the origins of MBSR, skillful means, and the trouble with maps.” In Mindfulness, pp. 281-306. Routledge, 2013.
  4. Van Dam, Nicholas T., Marieke K. Van Vugt, David R. Vago, Laura Schmalzl, Clifford D. Saron, Andrew Olendzki, Ted Meissner et al. “Mind the hype: A critical evaluation and prescriptive agenda for research on mindfulness and meditation.” Perspectives on psychological science 13, no. 1 (2018): 36-61.