Category: Buddhism

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.

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.

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.

The crisis in mindfulness research: have we been asking the wrong questions?

A review of mindfulness research in New Scientist highlighted long standing scientific problems; is it time for a new approach?

The crisis in mindfulness research: have we been asking the wrong questions?

How does science understand meditation
xvideTheo.com

Writing in New Scientist on June 5th Jo Marchant summarised the state of mindfulness research and practice. The investigation added some much-needed balance to the overview of medicalised mindfulness. The article confirmed the enduring presence of uncertainties in theoretical understandings and systemic methodological weaknesses. A discussion of the potentially harmful effects of meditation was especially welcome; most experienced meditation teachers know that practices can lead to beneficial or detrimental outcomes in practitioners.

However, the absence of greater historical insights left us with a snapshot rather than an overview of the current state of our scientific knowledge. For example, scientists have been criticising meditation experiments since the 1970s, but the weaknesses identified over 40 years ago can still be seen in contemporary research. The scientific study of meditation can be traced back at least 80 years; the first decades were relatively free of scientific uncertainty. By identifying the beginning of hesitancy in meditation research, we can better understand the current crisis in the science of mindfulness. Since 1975, an estimated 7,000 scientific papers investigating meditation have been published. The vast majority of this work has focussed on mindfulness, so should we be worried that we still don’t have a reliable scientific definition of it?

The evidence suggests that we (meditation scientists) have been trying to establish mindfulness’s psychological and clinical potential ahead of a stable understanding of what it is. We know from several strategic reviews that multiple ways of understanding mindfulness exist in the scientific literature. While each mindfulness experiment can offer us some new insights, findings are rarely confirmed through replication? When taking the long view of meditation research, medicalised mindfulness manifests within visible patterns of scientific progress. In its origins, medicalised meditation reflects a confluence between positivist and belief based knowledge systems. The current theoretical uncertainty in mindfulness research can be traced back to this convergence. If mindfulness has been developed as a bridge between spiritual and scientific understandings, do we have adequate ways of making sense of meditation as a human experience? The lack of stable definitions and replication suggests there are still significant gaps in our knowledge. The most pressing unanswered questions remain the most important, what is medicalised mindfulness, and how can we understand it?

Compassionate meditation from a scientific perspective

A review of the origins of compassion and the benefits of compassionate mind training. from spiritual and scientific perspectives

Compassion, the wish that other be free from suffering and the causes of suffering

Author: Paul Gilbert

Year: 2019

Title: Explorations into the nature and function of compassion

Summary: Paul Gilbert has been researching and writing about compassion for much of his career. In this paper from 2019, Gilbert offers a general introduction to current thinking and research in the field. The article doesn’t concentrate on scientific evidence from a cognitive or neuropsychological perspective, although there are some useful citations. In the opening definitions of compassion, potential evolutionary origins discussed, highlighting the foundational influence of ‘mammalian caregiving’. According to this model, it is the caregiving instinct of mammals that eventually gives way to more complex processes leading to the forms of compassion that we recognise in human behaviour. In describing compassion used in spiritual traditions, Gilbert signposts approaches from Buddhism and Jainism. And in an attempt to homogenise definitions from East and West, he offers us his synthesis of explanations from different knowledge traditions. There is a discussion of clinical and experimental progress in the field, focussing on both medicalised and Buddhist compassion training methods. In conclusion, Gilbert makes the case that compassion is an inherent trait that can be developed through training and motivation.  

Compassion (and compassionate values and moral) is not just automatic but something that can be deliberately chosen and worked at with a deepening of understanding over time.

Discussion: I want to acknowledge that Gilbert has made significant contributions to the western positivist understanding of the construct of compassion. This paper describes some complex ideas simply and at times, elegantly. But the overall impression is the presentation of the author’s particular perspective, a notion supported by a lack of critical insight. Citations of recent scientific studies are grouped logically, but I would have also valued some expert guidance on theoretical or methodological limitations in these papers. As a general principle, I find the use of evolutionary psychology to support definitions of complex human behaviours speculative, so it is perhaps unsurprising I wasn’t convinced by the accounts of the origins of compassion. The conclusions do offer a helpful overview of the subject, particularly to people new to this area. However, my central reservation was the selective use of concepts from different knowledge systems, particularly as the paper makes universal and generalised claims.

It is legitimate to draw on illustrations from Eastern spiritual tradition, but appropriate contextualisation is essential. So, for example, the discussion of Mahayana Buddhist concepts of compassion indicates that there are different understandings in Buddhism. These contrasting positions in Buddhism are supported by alternative ontological and epistemological frameworks that underpin interpretations of compassion, meditation and mind-training. I accept that this is a complex area, but if we fail to consider human understanding in its relevant context, we risk defining universal human traits and states from a narrow Western positive perspective. And in doing so, essential psychological constructs known and evidenced in traditional knowledge systems, such as non-dual compassion and relative compassion, will continue to be excluded from scientific study and consideration.

Link: https://www.sciencedirect.com

Misunderstandings of mind

An ever changing relationship between psychology and Buddhism reveals the transient nature of mindfulness meditation in the West.

the relationship between Buddhism and psychology

In the Western history of Buddhist theory and practice, traditional forms of Buddhism have been relatively stable during the twentieth century. New Buddhist traditions and Buddhist inspired movements have emerged in that time, but many of the established schools have demonstrated a surprising continuity. However, since 1900 psychology has undergone radical transformations, leading to changes in both mainstream and peripheral approaches. Therefore the current engagement between Buddhism and psychology, in the form of the science of mindfulness, should be seen as transient and merely the latest stage in the relationship.

Research into the history of the West’s engagement with meditation led me in pursuit of a book written by Caroline Rhys Davids1 in 1914. I haven’t yet tracked down a copy of this work. But several published reviews can be found through resources such as Google Scholar. Without reading Davids’s treatise, I wouldn’t wish to suggest it was representative of any or all of Buddhist psychology; that’s not my point. Instead, the reviews of her work appear, in some quarters, to accept that Eastern understandings of mind might be able to contribute to Western scientific knowledge. In one such appraisal, Walter Clark from the University of Chicago wrote in 1916:

The study of Buddhist psychology is of much interest to us because of the fact that it gives us a carefully worked out analysis of mental phenomena from the point of view of an entirely different “tradition of thought.” Its parallelism to and difference from our own psychological thinking opens up many problems which are of the utmost importance in the study of thought in general.2

pile of assorted title book lot selective focus photographt

Clarke’s review indicates apparent scholarly respect for Eastern sciences of mind. Suggestive of the potential for collaborative rather than appropriative perspectives of Buddhist understandings. There have been several Western scholars that demonstrate an appreciation of traditional (Eastern) forms of psychology, but these are mainly found in the humanities rather than the sciences. A scientist investigating traditional meditation methods rarely links their work to underlying Buddhist concepts, citing relevant texts.

By drawing attention to the evolving nature of psychology, it is a reminder that Western science is in a state of flux in some regards. That what counts as ‘scientifically validated’ psychology today, may well be washed away by a ‘post-cognitive’ movement over the next decades. Conversely, much traditional Buddhist thought and practice has a core of knowledge that extends back hundreds and occasionally thousands of years. In this regard, Buddhist writings on mind, consciousness, and meditation are an underutilised resource in the study and use of meditation technologies.

 

Notes

1 Buddhist Psychology: An Inquiry into the Analysis and Theory of Mind in Pali Literature. By Caroline Augusta Foley Rhys Davids. London: G. Bell & Sons, 1914. 212 pages. 2s. 6d.

2 The emphasis is mine. Clark, Walter E. “Buddhistic Psychology.” (1916): 139-141.

How far can we trust meditation research?

Strategic reviews are challenging the popular perception of the beneficial effects of mindfulness

How far can we trust meditation research?
Looking for answers from meditation?

How far can we trust meditation research?

No matter how I tried to write the headline it came out as provocative. My intention wasn’t to be controversial, rather I wanted to articulate concerns that have been rumbling around the science of meditation and mindfulness for decades. At the heart of this story are two important yet unresolved issues. Firstly how does psychology and neuroscience understand meditation and what do the results of meditation research really mean?

The limited prosocial effects of meditation is a recent systematic review of research undertaken by Ute Kreplin, Miguel Farias and Inti Brazil. The study has been discussed in the meditation community at some length so I’m not going to review it here. But to summarize, the positive effects of meditation on prosocial behaviours (compassion, empathy, aggression, connectedness and prejudice) in healthy adults were only observed in compassion and empathy scores. However, increases to compassion were just seen when the meditation teacher was one of the co-authors of the research paper or when the study used a ‘passive’ control group (this means the control group were on a waiting list). These findings are suggestive of flaws and possibly ‘bias’ in some of those studies that demonstrated significant results. In an interview with Ute Kreplin published in the international Buddhist journal Tricycle, a number of broader issues have been highlighted, it’s those that I’d like to push around a little now. Leaving to one side the methodological flaws which are the main focus of the Tricycle interview, let me draw attention to the potential causes of the ongoing limitations in our attempts to evidence the effects of meditation.

woman meditating

It should be stressed that the Kreplin, Farias and Brazil paper is one of a number of reviews that came to similar conclusions, that many (possibly most) of the published studies reporting significant effects in non-clinical populations had methodological and/or theoretical flaws. And as Kreplin hinted, published research tends only to be the tip of the iceberg, studies that fail to show measurable changes in meditators rarely see the light of day. So the examples analyzed in strategic reviews are not the full picture of meditation research, they offer a very selective (positive) account of the scientific landscape. And yet the common perception grows that meditation is a panacea able to deliver a range of desirable outcomes to almost anyone willing to practice a method.

“At this moment in time the science generally isn’t helping us to understand the benefits of meditation…”

Stephen Gene Morris

By way of transparency, I should make it clear that I’m an experienced meditator and confident of the great benefits of the practice. My interest in contemplative science comes from the perspectives of both a trained cognitive psychologist and a practising Buddhist. From my experience of teaching traditional meditation systems, it is unrealistic to claim that a few weeks of meditation practice automatically leads to ‘significant’ change. Some practitioners do progress rapidly, embracing the transformative potential of meditation, but others fall away after only a few weeks, sometimes disillusioned and unfulfilled. This is a difficult subject to address coming from a traditional meditation perspective because judging or criticizing the progress of another practitioner is something of a taboo. But to enhance the wider understanding of meditation this point needs to be stressed. There is no reason to assume that the meditation method alone leads to change, the method is an integral part of a firmly established theoretical framework. The effects of meditation tend to be meditated by several factors such as individual capacity, participant motivation and qualitative differences between the teacher or teaching systems.

The contemporary scientific investigation of meditation typically takes the reductionist approach, stripping out components that might confound the results of an experiment, such as variability in the method or differences in the environment. But isolating the cause (meditation method) and the effect (empirical change in the participant) is difficult, and in complex aspects of human behaviour such as empathy or compassion, it may be beyond the scope of many experiments. Consider that large numbers of the participants in meditation studies are likely to be undergraduates ‘pressed’ into research projects, obliged to participate in return for course credits. If meditation doesn’t always work for the people who choose to attend classes in the wider community why should things be any different in an experimental setting?

ancient architecture art asia

The ‘expectation’ that a meditation method in itself leads to change is not supported by human history. This idea may eventually be confirmed by science but the data gathered so far is inconclusive. We know that a number of meditation scientists are committed practitioners, so perhaps they have first-hand experience of the benefits of meditation or mindfulness. Is this as Kreplin suggests, part of the problem? Could the experiential knowledge of the results of meditating introduce subconscious bias into research methodology? I’m a meditator I know about the benefits of regular practice but I can see dangers to the credibility of meditation systems if claims based on poor science are over-hyped. The lack of long term studies for secular forms of meditation should also be a serious concern.

The failure to establish robust findings in meditation research begs a further question, without reliable replicated science how does the delivery of meditation technologies continue to grow in society? If scientists are raising questions about the claims made in individual studies why isn’t this filtering down more into health care, public policy and the media? If meditation and mindfulness interventions cannot be shown to work, or deliver predictable results, confidence in meditation generally may decline. It might also lead to an erosion in the status of experimental psychology as a provider of independent and reliable data.

These few paragraphs are simply an introduction to the subject, the start of a very long road. It can be argued that the contemporary western scientific investigation of meditation began in the 1970s, since when perhaps as many as 10,000 studies have been published. But based on the findings from recent strategic reviews our scientific understanding of meditation is at a surprisingly preliminary stage.

Notes

The Kreplin, Farias and Brazil study can be found here.

Spiritual based meditation may help preserve cognitive function

Whilst intensive meditation practice may improve cognitive function, sustained daily practice may help maintain it.

pexels-photo.jpg

Authors: Anthony P. Zanesco, Brandon G. King, Katherine A. MacLean, Clifford D. Saron

Year: 2018

Title: Cognitive Ageing and Long-Term Maintenance of Attentional Improvements Following Meditation Training

Summary: Can meditation lead to improvements in cognitive abilities such as attention? Meditation research generally suffers from a shortage of longitudinal studies, therefore this seven-year project should be applauded. Building on their earlier work which examined the effects of a three-month meditation retreat on cognition. This investigation assessed the benefits of sustained practice in the following years. The findings appeared to demonstrate that age-related decline in reaction time was negatively correlated with the continuation of meditation practice (regular practice leading to slower decline), following the intensive three-month retreat. The research broadly concludes that the cognitive benefits achieved through periods of intensive activity may receive protection against age-related decline from regular meditation practice.

In the original retreat at least two forms of meditation were undertaken, a basic mind training and a compassion/empathy based practice, both embedded in a spiritual tradition. Inevitably it is problematic to evaluate the benefits of each of the practices or their interaction effect. As an experienced meditator I should underline that by their very nature, participants willing and able to undertake retreats of three months and sustain meditation practice over several years are probably unrepresentative of meditators generally, let alone the wider population. Limitations of ecological validity are discussed in the study. There was also insufficient information provided regarding the meditation history of participants, their levels of accomplishment, the degree of their theoretical training and information regarding secondary or special practices undertaken since the retreat.

Link: https://link.springer.com