Jim, you might be a little premature in this dismissal. Below is some of the research results on mindfulness from Harris' book. And I have some comments on my own after that.
Long-term meditation practice is also associated with a variety of structural changes in the brain. Meditators tend to have larger corpora collosa and hippocampi (in both hemispheres). The practice is also linked to increased gray matter thickness and cortical folding. Some of these differences are especially prominent in older practitioners, which suggests that meditation could protect against age-related thinning of the cortex. The cognitive, emotional, and behavioral significance of these anatomical findings have not yet been worked out, but it is not hard to see how they might explain the kinds of experiences and psychological changes that meditators report. Expert meditators (with greater than ten thousand hours of practice) respond differently to pain than novices do. They judge the intensity of an unpleasant stimulus the same but find it to be less unpleasant. They also show reduced activity in regions associated with anxiety while anticipating the onset of pain, as well as faster habituation to the stimulus once it arrives.Other research has found that mindfulness reduces both the unpleasantness and intensity of noxious stimuli... ...One study found that an eight-week program of mindfulness meditation reduced the volume of the right basolateral amygdala, and these changes were correlated with a subjective decrease in stress. Another found that a full day of mindfulness practice (among trained meditators) reduced the expression of several genes that produce inflammation throughout the body, and this correlated with an improved response to social stress (diabolically, subjects were asked to give a brief speech and then perform mental calculations while being videotaped in front of an audience). A mere five minutes of practice a day (for five weeks) increased left-sided baseline activity in the frontal cortex — a pattern that, as we saw in the discussion of the split brain, has been associated with positive emotions. A review of the psychological literature suggests that mindfulness in particular fosters many components of physical and mental health: It improves immune function, blood pressure, and cortisol levels; it reduces anxiety, depression, neuroticism, and emotional reactivity. It also leads to greater behavioral regulation and has shown promise in the treatment of addiction and eating disorders. Unsurprisingly, the practice is associated with increased subjective well-being. Training in compassion meditation increases empathy, as measured by the ability to accurately judge the emotions of others, as well as positive affect in the presence of suffering. The practice of mindfulness has been shown to have similar pro-social effects. Scientific research on the various types of meditation is just beginning, but there are now hundreds of studies suggesting that these practices are good for us. Again, from a first-person point of view, none of this is surprising. After all, there is an enormous difference between being hostage to one’s thoughts and being freely and nonjudgmentally aware of life in the present. My first meditations were guided meditations, which work quite well because you are rather innocently following instructions. Then I learned a version of mindfulness, and on the whole, it did not go that well. TM proved to be easy for me, and that was basically what I did until about 10 years ago things started to shift, and TM started to morph into mindfulness. My meditation is now mostly mindfulness. The basic difference between the two is with TM you come back to the mantra, and with the variation of mindfulness that I do you come back to the breath. Breath is automatic because you need not do anything about it to keep it going. And sometimes I just sit there, doing nothing. Now some time ago you mentioned that mindfulness puts the cart before the horse, and in some ways that is true. Enlightenment is a state of non-forced mindfulness. Trying to emulate that state when you are not in that state simply does not work. The TM advantage in teaching is the checking notes, which run the student through the process systematically. This tends not to happen with mindfulness instruction, where instruction is more minimalist especially for people who try to do it from a book. My guess if you stole and rewrote the checking process and substituted 'breath' for 'mantra', mindfulness meditation instruction would probably improve, though some other adjustments might also be necessary. I think M's greatest accomplishment as far a meditation is concerned was the checking process. Eventually the 'depth' of meditation goes away as the fiction of transcendence becomes apparent, and what used to be a deep inner experience is now the surface of everything and one is left only with mindfulness, which in the Pali language probably means 'clear awareness' rather than mindfulness. Mindfulness properly done is not forced, and is not necessarily concentrative any more than TM. Research on mindfulness may be complicated by variations in mindfulness techniques. The main reason mindfulness is the most researched meditation is it is basically free and non proprietary and is easily adaptable to scientific research requirements, as it does not have the Church of the TMO hovering over the process. It may also be that certain individuals are more comfortable with one kind of meditation than another. Because only 10% to 20% of TM meditators continue with the practice, it is clear that it does not do the trick for many people. Everybody has self awareness, everybody is conscious, everybody has the same amount; the nature of that self awareness varies because of the mind's conditioning. Early on Maharishi said it was the mind that expands, not consciousness, consciousness stays the same. So when we meditate we are not really becoming more conscious, the vehicle of experience is being modified, presumably for the better and for clearer functioning and perception of what is already the case. Whichever meditation floats someone's boat, it is OK with me. Mentally retarded individuals probably would have much more problem with mindfulness, which in most settings requires more self initiative, and intelligence (which they lack) to grasp the method than TM which is rather easy; so it would probably benefit mentally retarded individuals to try TM first. They may not even be able to do that. The self referral loop is basically a function of how much the mind is divided; if the mind is not divided, there is no self referral loop because everything is perceived as having the same essential value. The self referral loop is a measure of how far the mind is from recognising its own true nature. The loop is large when the mind is in deep ignorance of its true nature, and it becomes shallower if there is progress toward clarity. ________________________________ From: "fleetwood_macnche...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife]" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, September 18, 2014 1:20 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] thoughts on samskaras and enlightenment - CC to UC Mindfulness techniques are for mentally retarded individuals, who have very little self awareness. It would be a waste of time for a normal person, even harmful, to do this "mindfulness". There is no need for the mini self referral loop that you entertain, if your mind was normally awake. However, with a mind retarded by so many past impressions, mindfulness may help dispel a bit of the murk, temporarily. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <turquoiseb@...> wrote : From: "LEnglish5@... [FairfieldLife]" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> MIndfulness and concentrative practices disrupt the Default Mode Network of the brain, which is highly involved with self-referral processing and sense-of-self. Written "authoritatively" by someone who has never in his life experienced mindfulness meditation or any technique based on concentration. Can I get a hearty laugh from the peanut gallery? I think I can. :-)
