This is easily googled. In any case, keep in mind that scientific approaches have only been applied to a very small subset of meditation practices popularized in the West by people like Jon Kabat-Zinn who were looking to address specific problems. Jon's program has had over 100 randomized clinical trials, and several hundred more publications.

He has a pretty good course on master class.

Good question. Just note that success is not the only possible desirable outcome. And I would judge it at a larger than individual scale, sort of like a medical trial for a drug.

I think no, there's no proof it actually does anything meaningful. Otherwise we would see some effects on populations where these practices are popular.

> Is there any evidence mindfulness as taught and practiced by, well, those who teach and practice it, is good for anything?

Well, the 26 centuries of Buddhism, and all those monks and laypeople. I'm not sure if you consider all that they've said and written to be evidence, but I think you should.

This statement can be made of any long-lived practice.

(This is not a statement of disagreement, just a comment.)

Well, I think it's pretty easy to see differences between, say, Christianity and Buddhism. Do you know of any Christians who claim to have had some breakthrough in prayer after which they experienced no suffering? I don't. But it's normal for Buddhist meditators to report things like that, or to report that happiness flows to them automatically. Ecstatic experiences are sometimes reported in Christianity, but I and many other Buddhist meditators have ecstatic experiences every day. How many hundreds of thousands of people reporting things like this over 26 centuries does it take before it starts being considered evidence? Edit: don't be shy about hitting the "reply" and typing your thoughts if you disagree with something I said.

“Enlightened” people have existed in all walks of life, not just Buddhism. In fact one could see Buddhism as annoyingly codifying into a religion that which is natural and obvious. Just like Christianity.

I agree, enlightenment can happen many different ways. I see Buddhism as just one collection of strategies to achieve it. But I don't agree that it's obvious. It's so non-obvious that people have been trying to teach it to everyone without charge for 26 centuries without much luck.

It’s obvious in the sense that it’s basically elimination of unproductive habits. And it might be unlikely, but some people arrive there naturally, without pursuing it.

As for the teachings, I think they’ve been misleading people for centuries. Every religion comes up with rules and symbols to explain the “way to the truth” and mostly what happens is they gain a following that just worships and embellishes the symbols. Those people would have been better off being naive. Maybe then they’d be free to have a visceral insight.

Indeed. The only time I have ever achieved enlightenment was when I took a pill of hydromorphone.

According to the Buddha, his path is the only one to nirvana.

Many enlightened Indians didn’t follow Buddha’s path — and in fact followed a variety of paths.

Then they are not enlightened in the sense meant in Buddhism, that is, they have not attained Arhatship nor become awakened Bodhisattvas nor Buddhas. They haven't extinguished the causes for rebirth, and are still bound to the samsaric cycle.

I don't buy that. For example Ramana Maharshi was awakened and he self-realized suddenly without following any path. There were awakened people before Buddha, and there are awakened people today without having followed any path.

The idea that only Buddhism holds the keys to self-realization is dangerous, frankly. The Catholic Church want you to believe the same thing, that only the Papal hierarchy can direct you to God.

"self-realisation" has nothing to do with enlightenment in a Buddhist sense. I understand it is tempting to subsume all religious experiences into one super-experience, but they really are qualitatively different: in Buddhism it is about permanently ending suffering and the cycle of rebirth, in Advaita Vedanta (e.g. like Ramana Maharshi) it's about, as you say, self-realisation or perhaps "realising you are a part of God". What makes you so sure that these two things are necessarily related? I see this quite a lot, people want to think that Buddhist enlightenment is qualitatively the same thing as others, and that all the different spiritualities point to the same ultimate goal, which is some kind of spiritual union with God. Well that's _not_ the goal of Buddhism. Do you have any actual evidence to suggest it is?

> What makes you so sure that these two things are necessarily related?

In short, I take these people's word for it because I see no reason to doubt it, just like any non-enlightened person takes the word of Buddha or Buddhist monks that they were/are enlightened. There are numerous instances of Hindus like Ramana and Nisargadatta claiming that their state of mind is identical to what Buddhists call Enlightenment.

If anything, it's Buddhism that has these crazy religious narratives about the cycle or rebirth and so on. Nisargadatta, for example, rejects all this stuff. God, reincarnation, is all conceptual fluff; ignorance. Because what is the "reincarnation" concept to the silent mind? It a disturbance.

What’s so special about buddhists? What’s the evidence? Is there some scientific research demonstrating something unique about them compared to the rest of the people?

Well, suppose your best friend told you that he did some practice for a while, and gradually got rid of what he estimated to be 99% of the suffering he'd had before. What form do you think evidence of that could take? Brain scans of some kind? They have apparently been done, and they apparently really do look odd. https://www.lionsroar.com/how-meditation-changes-your-brain-...

I don’t doubt that one can do mental things to put one’s mind in an unusual state long term (nor that differences from these unusual states can be observed with a measurement device).

What I doubt is that doing so is prudent.

When you look at the ambiguously labeled knobs and levers in the locked control panel of your mind, is it really a good idea to pick the lock and mess around with the levers?

(Also, why would I even want to change whether a thing would cause my mental reaction to be “suffering”? Either “suffering” refers to something other than what I generally mean by the word, in which case, well, whether it is a benefit would depend on what that meaning is (but the default would be not to mess with things beyond my ken) , or it does, in which case, uh, no, I’d rather not be wireheaded kthx. Along the lines of https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/utilitarian-time-travel , if the baron would impale me on a pike, my preferred solution would be to prevent that, not to have a neural restructuring beam make it so I love getting impaled. )

The basic problem of life is that by default, happiness depends on circumstances that you don't control. Meditation helps cultivate a kind of happiness that does not depend on getting what you like or avoiding what you dislike. It also helps people behave like saints, i.e., kind, compassionate, joyful about the successes of others, equanimous, generous, fearless, etc.

Why should I want to be happy?

A major purpose of happiness is a difficult-to-fake signal to others of an outcome being good for me (rather, of it seeming to me to be good/desirable).

Happiness is what happens when I get what I want. Making happiness into the thing I want is almost completely backwards.

I am not advocating wanting to be happy, I'm advocating cultivating happiness that does not depend on circumstances. There's a parable called "who knows what's good or bad?" that addresses why it doesn't make sense to assign "good" or "bad" to the events that happen to us.

> Happiness is what happens when I get what I want.

Well, that's how it seems at first. But even though you were overjoyed at the presents you got on your 10th birthday, that happiness did not last. After seeing enough ups and downs, the mind might get tired of being endlessly pushed around by wanting or aversion. It might prefer to just be still, unmoved. Meditation helps develop this kind of stability.

But what reason is there to cultivate this happiness-independent-of-circumstances if not in order to be happy? But if I do not wish to be happy, then I have no reason to cultivate this kind of happiness. It is like you are trying to tell me a way that I can get free oil for my car instead of having to buy it from the gas station, when I don’t have a car, but a bicycle (or maybe a skateboard?). I have no use for this source of free oil.

And of course the happiness from getting things I want doesn’t last; if it did, my happiness would cease to be a useful signal for others of what I want, and therefore the mechanism which modulates my happiness would cease to usefully serve its purpose, which would be detrimental regarding the goal of me getting more of what I want.

Your arguments are all assuming that I terminally value being happy, and without that assumption they have no foundation.

If you're completely content with how things are already, you're one of the rare individuals who has no need for meditation.

The Buddha taught of those who are deluded and thus content with samsara as it is, which is the category you fall into. It could be because you have a good rebirth, and thus have not experienced enough significant suffering to feel the need to find refuge from it. Whatever it is, no one can convince you that samsara should be escaped. In Buddhist doctrine, probably the best approach for you would to be to cultivate good karma for good future rebirths and wait until samvega perhaps develops.

I think this image is evidence enough: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%ADch_Qu%E1%BA%A3ng_%C4%9...

By that logic we have proof that tiger dongs cure erectile dysfunction.

Well, I regret how I phrased my answer. I read a lot of books about Buddhism and listen to a lot of monks explain things about Buddhism, and I really meant "all that stuff", i.e., tens of thousands of books and uncountable hours of dhamma talks about how to practice, what results to expect, etc.

To me the question was kind of like "is there really any evidence that this 'exercise' stuff is useful at all?" And the answer would be "yes... all the thousands of books about exercise and all the people who exercise regularly."

So, an appeal to tradition is all you have?

Just because it's a Buddhist practice, and it's ancient, that's all you need...?

The same can be said about any other religious practice.

You sound almost like a Christian preacher who could very well say,

"Well, the 20 centuries of Christianity, and all those priests and laypeople. I'm not sure if you consider all that they've said and written to be evidence, but I think you should."

You need reasons actually grounded in preferably personal practice.

That is, something treated like a scientific experiment performed on yourself, to see if following the steps affects you. Then, you look at the results others have attained.

And then you draw rational and logical conclusions based off of that cumulative data.

> So, an appeal to tradition is all you have?

Hmm, no, sorry if that's how it seemed. I mean the tens of thousands of books, talks, testimonials, etc, that make specific claims like attaining freedom from suffering using various specific strategies and meditation practices.

> You need reasons actually grounded in preferably personal practice.

My personal practice is a few thousand hours of meditation. It's obvious to me that the practice is working, but I can't say exactly what it's doing to my brain, and I can't prove it to anyone else (unless I would already appear odd on a brain scan)