A Critical Perspective on the Scientific Study of Mindfulness and Meditation

The benefits of engaging in contemplative practice are pervasively promoted as being justified by scientific evidence. iPhones come with Mindfulness tracking alongside screens for logging steps and aerobic minutes. Yet this scientific evidence is often weak, taken out of context, and over-interpreted beyond what the data actually show. This state of affairs is laden with implicit scientific hegemony that discourages rigorous methodological scrutiny and the crucial relevance of personal understanding and reflection. It also plays into narratives that promise large results with little effort.

About the Speaker

Clifford Saron is a Research Scientist at the Center for Mind and Brain and MIND Institute at the University of California at Davis. He received his Ph.D. in neuroscience from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Dr. Saron has had a long-standing interest in the effects of contemplative practice on physiology and behavior. In the early 1990s he conducted field research investigating Tibetan Buddhist mind training under the auspices of the Office of H.H. the Dalai Lama. A frequent faculty member at Mind and Life Summer Research Institutes in the US and Europe and a former member of the Mind and Life Institute Steering Council, he received the inaugural Mind and Life Service Award in 2018. Dr. Saron directs the Shamatha Project, a multidisciplinary longitudinal investigation of the effects of intensive meditation on physiological and psychological processes central to well-being. In 2012, Dr. Saron and his research team were awarded the inaugural Templeton Prize Research Grant in honor of H.H. the Dalai Lama. His other research area focuses on sensory processing in children with autism spectrum disorders to better understand how these children experience their everyday sensory environments.