Category: Blog

The science of training the mind. A blog about science, psychology, and meditation to support rational secular Buddhists.

A Meditator’s Guide to the Neuroscience of Attention

Three insights from attentional neuroscience to improve your concentration in meditation.

Note: Probably the most important lesson about attention is that you need to learn to balance it with awareness – I’m writing this for an audience who I assume will already be familiar with this attention-awareness interplay that’s spelled out in the book The Mind Illuminated.… Read the rest “A Meditator’s Guide to the Neuroscience of Attention”

The (Sort of) Complete Guide to Actually Getting Better at Meditation

Here are the six steps to actually getting better at meditation, according to psychology.

Contents

  • Introduction
  • Prelude – Understanding Mental Representations
  • The Elements of Deliberate Practice
    • 1: A Highly Developed Field
    • 2: Target Specific Sub-Skills
    • 3: Clear and Immediate Feedback
    • 4: Focused Practice
    • A Brief Interlude About the Dangers of Over-Efforting
    • 5: Get Out of Your Comfort Zone
    • 6: Continued Engagement
  • A TL;DR Summary of Deliberate Practice

Introduction

Most meditation instructions that you’ll find go something like this:

  1. Place your attention on the object of meditation (usually the sensations of breathing at the nostrils) and keep it there.
… Read the rest “The (Sort of) Complete Guide to Actually Getting Better at Meditation”

I Wasted 8 Years of Meditation Because I Didn’t Understand These 4 Things

Most people meditate for a long time with little improvement because of these four myths.

Contents

  • Introduction
  • Striving for unusual or one-off experiences
  • Misunderstanding non-judgemental awareness
  • Thinking that trying to exert any kind of effort in meditation is a mistake
  • Extremely vague or unstructured meditation instructions
  • Conclusion

Introduction

“I’ve been practicing meditation for a few years, but I still can’t keep my attention on my breath for more than a few seconds at a time.… Read the rest “I Wasted 8 Years of Meditation Because I Didn’t Understand These 4 Things”

The Science of The Dharma

A rational explanation of the project of Buddhism, and why the newly emerging science of the mind is essential to that project.

The Problem of Dukkha

This blog will be about dukkha, and the end of dukkha. Dukkha is a pali word which has been translated as ‘suffering’, ‘insufficiency’, ‘pain’, ‘unsatisfactoriness’, and ‘dissatisfaction’. It includes all those things and more.

Dukkha is that to which all problems can be simplified, and our attempts to solve it are written in the stories of our lives.… Read the rest “The Science of The Dharma”