Thank you for your thoughtful response M.S. I’d like to clarify some things:

But. To speak in a blanket fashion as if there were only -one- meditation performed with one set of goals in mind (as it were) strikes me as suffering from many of the flaws in thinking that you point out in this piece.

Your point here, I think went off track. In fact, I point out in my essay that there are many types of meditation, and many supports for them, each with a specific goal as well. I also speak of traditional meditation, not any one traditional meditation in particular. And I speak of them together because, technical differences aside, they all rely on a basic human ability, and all of the traditions have a singular focus on knowing mind, no matter what their terminology for it is. (Also, the term “Dark Night” comes from Christian contemplative prayer practices, not the “East.” So these are not distinct and unrelated practices.)

And I didn’t want to get confusingly broad by mentioning systematic types of physical activities, such as the Yoga, Ji Ben Chi Gong, Dao Yin, and Nei Dan that I also practice, whose stated purpose is either to develop concentration and control over physical processes, or develop the manipulation of the subtle energy body for various reasons, which result in meditative advancements — the mind-body distinction being false.

For example, I think I can say that most yoga practioners today do not know that the original goal of yoga was to access inner spontaneous sound (the anahata nada) in order to merge with the divine mind by performing Nādānusandhāna. So would it benefit anyone if I said “traditional meditation and yoga?” It creates complications that elicit responses based upon assumptions about what “yoga” is, and doesn’t add anything to the conversation.

And, finally, I don’t know that ANYONE is in a position to say, in a blanket fashion, what is or isn’t “meditation”.

Again, here, you overlooked the point I made earlier in the essay that I summarized in the recap at the end of the article, which you were responding to. The point I made was: “She makes no mention of how these participants could be instructed to not meditate on their thoughts, perhaps because she doesn’t know better — and that, I argue, is a widespread fault of secularized meditation research.” How could anyone say what isn’t meditation, so that a research protocol, using some active none-meditation placebo, was valid? At least an advanced meditator (this being the subject of the research afterall) can see the possible faults (as in the example I gave in the essay). And although it was beyond the scope of this essay, the fundamental human ability used in all meditation techniques, is a universal capability, so that one can say: all humans breath, all humans meditate; some humans breath systematically (pranayama for example), some humans meditate systematically.

The criticism you make of my statements about research into secular meditation being based upon an unfounded presumption that meditaiton produces results in a smooth linear fashion, is not undone by the lack of anyone practicing meditation believing it — because it is the foundation upon which short-term research protocols into secular meditation are believed to deliver meaningful results. Do you see the difference here? Non-meditators, or at least researchers who are limited by time and money, rely on it, even if no meditators find it to be a valid assumption. If this wasn’t the case, we would instead be seeing the results of long-term research on the order of decades or participant’s lifetimes, not eight week efforts. That is the issue I was pointing to.

Thanks again for engaging with my essay.