[MichaelGG]

Does anyone have any recommendations on a good, but scientific, intro to meditation practices? All the ones I read seem so interspersed with nonsense I find incredibly distracting. And not just "secular", either.

I'm referring to talk about "Life force" or "true nature" etc. Those are matters of biology and physics, so writing about them when your only source of knowledge is sitting by yourself thinking private thoughts, stretches credibility a bit.

I'm sure I would gain a lot by being able to shut my mind up at times. And indeed, I find induced mental states to be great. But while I can lie to myself about many things, I can't seem to do it with mysticism around mediation. I'd like to eliminate that hurdle.

[3beard]

> I'm sure I would gain a lot by being able to shut my mind up at times

There is nothing much more to understand. The single best piece of advice I ever got came from an Indian guru named Muktananda who said "Meditation is not very difficult and meditation is not very easy". That is, you need to find a balance between trying too hard and not trying hard enough.

[UntitledNo4]

I don't know if it is really what you are looking for, but I have always been curious about meditation but not the religious side of it, and was recently introduced to headspace.com. I have just finished the first (free) 10 sessions and subscribed for some more. I can't say I'm sold yet, but I'm still curious to practice it some more. At the least, I enjoy taking 10 minutes every day to just take a break from life.

[ruchir]

I've found most western books written on the topic unsatisfying and barely hitting the basics of what's in eastern books. Have found it more effective to improvise one's own techniques using analogies and would recommend this to others. I think this is 'scientific' because no two minds are quite alike - so do the experiment and see what works for you.

The mind is much closer to computer science (with multiple processes) than biology and physics as currently understood. Think of how a computer shuts down cleanly (vs after corruption or out of memory) and then bootstraps clean (clarity). Or a tall office building that is lit all the way up, that is gradually shutting out its lights level by level. A physical analogy that is useful is of a train that is slowly coming to a halt. One cannot stop it suddenly as it has a lot of momentum, but one can reduce momentum gradually and let it coast to a halt. The mind is similar to the train - it does not really want to stop when awake - that's why it takes practice. Sometimes one of these images work, sometimes none do. I'm curious about other's experience as well.

[dood]

Mindfulness in Plain English is what you are looking for. You can read online but there are OCR errors: http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html - I'd recommend buying a copy.

[MichaelGG]

That one was the one I was reading, which refers to "seeing things as they truly are" and "life force" and other hand-wavy concepts. But it seems OK otherwise.

[steveeq1]

Try "The relaxation response" by Herbert Bensen. It has a more scientific approach to the transcendental meditation movement and the research presented in the book was done in reputable institutions (Harvard) using peer review.

[ramblerman]

I liked "Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion " By Sam Harris.