My sense is that existing mindfulness studies don’t show the sort of impressive results that we’d expect if this were a great solution.
If you have any specific studies in mind which show this, I would be interested to see! I have a sense that mindfulness tends to be studied in the context of “increasing well-being” in a general sense and not specifically to “decrease or eliminate suffering.” I would be quite interested in a study which studies meditation’s effects when directly targeting suffering.
Also, I think people who would benefit most from having less day-to-day suffering often struggle with having no “free room” available for meditation practice, and that seems like an issue that’s hard to overcome even if meditation practice would indeed help them a lot.
I really appreciate you raising this point in detail; I think it’s something I haven’t included enough in my own considerations. Having enough free time and energy for meditation practice is indeed a kind of privilege.
I’m going to chew on this some more, but one initial thought I’ve had is that the general quality of life needed as a prerequisite to devoting enough time and energy to meditation practice may be lower than one may expect, at least by Western standards. For example, in a place like India, there seems to be a good amount of people in difficult circumstances that nonetheless make time for meditation and spiritual pursuits. However, I agree that in the limit, if all of your waking moments are focused on simply acquiring enough food today, it seems much less reasonable to prescribe meditation as the solution for their suffering.
If you have any specific studies in mind which show this, I would be interested to see! I have a sense that mindfulness tends to be studied in the context of “increasing well-being” in a general sense and not specifically to “decrease or eliminate suffering.” I would be quite interested in a study which studies meditation’s effects when directly targeting suffering.
I really appreciate you raising this point in detail; I think it’s something I haven’t included enough in my own considerations. Having enough free time and energy for meditation practice is indeed a kind of privilege.
I’m going to chew on this some more, but one initial thought I’ve had is that the general quality of life needed as a prerequisite to devoting enough time and energy to meditation practice may be lower than one may expect, at least by Western standards. For example, in a place like India, there seems to be a good amount of people in difficult circumstances that nonetheless make time for meditation and spiritual pursuits. However, I agree that in the limit, if all of your waking moments are focused on simply acquiring enough food today, it seems much less reasonable to prescribe meditation as the solution for their suffering.