The Mindful Geek

I know of Michael Taft as the canny editor who helped put together Shinzen Young's The Science of Enlightenment and as the host of the Deconstructing Yourself podcast.  I've gotten lots out of both of those, so when I happened to see that he was giving away a book of his own on his website, I figured there wasn't much to lose.  Taft is a long-time student of Young's, so a lot of what's in The Mindful Geek is just a beginner level introduction to his teacher's more complete system.  Nevertheless, it might be an even better starting place for the absolute beginner meditator.  

True to its title, the book is aimed at the geeky tech types who Taft often teaches in CA.  It contains not the least hint of the religious aspect of meditation.  It relies heavily on selling meditation as a general form of self-improvement whose effectiveness is increasingly documented scientifically.  Given my sympathy for Thompson's critique Buddhist modernism, you might have imagined that this way of looking at things would not appeal to me.  But Taft actually doesn't fall quite into the trap Thompson describes.  Perhaps, as his interview of Thompson suggests, because he is aware of it.

Yes, he does spend some time referencing the scientific research on meditation's physiological and psychological effects that was covered more extensively in Altered Traits.  This is fine though as far as it goes -- that is insofar as we understand that this research is still pretty preliminary.  I read through these parts fairly quickly, simply noting that the book is also intended to convince busy tech bros to give meditation a try.  In other words, since I already meditate, I was not the target audience for these discussions.   Mostly one can just ignore them, or read them at the level of the latest pop science regarding what supplements one should be taking.  Personally I use the ginger-psilocybin-lovingkindness stack to get shredded.

More crucially though, Taft evades the Buddhist modernist problem because he doesn't try to tell us that meditation shows us, "how things really are".  The book carries little religious or philosophical baggage.  It's a purely practical self help book.  Everything is phrased as, "try this and see if it makes your everyday life any better".  While this is a pretty limiting way of looking at Buddhism as a whole, and doesn't address a lot of the questions that come up once you've been meditating for a while, I actually think it's a great way to get started.  Since the book does not profess to be anything other than an introduction, it mostly stops short of where the problems with Buddhist modernism begin.  And as far as introductions go, I thought it was quite concise and useful.  Taft picks out just a few of Shinzen's techniques, teaches us how to do them, and tells us what we might hope to gain from these practices.  He even includes 10 and 30 minute guided meditations that cover these on his website.  I particularly liked the way he explained the practice of investigating subtle bodily emotions by relating them to body language and our ability to recognize emotions in another person.  

So while I don't think the book advanced my understanding a ton, I would still recommend it as a starting point for someone who fits its target -- a science minded religious skeptic who wonders what all the hoo-haa with meditation is about.  You can cut through most of the clutter surrounding the question for these folks by simply saying, "just try it".  You don't need to believe anything or change any of your opinions to try it.  Just do X and see what you think.