Meditation Sickness and the Dangers of Buddhist Practice with Pierce Salguero
The Imperfect Buddha PodcastShow Notes
Pierce Salguero joins us to discuss his new co-edited volume, Meditation Sickness: A Sourcebook on the Dangers of Buddhist Practice. While modern mindfulness frames meditation purely as a wellness tool, the Buddhist tradition has long recognized its inherent psychological and physical risks. We explore multi-tradition historical texts, the anatomy of practice crises, and the ethical responsibility of teachers and app developers to provide something along the lines of informed consent.
Key Discussion Points & Timeline
Contrasting modern wellness marketing with historical accounts of meditative danger; the book provides a sourcebook for Dharma teachers, clinicians, and serious practitioners.
Multi-Tradition Mapping throughout covers Pali, medieval Chinese, Japanese, and Tibetan sources, many of which we touch on.
Traditional sources diagnose destabilization and even offer a range of physical, energetic, and lifestyle remedies to mediate crisis: whether they would be a good fit for today’s practitioner is another matter.
Challenging the modern claim that adverse effects only happen to the unprepared or mentally fragile.
Classical lineages show that severe physical ailments and mental destabilization can happen randomly, even to advanced practitioners.
The hidden risks of unmonitored, commercialized meditation apps.
Why creators have an ethical duty to move past treating meditation as a risk-free panacea and offer clear safety guardrails.
How different cultures draw the line between a spiritual breakthrough and clinical pathology.
The ongoing project of integrating traditional remedies with modern psychology and neuroscience.
Links & Resources Mentioned
The Book: Meditation Sickness: A Sourcebook on the Dangers of Buddhist Practice.
Guest Website: here (Includes the book's introduction).
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