The Science of Enlightenment: How Meditation Works, by Shinzen Young

After listening to a meditation guided by Shinzen Young in my meditation app, I wanted to know more about him. I was excited to see he’d written a book called The Science of Enlightenment: How Meditation Works. Books about the neuroscience of meditation are my jam.

Turns out, this was not a book about the neuroscience of meditation.

Meditation has made me kinder, more grateful, more resilient. I’m a better person for it. I want to take my practice deeper, and so I’ve been meditating more, with more intentionality, and I’m trying to read more about it. I want to understand better the mechanisms behind meditation. How does it, you know, work exactly?

Young’s book does not answer that question. Instead, he uses science language and metaphors to describe the practice of meditation. There’s some cool stuff in here, but it’s not what I was looking for. And he spends most of his time talking about concepts that are beyond me. Even after six years of a daily mindfulness meditation practice, I still very much feel like a beginner.

His discussion on impermanence, for instance, went almost entirely over my head. I still don’t understand what impermanence is or why it’s important to happiness and enlightenment. Though for what it’s worth, I’m incorporating his advice on noticing when things end, not just when they begin. The sound of a passing car might draw my attention, but I’m trying now to notice when that sound fades. But I can’t pretend I understand why this is valuable, despite having read the book.

Confession: I tend not to like books about meditation. I find the concepts too abstract, the writing too inaccessible. I feel the same frustration with books about philosophy and religion. Though I can point to any number of delightful exceptions, these genres as a whole are not my favorites.