the present article discusses the difficulties of defining mindfulness, delineates the proper scope of research into mindfulness practices, and explicates crucial methodological issues for interpreting results from investigations of mindfulness.

For doing so, the authors draw on their diverse areas of expertise to review the present state of mindfulness research, comprehensively summarizing what we do and do not know, while providing a prescriptive agenda for contemplative science, with a particular focus on assessment, mindfulness training, possible adverse effects, and intersection with brain imaging.

A manifesto of sorts for the major current trend in Western mindfulness research which accepts the therapeutic potential of meditation and now seaks to understand it on medicine’s terms: dose, side-effects, and mechanism of action.