So long as researchers are investigating “meditation” in the abstract, they will miss out on the process by focusing too much on the goals. They will assume that the “goal” is a particular state that can be attained and stabilized, and will fail to understand the various techniques that are required for getting there in the first place.

A comparison of the path of meditative attainment as presented by the fifth-century, Sri Lankan author Buddhaghosa and by the sixteenth-century, Tibetan author Dakpo Tashi Namgyal along with some reflections on what this might mean for contemporary, “scientific” research on meditative states of consciousness.