Meditation Sickness

"Meditation Sickness provides a much-needed corrective to an idealized view of meditation by documenting the long history of Asian Buddhist discourse around the etiology, symptoms, and treatments for meditation-related difficulties. The context and perspectives presented across its chapters lay to rest the myth that the ‘dangers’ of meditation are due to incorrect practice or a flawed practitioner, while also offering guidance that could help meditators-in-distress today. The book authoritatively sets the record straight: meditation has never been without risks or harms, and difficulties can arise even under optimal circumstances." - Nicholas Canby, Brown University; Senior Clinician, Cheetah House

"I wish Meditation Sickness had been out twelve years ago when I started researching the effects of meditation. It should be mandatory reading for all mindfulness researchers, clinicians, and teachers. Reports and discussion of meditation's adverse effects have a long history that takes us back to early Buddhism. The older accounts translated here are impressively similar to many contemporary ones and offer us a wonderful opportunity to better understand human consciousness." - Miguel Farias, University of Oxford, author of The Buddha Pill: Can Meditation Change You?

"This volume is of not only great importance as it will help support a necessary conversation about the adverse effects of meditation but also great value because it compiles in one place a truly arresting array of texts, interviews, and ethnographic material on the subject. The result is a refreshing and original approach in Buddhist studies." - Amy Langenberg, Eckerd College

"Meditation Sickness will serve as an unprecedented resource for researching and teaching courses on the relationship between Buddhism and medicine, Buddhist meditation more broadly, and historical and cultural approaches to disease." - William A. McGrath, New York University