If you carefully read (
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=10176820&postcount=591) you find that this meta-analysis claims that "it is impossible to select components that might be considered universal or supplemental across practices."
And recent posts have determined that there
are universal components. Your strange TM inspeak aside, there is no convincing argument that meditation differs between schools. It may differ in the
approach, but not in the
terrain. Just like swimming may be breast-stroke or crawl, but you still cross the pool.
TBM is based on the notion that Human suffering is the result of the tendency to block things from being changed, because the fundamental principle of Buddhism is that everything is only variant (everything is changed and nothing is invariant).
This is taking one aspect, their notion of reincarnation, out of context. We are talking about meditation and mind - and TBM very definitely speaks of a single,
invariant, mystical level under all things.
.. where TBM looks only at the variant aspect of consciousness.
I disagree. My position is now clear.
I'll give you a concrete example according what is called TM checking, which is a systematic procedure that its aim is to tune TM practice to be done without any efforts in one's mind.
I thank you for that, however it does not communicate much to me. It's too full of inspeak and reliant on an insular experience; this is the opposite of what a science would look like, but it might get there one day if the windows are thrown open and some air is let in.
TBM is no more than the first stage of TM, where TM is actually the comprehensive mental practice that systematically and effortlessly enables the linkage among the invariant AND the variant essential properties of reality.
Well, I suppose this is where we part ways and I can't see a means to settle it. You will keep claiming that TM is the better and I will keep saying TBM (or any other system) is basically no different and neither of us has any way to compare the apples.
There's no science only strange language and anecdotes. You have thousands of links to dubious studies all trying to sciencify TM, but so far they lack punch - they are all about thin gruel effects on health which have to be heavily filtered to even see.
One has to practice a technique that actually enables the linkage among the invariant AND the variant. From your question one can conclude that your TBM practice did not achieve systematically and effortlessly this linkage.
Once again, my failings do not enter this story. It's about the claims made by TM as well as TBM.
Take, for example, this research:
Transcendental Meditation, mindfulness, and longevity: An experimental study with the elderly. (
http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/57/6/950/)
Another paygate link. From the blurb it has to do with health and life-expectancy in the elderly. I don't see the connection to what has come before.
I'll also use Slowvehicle's wonderful phrase, "
Argumentum ad catarractam", which is what these links of yours are becoming, and coming and coming and coming: you don't do us the courtesy of:
1. Supplying a readable study.
2. Supplying your own view on the study, your take, your conception.
3. Arguing in context and remaining on topic; rather you bring in
yet another study.
4. Answering questions that have gone before: like where do the terms variant, invariant and linkage appear in the studies you linked?
I've never been in a snow-storm, but I am getting that snow-job sensation.
