Can Meditation Help Enable Human Flourishing?

The past decade has seen a wealth of neuroscientific research into the benefits of meditation, which goes far beyond mainstream conceptions of mindfulness.

A few years ago, philosopher Owen Flanagan appeared on the Partially Examined Life podcast to discuss his 2011 book, The Bodhisattva’s Brain. In this work, he argues that the Buddhist theory of human flourishing, when rendered in naturalistic terms, should be of interest to many in the West.

For Flanagan, implicit in Buddhism is the promise that one can achieve “a stable sense of serenity and equanimity” through the cultivation of Buddhist wisdom-which we might describe as a deep understanding of particular philosophical propositions and the Buddhist model of human psychology-alignment with Buddhist ethics, and embodiment of the virtues of compassion and loving-kindness.

What makes the project interesting is that, unlike much of Western philosophy, Buddhism contains a rigorous program of implementation for its virtue theory. By connecting philosophy, psychology, and ethics with a regime of practice, Buddhism becomes more of a way of life than a pure abstraction-and one that might be open to empirical validation. Such a project is not an simple one: bridges need to be built between the theory in question, the application of that philosophy, and the structure of…