The Dark Side of Mindfulness

person

There's a new article in The Atlantic on some of the negative effects meditation has had on people.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/09/meditation-willoughby-britton-downsides/688474/?gift=WUeIUHSFKauOwPXVhMCqa12g-b_Z0bJCXq1c6qabN7s
In another meditation adjacent forum I'm on its gotten a bit of discussion. I appreciated one commentor pointing out that the possible dark complications of meditation have been long known about I'll paste one of her paragraphs rather than making it seem like my own.

These warnings aren’t new though. Buddhist texts identify “sloth and torpor” as a hindrance, Zen has explicitly warned against “Zen sickness” (dizziness, trembling, hallucinations), and “cold ashes and dry wood,” mistaking quietism for awakening. There are old warnings against reading emptiness or nonduality as nihilism fairly extensively as well. Dissociation isn’t nonduality, psychological deadening isn’t realization, unusual states aren’t enlightenment; traditions have been trying to tease these apart for a long time. What’s newer is the systematic clinical documentation of it in the modern West, and that part I do think Britton’s added something valuable for other psychologists or teachers who push more than they should.

My feeling is that meditation is just one aspect of the 8 fold path. Stripping it of its context for modern sensibilities and a wider appeal also removes much of the guiderails and support keeping one on the beneficial path. There's also the element in the article of teachers and groups being resistant to notions that practice can be anything but beneficial. I think this is another aspect of bringing something to a new environment. People want to be positive and sort of evangelical to spread the benefits, negative talk removes some of that and also cuts into the cultish behavior groups can fall into.

I think we'll eventually have fully functioning western style meditation practices, but it'll take time to get it completely right.

Jeroen

Well, the article certainly is thorough in terms of gathering commentary. A lot of prominent members of the American Buddhist teacher community pass the review. But I’m still detecting a lack of acceptance that meditation could be anything but good. For myself, I long since determined that long stretches of meditation put unnecessary stress on my mind, and I started limiting meditation time to sessions of not more than twenty minutes.

The thing is, these negative symptoms that meditation brings up could be hidden problems within the mind that are just surfacing. Osho warned about this back in the seventies, that the mind of modern man contained too much junk to just start meditating in a vipassana style. He advised a cathartic meditation called “the Dynamic” to be done for 3 to 6 months first. Perhaps he was ahead of his time.

What I find surprising is the amount of negative effects being cited; in some studies seven to thirteen percent of participants, in other studies a quarter. These are not minor numbers. That’s a lot of people.