Elf Sternberg

The practical claim is that we can become wiser and more compassionate through meditation. That may be true, but I'm pretty sure the benefits of reading, talking with people, and thinking about what we've learned are orders of magnitude greater.

Nah, just different. I doubt we can become "wiser" and "more compassionate"; what I found when I was meditating regularly was that it was a fabulous tool for controlling for my ADD, but when the office took away my meditation space I stopped and lost all the benefits, and like many ADDers haven't gone through the effort of finding a new space.

That said, it's just a self-discipline practice like Tai Chi or going to the gym regularly. I do it because I experience tangible, personally desirable results. I find the whole religious connection to it irrelevant, even if that's the tradition from which it emerges.

I just Brooks's buying in to the whole New Age mishmash a little incoherent.