On a related note, I found this ebook ("Mindfulness in Plain English") an interesting read, clearing misconceptions about meditation and how it is related to mindfulness.

http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html

That one is great. Especially worth recommending in a place like this where I'd expect more people than average would prefer a resource that isn't full of religious stuff one might not agree with.

I loved it, as while this book was written by a Buddhist monk, apart from an odd reference here and there, the book is a "manual" first and foremost. It describes the mechanics of mindfulness meditation, rather than the Buddhist spiritual basis for it. It doesn't make any promises of supernatural results, and in general is a reasonably painless read for atheists or people who otherwise don't share the authors beliefs. The only mentions of Buddhism is for historical context.

In a similar vein, I'd recommend Gil Fronsdal's "Introduction to meditation" series of podcasts: http://www.audiodharma.org/series/1/talk/1762/

They're a great companion to Mindfulness in Plain English, and they're also largely religion free and no-nonsense.

Buddhism does not really fit the (Western) context of a "religion" anyways - probably that's why. That is especially true for the more ancient forms of Buddhism - which the author of this book subscribes to.

i second Gil Fronsdal's work, The Issue At Hand. Great insight, no pun intended :-) http://www.insightmeditationcenter.org/books-articles/the-is...

An interesting point he talks about is that growing up at the intersection between science and art lead him towards mindfulness. This reminded me of pgs Hackers and Painters connection.

Jon Kabat-Zinn gave an hour-long talk at Google I found excellent too (they talk about it in this interview).

Both restful and thought-provoking. If you're mildly interested, I recommend watching the video.

I think this is the link -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nwwKbM_vJc -- but I'm in China, which blocks YouTube, so please correct if it's wrong.

Edit: his Wikipedia page -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Kabat-Zinn -- links to a bunch of talks he's given -- http://www.google.co.in/search?q=Jon+Kabat-Zinn&hl=en...

JKZ has some good videos on YT for anyone looking to learn more about mindfulness meditation.

Could someone please give an executive summary? (I know there may be some irony in asking this.)

mindful meditation is currently popular in western medicine. the idea is that you sit somewhere peaceful, close your eyes, and think about your breathing. pretty much immediately you're going to start thinking about something else, so you gently notice, acknowledge that you're distracted, put the thought aside, and go back to thinking about your breath.

that's it, basically. you repeat that and you slowly get better and catching the thoughts and not thinking them. there are then various claims made about benefits that arise from doing this.

disclaimer - i'm just describing mindful meditation, which i use and find helpful (it's easy to do and may reduce stress). the recording itself is a bit gushing / over-enthusiastic for me in places, but it's an interview with someone connected to mindful meditation. there's a walk-through of what i describe above from about 19:45.

I've been doing this for a couple of months to deal with anxiety, I can't recommend it enough.

sorry... this comes across as pure advertising to me.