10 More Ways the Government Wastes Your Money
9. More than half a million spent on a study of Buddhist meditation
Despite concerns about the availability of federal funding to study cures to the major diseases of the 21st Century, NIH (National Institute of Health) shelled out a total of $533,376, to investigate the effects of meditation not from scientific analysis, but from reading Buddhist texts.
Undermining the NIH’s demands for more funding, both of these studies, published in January 2014, have concluded that Buddhist literature, not science, is key to understanding meditation experiences. Taxpayers spent over half a million dollars incorporating Buddhist literature to “scientifically” analyze if meditation causes sleepiness or wakefulness, as well as to explain if and why some people see lights while meditating.
