In the process of finally taking-on a project long promised (analysis of source documents for a popular form of 'jhana-lite'), came across this practice narrative -- quite worth reading, IME.

Also I searched DhO for 'Bucknell', in case everyone already knew about this guy --  finding only my own mentions of his name.

Anyway, here's arguably a noteworthy demonstration of 'pragmatic' methodology going back 30+ years:

Roderick S. Bucknell, "Experiments in Insight Meditation," Australian Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 3 (1983), 96-117. Republished in The Meditative Way: Readings in the theory and practice of Buddhist meditation, edited by Rod Bucknell and Chris Kang (Richmond: Curzon, 1997).

http://www.buddhismtoday.com/english/meditation/Vip/016-experiment.htm

This is a very nice report. I think anyone with a keen interest in the hobby of Buddhist science of mind could use this article all by themselves and understand reliably. What is perhaps missing is insight into how one causes events/troublesome events for oneself and puts many things in motion with have to-be-addressed consequences, and then how one can start to see what is reliable and when awareness stops coveting content.

Thanks for pulling that up.

Good point – the emphasis on methodology of insight (btw a fair example of genuine phenomenology) with little indication of the 'soteriological' or what one might call the sila / virtue angle (kusala / akusala)* -- that is, what to do with one's life and why.

Also, the tendency towards virtuosity of purely mental transformation seems (IME -- an interpretation possibly biased in some ways) to pop-up often in pragmatic Buddhist circles.

* These terms are commonly translated as 'wholesome/unwholesome', 'profitable/unprofitable', skillful/unskillful'. I've toyed recently with adding to this list 'harmful/harmless', which may not be that original.