Meditation Sickness
The Oxford Handbook of Meditation October 8, 2020 Peer reviewed DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198808640.013.45
Summary
Buddhists traditionally believed that achieving liberation necessitates either perfect concentration or supernatural insight, leading to concerns about the challenges in attaining these states. The concept of 'meditation sicknesses' emerged, referring to undesirable conditions that hinder concentration and distort insight. This chapter reviews Buddhist texts discussing these meditation sicknesses, focusing on obstacles to concentration and the issues related to insight found mainly in Mahayana, Chan, and Zen teachings.
Study at a glance
| Key finding | The chapter discusses the concept of meditation sicknesses in Buddhism, which arise from difficulties in achieving concentration and insight. |
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Abstract
Abstract Buddhists commonly assumed the path to liberation to require perfect concentration or supernatural insight, or the combination of the two. Concerns were therefore often voiced about the inability to attain concentration and the possibility of insight going awry. Buddhists came to regard these undesirable conditions as sickness and called them meditation sicknesses. This chapter provides an overview of canonical Buddhist discourses about these two meditation sicknesses. It begins with a discussion of the hindrances to the attainment of concentration and then proceeds to discuss concerns about insight, which were voiced mainly in Mahayana and Chan and Zen sources.