The roles and impacts of worldviews in the context of meditation-related challenges.
Jared R Lindahl, Roman Palitsky, David J Cooper, Willoughby B Britton
Transcultural psychiatry August 1, 2023 Peer reviewed DOI: 10.1177/13634615221128679 via PubMed
Summary
Worldviews can influence meditation-related challenges, acting as both risk factors and remedies. Interviews with Buddhist meditation practitioners and experts reveal that while some individuals experience difficulties due to their worldviews, others find that adopting or changing a worldview helps alleviate distress during challenging meditation experiences. The study highlights the interplay between religious and scientific perspectives among practitioners in a modern context.
Study at a glance
| Population | Buddhist meditation practitioners and meditation experts |
|---|---|
| Key finding | Worldviews can serve as both risk factors for meditation-related challenges and remedies for mitigating distress associated with these challenges. |
Abstract
Previous research has shown that worldviews can serve as a coping response to periods of difficulty or struggle, and worldviews can also change on account of difficulty. This paper investigates the impacts worldviews have on the nature and trajectory of meditation-related challenges, as well as how worldviews change or are impacted by such challenges. The context of meditation-related challenges provided by data from the Varieties of Contemplative Experience research project offers a unique insight into the dynamics between worldviews and meditation. Buddhist meditation practitioners and meditation experts interviewed for the study report how, for some, worldviews can serve as a risk factor impacting the onset and trajectory of meditation-related challenges, while, for others, worldviews (e.g., being given a worldview, applying a worldview, or changing a worldview) were reported as a remedy for mitigating challenging experiences and/or their associated distress. Buddhist meditation practitioners and teachers in the contemporary West are also situated in a cultural context in which religious and scientific worldviews and explanatory frameworks are dually available. Furthermore, the context of "Buddhist modernism" has also promoted a unique configuration in which the theory and practice of Buddhism is presented as being closely compatible with science. We identify and discuss the various impacts that religious and scientific worldviews have on meditation practitioners and meditation teachers who navigate periods of challenge associated with the practice.