Meditation experiences through a developmental lens: Does the “Stages of Insight”, a Buddhist model of meditative progression, apply to contemporary meditators?
May 27, 2025 Prai Wattanatakulchat, Julieta Galante, Timothy Wood et al. preprint
Unwanted meditation-related experiences are common and alternate with positive ones, but predicting them is difficult because they have been studied as isolated events. This survey of 886 U.S. meditators tested whether a modern interpretation of the Stages of Insight (SoI), a Buddhist model of meditative progression, fits contemporary meditators. Only four of the eight stages could be assessed. The pattern of item endorsement predicted the number of stages reached better than chance, but early stages were not more frequently endorsed than later ones, and more meditation experience did not predict classification into later stages. The findings provide no clear evidence that the SoI model applies across contexts and traditions, but show that traditional models can guide research on meditation experiences as developmental processes.