Relationships between Religious and Scientific Worldviews in the Narratives of Western Buddhists Reporting Meditation-Related Challenges

Western Buddhist meditators often draw on both religious and scientific worldviews to make sense of meditation-related challenges. Interviews with 68 meditators and 33 meditation experts revealed five ways these worldviews relate: conflict, compatibility, nested relationships, discrete domains, and complementarity. These varied relationships carry existential weight and influence how meditators respond to challenges. The findings suggest that the scientific study of contemplative practices should consider the diverse ways religion and science interact, and that nuanced understandings of these relationships can help practitioners and teachers address meditation-related difficulties.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Contemporary Buddhist meditators in the West are likely to find themselves engaged in practices with rich associations with both religious and scientific worldviews. Meditation-related challenges can provoke existential concerns that make unexplored relationships between religious and scientific worldviews more important and explicit for Western Buddhist meditators, who may turn to both religion and science for making sense of these challenges. Interviews with 68 meditators and 33 meditation experts were analyzed to examine how meditators and meditation teachers understand the roles of, and relationships between, scientific and religious worldviews in the context of meditation-related challenges. Observed themes included: conflict between science and religion, compatibility between science and religion, nested relationships between science and religion, science and religion as discrete domains, and complementarity between science and religion. These themes suggest an expansion of existing understandings of the relationships between religion and science as they apply to Buddhist meditators, especially in the context of meditation-related challenges. The variety of relationships between religion and science, their existential relevance for meditators, and their interaction with responses to meditation-related challenges suggest that varied relationships between religious and scientific worldviews are important considerations in the scientific study of contemplative practices. Nuanced understandings of how religion and science relate may also benefit practitioners, experts, and their communities when addressing meditation-related challenges.