Buddhist-derived meditation practices are currently being employed as a popular form of health promotion. While meditation programs draw inspiration from Buddhist textual sources for the benefits of meditation, these sources also acknowledge a wide range of other effects beyond health-related outcomes. The Varieties of Contemplative Experience study investigates meditation-related experiences that are typically underreported, particularly experiences that are described as challenging, difficult, distressing, functionally impairing, and/or requiring additional support. A mixed-methods approach featured qualitative interviews with Western Buddhist meditation practitioners and experts in Theravāda, Zen, and Tibetan traditions. Interview questions probed meditation experiences and influencing factors, including interpretations and management strategies. A follow-up survey provided quantitative assessments of causality, impairment and other demographic and practice-related variables. The content-driven thematic analysis of interviews yielded a taxonomy of 59 meditation-related experiences across 7 domains: cognitive, perceptual, affective, somatic, conative, sense of self, and social. Even in cases where the phenomenology was similar across participants, interpretations of and responses to the experiences differed considerably. The associated valence ranged from very positive to very negative, and the associated level of distress and functional impairment ranged from minimal and transient to severe and enduring. In order to determine what factors may influence the valence, impact, and response to any given experience, the study also identified 26 categories of influencing factors across 4 domains: practitioner-level factors, practice-level factors, relationships, and health behaviors. By identifying a broader range of experiences associated with meditation, along with the factors that contribute to the presence and management of experiences reported as challenging, difficult, distressing or functionally impairing, this study aims to increase our understanding of the effects of contemplative practices and to provide resources for mediators, clinicians, meditation researchers, and meditation teachers.

Children in the United States are at risk for numerous psychological problems, such as anxiety, attention problems, and mood disorders, and are underserved by current mental health provisions. The current study is a pilot trial to examine the effects of a nonelective, classroom-based, teacher-implemented, mindfulness meditation intervention on standard clinical measures of mental health and affect in middle school children. A total of 101 healthy sixth-grade students (55 boys and 46 girls) were randomized to either an Asian history course with daily mindfulness meditation practice (intervention group) or an African history course with a matched experiential activity (active control group). Self-reported data was collected by administering the Youth Self Report (YSR), a modified Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, and the Cognitive and Affective Mindfulness Measure -Revised before and after 6 weeks of meditation or active control condition. Both meditators and active controls decreased significantly on the YSR Internalizing Problems, Externalizing Problems, and Attention Problems subscales but did not differ in the extent of their improvements. Both groups also showed comparable improvements on measures in affect. Meditators were significantly less likely to develop suicidal ideation or thoughts of self-harm than controls. Improvements in affect were correlated with increases in mindfulness in meditators but not controls. These results suggest that mindfulness training may yield both unique and nonspecific benefits that are shared by other novel activities.

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While the trait of absorption has received a considerable amount of scientific study, states of absorption have been comparatively understudied and even less scholarly or scientific attention has been paid to those that are cultivated within the contemplative traditions of Islam and Judaism. This paper explores canonical descriptions of states of contemplative absorption in Islamic and Jewish traditions, specifically highlighting how they are often cultivated using sensory deprivation and sensory withdrawal, can be distressing and entail functional impairment considered normative in some contexts, and how some are set apart as the goal of specific meditative paths. The import of this survey goes beyond just historical significance, since these traditions assume, and recent research suggests it is plausible, that such states may be hyper-plastic and pivotal in both adaptive and maladaptive directions.

This chapter examines traditional descriptions of challenging stages of Jewish, Christian, and Islamicate meditative paths and some of the ways in which contemporary teachers and students in the West interpret them. It explores how these “dark nights” are understood in some contemplative systems as part of an oscillatory trajectory between expansive and constricting states of consciousness that ultimately lead to traditional goals. These contemporary traditions often draw upon classical mystical texts to appraise such challenging experiences but translate their medieval frameworks of purification into the arena of depth psychology. In introducing the conception of “non-linear paths,” this chapter seeks to highlight the ways in which certain meditation-related difficulties are interpreted and normalized even as individual variability and the unpredictable nature of these paths has been acknowledged for centuries in these traditions.