Meditation as First-Person Methodology: Real Promise—and Problems

Shear, Jonathan

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-01634-4_4

Cited by 6 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…We will refer to the experience that is aimed for in a practice as a "goal-state". In the main strand of academic literature, goal-states like those in Shamatha, Thai Forest, and Stillness Meditation have been treated as contentless experience, and this experience is described as having no content (e.g., Fasching, 2008;Forman, 2010Forman, /2011Shear, 1998Shear, /1999Shear, , 2014Stace, 1960Stace, /1961; see further Woods et al, in press-a). Academics have frequently argued or assumed that, since contentless experience has no content, all cases of this experience are identical (Almond, 1982;Bernhardt, 1990;Bucknell, 1989aBucknell, , 1989bForman, 1990a;Shear, 1990).…”

Section: Across Practices Aiming For Contentless Statesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Subjective Experiences of Committed Meditators Across Practices Aiming for Contentless States

Woods¹,

Windt²,

Brown³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Objectives: Contentless experience involves an absence of mental content such as thoughts and perceptions. It is often described as pure consciousness or complete stillness/silence, and is a goal in Shamatha, Thai Forest, and Stillness Meditation. This study examined the subjective character of the typical experience of stillness/silence reported in each practice, and whether there are differences in reports across traditions.Methods: Eighty-four Shamatha, 80 Thai Forest, and 88 Stillness Meditation participants (M lifetime hours practice = 2,305; median = 671; range = 5–34,021) provided useable responses to an online questionnaire. Participants indicated the extent to which 48 types of mental content described as absent or present in traditional texts were part of their deepest experience of stillness/silence during a specific retreat or during class and home practice.Results: In each tradition participants typically reported a highly positive experience involving low awareness of content such as thoughts and perceptions, and a high degree of abstract content such as calm and mental relaxation. Across the practices there were robust differences with respect to bliss/joy, wakefulness, absorptiveness, and depth.Conclusions: The reported experiences are contentless in the sense that participants reported little awareness of content such as thoughts and perceptions. However, the experiences are not the states devoid of all content (and therefore identical to one another) that have been classically referred to in academic literature. These findings demonstrate the importance of examining contentless experiences in a fine-grained manner that takes into account abstract forms of content and assesses differences as well as similarities.

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Section: Across Practices Aiming For Contentless Statesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Subjective Experiences of Committed Meditators Across Practices Aiming for Contentless States

Woods¹,

Windt²,

Brown³

et al. 2022

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Although the importance of first-person reports of meditative experience is frequently noted in the emergent field of contemplative science (e.g. [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29], thus far, what it is like to meditate, from moment to moment, at different stages of a given practice, has barely been addressed [e.g. [30][31][32][33][34][35][36].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Studying the experience of meditation through Micro-phenomenology

Paquet

Beek

Bitbol

et al. 2019

Current Opinion in Psychology

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Numerous scientific studies are conducted on the neurophysiological effects of meditation practices and on the neural correlates of meditative states. However, very few studies have been conducted on the experience associated with contemplative practice: what it is like to meditate -from moment to moment, at different stages of different forms of practice -remains almost invisible in contemporary contemplative science. Recently, "micro-phenomenological" interview methods have been developed to help us become aware of lived experience and describe it with rigor and precision. This article presents the results of a pilot project aiming at applying these methods to the description of meditative experience, and highlights the interest of such descriptions for understanding, practicing and teaching meditation.

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“…Some studies have already been conducted (independently by different groups) to assess the levels and various kinds of subjective experiences associated with different practices. One group correlates these experiences with the neurophysiological and neuropsychological data (Telles et al, 2015; Kok and Singer, 2017; Singer and Engert, 2018; Deepeshwar et al, 2019), whereas others study and discuss the phenomenological and subjective aspects (Shear and Jevning, 1999; Varela and Shear, 1999; Shear, 2006, 2013). Since meditation as a practice stems from ancient spiritual cultures, we feel that there is a need to bridge empirical investigations with philosophical and phenomenological approaches as discussed in the traditional literature.…”

Section: The Traditional Goal Of Meditation: a Natural Meditative Statementioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding Meditation Based on the Subjective Experience and Traditional Goal: Implications for Current Meditation Research

Reddy

Roy

2019

Front. Psychol.

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Owing to its benefits on various cognitive aspects, one’s emotions, and well-being, meditation has drawn interest from several researchers and common public alike. We have different meditation practices associated with many cultures and traditions across the globe. Current literature suggests significant changes in the neural activity among the different practices of meditation, as each of these practices contributes to distinct physiological and psychological effects. Although this is the case, we want to find out if there is an underlying commonality among all these different practices. Thus, we ask the following questions related to different practices of meditation, the traditional goal of meditation and its significance—what is the central purpose of meditation? Do traditions define the final goal of all the practices of meditation? Are the purpose and goal of these practices different or is there a common goal to be attained through all these distinct practices? Embracing the traditional perspective, through this paper, we want to emphasize that, although these techniques and practices may appear different on the periphery, eventually, they seem to subject one to the same experience at the end, a natural meditative state (discussed in various spiritual traditions as the goal of meditation). In view of future studies on different meditation practices and also those exploring this subjective state, we offer some interesting ideas based on the traditional insights into meditation. In this context, we would also like to make a few comments on the way contemporary researchers view different practices of meditation.

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Meditation as First-Person Methodology: Real Promise—and Problems

Cited by 6 publications

References 8 publications

Subjective Experiences of Committed Meditators Across Practices Aiming for Contentless States

Subjective Experiences of Committed Meditators Across Practices Aiming for Contentless States

Studying the experience of meditation through Micro-phenomenology

Understanding Meditation Based on the Subjective Experience and Traditional Goal: Implications for Current Meditation Research

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