Both Buddhist meditation and micro-phenomenology aim to reveal aspects of experience that normally go unnoticed, but neither approach has systematically described how experience becomes veiled or how those veils can be lifted. Drawing on written and oral meditation teachings and on micro-phenomenological interviews, the authors identify four types of veiling processes—attentional, emotional, intentional, and cognitive—that together obscure direct experience and foster the naive belief in a mind-independent external reality. The first part of the article details these veils and the processes that dissolve them, identifying several conducive gestures. The second part examines how meditation and micro-phenomenology elicit those gestures.
The experience of working with Zen koans—statements or stories used to transform conscious awareness—follows a structured pattern. Eight Zen students from Southern California, with 1 to 30 years of practice, described their koan practice in interviews. Analysis revealed six thematic clusters: motivation, approaches to working with koans, experiences during practice, moments of insight, the role of a teacher, and personal transformation. Participants reported positive changes such as improved emotional control and concentration, heightened awareness of prejudices and biases with the ability to suppress habitual associations, and a new acceptance of spiritual questions and doubts.
Despite impressive neuroscientific achievements, the discipline cannot explain human consciousness—the subjective experience—because consciousness is the only phenomenon in which we have complete confidence. The article suggests that to advance understanding of subjective experience, we must focus on how the body is thrown into the world in the here-and-now.