What Stands in the Way Becomes the Way: Dual and Non-Dual Approaches to Meditation Hindrances in Buddhist Traditions and Contemplative Science
Religions September 11, 2022 DOI: 10.3390/rel13090840 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Buddhism Meditation |
| Citations | 13 |
| Key points | Argues that the concept of meditation hindrances, particularly the idea that a hindrance can be taken as the way to liberation, makes the distinction between negative and positive effects ambiguous and questions whether a unified conception of "negative effect" can be maintained. |
Abstract
Meditation research tends to be focused on positive effects. Recent studies, however, have uncovered a range of potential negative effects, which may be more prevalent than one would expect. Several different conceptions of “negative effects” exist, and such effects are variously termed “challenging”, “unpleasant”, “adverse”, and “harmful”. Before work on a unifying conception of negative effects can begin, the notion of “meditation hindrances” needs to be clarified. Research on meditation hindrances is very scarce. Traditional Buddhist texts and more recent meditation manuals treat different kinds of meditation hindrances, defining them as reactions that impair or halt spiritual progress generally and access to absorption states specifically. Different strategies have been devised as means to renounce or counteract hindrances. However, one influential idea consists of taking a hindrance as the way to liberation, which either makes the distinction between positive and negative ambiguous or collapses it. This makes it questionable whether a unified conception of “negative effect” can be maintained at all. This article gives an overview of the concept of meditation hindrances and discusses both the problems and the potential benefits inherent in the idea of relativizing the distinction between negative and positive effects. Such an idea may be either harmful to practitioners or their greatest asset.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on buddhism, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mental balance and well-being: Building bridges between Buddhism and Western psychology. | 2006 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Buddhist Modernism and the Rhetoric of Meditative Experience | 1995 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Buddhist and Psychological Perspectives on Emotions and Well-Being | 2005 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Too Early to Tell: The Potential Impact and Challenges—Ethical and Otherwise—Inherent in the Mainstreaming of Dharma in an Increasingly Dystopian World | 2017 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| From self to nonself: The Nonself Theory | 2016 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
Citations in the library
Cited by 7
- The Third Wave of Meditation and Mindfulness Research and Implications for Challenging Experiences: Negative Effects, Transformative Psychological Growth, and Forms of Happiness Mindfulness June 11, 2025
- An 18-month meditation training selectively improves psychological well-being in older adults: A secondary analysis of a randomised controlled trial. PLoS One 2023
- Meditation Hindrances and Breakthroughs: A Multilevel First-Person Phenomenological Analysis Religions July 18, 2024
- The dawn of division: For an anthropological theory of consciousness through contemplative ethnography Anthropology of Consciousness January 12, 2025
- Meditation and neurofeedback: A systematic scoping review, synthesis, and future directions Imaging Neuroscience 2026
and 2 more in the library
Cites 16
- Mindfulness Interventions Annual Review of Psychology September 30, 2016
- Investigating the phenomenological matrix of mindfulness-related practices from a neurocognitive perspective. American Psychologist October 1, 2015
- The varieties of contemplative experience: A mixed-methods study of meditation-related challenges in Western Buddhists PLoS One May 24, 2017
- Prevalence of meditation-related adverse effects in a population-based sample in the United States Psychotherapy Research June 2, 2021
- Defining Meditation: Foundations for an Activity-Based Phenomenological Classification System. Frontiers in Psychology 2021
and 11 more in the library