Editorial: Deepening consciousness: what phenomenology, yogic, and Buddhist meditation can contribute from a psychological perspective.
Christopher Gutland, Selenia Di Fronso, Stephan Schleim
Frontiers in Psychology March 18, 2026 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1815107 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Buddhism Meditation Philosophy of mind |
| Keywords | Methodology Consciousness Yoga First-person methods |
| Key points | Argues that the interface between meditative transformation and phenomenological description constitutes a shared research problem across philosophy, psychology, and methodology, and proposes that phenomenology must examine whether its methods can address altered and cultivated modes of consciousness or must be retooled for them. |
Abstract
If meditative practice can durably transform experience, and if phenomenology can refine how conscious experience becomes describable, then the interface between transformation and description becomes a shared research problem-philosophical, psychological, and methodological. Addressing it requires the traditions to move beyond conventional self-descriptions. Phenomenology is challenged to ask whether its methods can be applied to (or must be retooled for) altered and cultivated modes of consciousness, including healthier and more aware forms of lived experience.
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 |