Predictive Engagement and Awakening: A Neurophilosophical Essay on NEAS, Shamatha, and Vipassana
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) July 12, 2026 preprint DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.21318600 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Topics | Buddhism Meditation |
| Keywords | Existentialism Metaphysics Contemplation Relation database Heuristic Epistemology Aesthetics Dialectic Action physics Literal mathematical logic Cognitive psychology |
| Key points | Proposes that Buddhist meditation should be understood as a transformation of embodied, affectively weighted, socially embedded world-participation rather than as modification of internal models, and introduces the Neuro-Existential Architecture System as a heuristic for this reinterpretation. |
Abstract
This essay introduces the Neuro-Existential Architecture System (NEAS) as a newly proposed neurophilosophical heuristic for interpreting Buddhist meditation in terms of predictive engagement. Moving beyond representationalist readings of predictive processing, it argues that meditation should not be understood primarily as the modification of internal models, but as a transformation of embodied, affectively weighted, socially embedded, and existentially oriented world-participation. NEAS seeks to contribute to a contemporary understanding of ancient contemplative wisdom practices by articulating how such practices may transform the relation between attention, affect, selfhood, meaning, and agency. The model distinguishes three functional modes of predictive engagement: prereflective transparency, in which experience is immediately identified with affective and self-related contents; the Witnessing-Space, in which thoughts, sensations, affects, and impulses become visible as phenomena within experience; and the Logos-Vektor/Logos-Prior, through which deeper existential orientations are reconfigured. On this basis, Shamatha is reconstructed as the cultivation of the Witnessing-Space, while Vipassana is interpreted as the activation of Level 2 through insight into impermanence, suffering, and non-self. The three marks of existence—anicca, dukkha, and anattā—are understood not as reifying metaphysical claims or literal neural priors, but as contemplatively cultivated Logos-Priors that transform how permanence, grasping, ownership, and selfhood are enacted. Finally, awakening is interpreted in secular and neurophenomenological terms as a fragile, recurrent, and non-appropriative recalibration of predictive engagement rather than as a stable possession, final attainment, or metaphysical state.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on meditation, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mindfulness: A proposed operational definition. | 2004 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Mechanisms of mindfulness | 2005 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| How Does Mindfulness Meditation Work? Proposing Mechanisms of Action From a Conceptual and Neural Perspective | 2011 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for depression | 2006 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-transcendence (S-ART): a framework for understanding the neurobiological mechanisms of mindfulness | 2012 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |