The meeting of meditative disciplines and western psychology: A mutually enriching dialogue.

Meditation is a widely practiced and researched psychotherapeutic method, but its integration with Western psychology has been hindered by misunderstandings that overlook the richness of meditative traditions and their underlying psychologies and philosophies. These traditions offer valuable insights into cognition, attention, mental training, health, pathology, and human potentials. Approaching meditative traditions with greater cultural and conceptual sensitivity could lead to mutual enrichment, benefiting both meditative practices and Western psychology.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Meditation is now one of the most enduring, widespread, and researched of all psychotherapeutic methods. However, to date the meeting of the meditative disciplines and Western psychology has been marred by significant misunderstandings and by an assimilative integration in which much of the richness and uniqueness of meditation and its psychologies and philosophies have been overlooked. Also overlooked have been their major implications for an understanding of such central psychological issues as cognition and attention, mental training and development, health and pathology, and psychological capacities and potentials. Investigating meditative traditions with greater cultural and conceptual sensitivity opens the possibility of a mutual enrichment of both the meditative traditions and Western psychology, with far-reaching benefits for both.