From Buddhist meditation to psychological well-being: an ethical-cultural training ecology model
Yukun Mei, Jiyu Li, Sarawadee Phuchomsri
Frontiers in Psychology September 3, 2026 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1938434 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Buddhism Meditation |
| Key points | Proposes that Buddhist meditation functions as a coordinated practice ecology, where mechanisms like attention and compassion acquire distinct roles through asymmetric dependencies, and that authority reorganization serves as a higher-order explanatory principle rather than an independent mechanism. |
Abstract
Buddhist meditation is widely studied in relation to mindfulness, emotion regulation, compassion, and well-being, yet it is often operationalized as an attentional or stress-reduction technique detached from the ethical and cultural conditions of practice. This article develops the ethical-cultural training ecology model, a Hypothesis and Theory framework that treats Buddhist meditation as a coordinated practice ecology rather than a single psychological technique. The model distinguishes four nested analytic levels. Ethical-cultural ecology provides the process-shaping context; a probabilistic functional hierarchy links attention, emotion regulation, self-decentering, nonattachment, and compassionate reorientation; authority reorganization provides a higher-order explanatory principle; and multidimensional well-being defines the distal outcome domain. Its distinctive claim is relational rather than additive: familiar mechanisms are hypothesized to acquire different functions through asymmetric dependencies and ecological configuration. Attention may increase observability, emotion regulation may increase affective tolerability, self-decentering may demote self-related narratives from self-truth, nonattachment may weaken their action-guiding grip, and compassion may provide ethical-relational direction while recursively supporting emotional safety. Authority reorganization is not proposed as an independent latent mechanism. Self-transcendence is treated as a possible experiential and relational outcome. Three theory-driven hypothetical illustrations specify predicted and disconfirming patterns, and five propositions translate the framework into prospective, incremental, mediation, and configuration-level hypotheses for future empirical testing.
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
Cites 37
- The benefits of being present: Mindfulness and its role in psychological well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 2003
- Using Self-Report Assessment Methods to Explore Facets of Mindfulness Assessment January 27, 2006
- Mindfulness: A proposed operational definition. Clinical Psychology Science and Practice 2004
- Mindfulness training as a clinical intervention: A conceptual and empirical review. Clinical Psychology Science and Practice 2003
- Mechanisms of mindfulness Journal of Clinical Psychology December 29, 2005
and 32 more in the library