Measuring a Journey without Goal: Meditation, Spirituality, and Physiology.

Meditation's secular benefits—lower blood pressure, reduced cortisol, cortical thickening, and brain changes linked to attention and emotion regulation—are secondary to its primary spiritual aim of transformation. This review contrasts the relaxation response model with mindfulness research emphasizing attention and alertness, showing how Buddhist texts can guide scientific questions. It proposes triangulating spiritual texts, first-person neurophenomenological accounts, and physiological/cognitive measures to understand meditation in both health and spiritual contexts.

Study at a glance

Abstract

The secular practice of meditation is associated with a range of physiological and cognitive effects, including lower blood pressure, lower cortisol, cortical thickening, and activation of areas of the brain associated with attention and emotion regulation. However, in the context of spiritual practice, these benefits are secondary gains, as the primary aim is spiritual transformation. Despite obvious difficulties in trying to measure a journey without goal, spiritual aspects involved in the practice of meditation should also be addressed by experimental study. This review starts by considering meditation in the form of the relaxation response (a counterpart to the stress response), before contrasting mindfulness research that emphasizes the role of attention and alertness in meditation. This contrast demonstrates how reference to traditional spiritual texts (in this case Buddhist) can be used to guide research questions involving meditation. Further considerations are detailed, along with the proposal that research should triangulate spiritual textual sources, first person accounts (i.e., neurophenomenology), and physiological/cognitive measures in order to aid our understanding of meditation, not only in the secular context of health benefits, but also in the context of spiritual practice.