Mindfulness Meditation

Mindfulness meditation, particularly breath-focused ānāpānasati, reveals features of consciousness that align with and challenge Sartre's philosophy. First-person accounts from meditators generally support Sartre's view of consciousness as spontaneous, free, and intentional. However, Sartre's phenomenology oversimplifies the relationship between pre-reflective and reflective consciousness, and does not fully account for the distracted, unfocused, and obsessively thought-oriented nature of consciousness that meditators experience.

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Abstract

In this article, I consider the rising interest in mindfulness meditation in the West and submit it to an analysis from a Sartrean phenomenological and ontological perspective. I focus on a common form of Buddhist meditation known as ānāpānasati, which focuses on the breath, in order to draw connections between common obstacles and experiences among meditation practitioners and Sartre’s understanding of consciousness. I argue that first-person reports generally support a Sartrean view of consciousness as spontaneous, free, and intentional, but I also highlight areas where Sartre’s phenomenology and ontology oversimplify the complex relationship between the pre-reflective and reflective modes of consciousness. I contend too that Sartre does not always take seriously enough the distracted, unfocused, and obsessively thought-oriented nature of consciousness.