The panel examines how Buddhist meditation instructors and practitioners interpret, respond to, and manage the potential challenges of meditative practice. The panel adopts an interdisciplinary approach, analyzing the complex nature of meditation from religious, cultural, historical, psychological, and gender perspectives. Six panelists examine meditation-related health concerns experienced by lay and monastic Buddhists in different geographical areas, including Tibet, Nepal, Taiwan, the United States, Burma, and Thailand. Their combined efforts reveal the intricate nature of meditation, highlighting its connections not only to individual experiences but also to larger institutional frameworks. The discussion makes a significant contribution to the exploration of strategies for preventing, alleviating, and effectively managing potential challenges that may arise from meditation practice. By highlighting the limitations of a one-size-fits-all approach in meditation research and practice, it advocates for a more nuanced and culturally sensitive methodology in contemplative studies, Buddhist studies, and religious studies.
By the eleventh century, Tibetan contemplatives devised practices to intentionally dispel obstructions to their health and wellbeing. These new practices were designed to both counteract challenging experiences that emerged during meditation and to enhance meditative performance. Meditators integrated novel and known principles of Buddhist contemplation to remedy psychosomatic and psychosocial disorders. Contemplative remedial interventions for dispelling and methods of enhancement were recorded in Tibetan meditation manuals, compiled in anthologies, and circulated among practitioner communities. This paper gives attention to a suite of practices that were innovated from the eleventh through the fifteenth centuries and recorded in anthologies by the founder of the Drikung Kagyü order, Jigten Gönpo Rinchen Pel (1143-1217) and the Sakya scholar Minyak Drakap Dorjé (d. 1491). Our analysis of select practices will provide an understanding of the generative processes employed in the design of practices for human health and insights about an ethnopsychology of Tibetan contemplative practices.
Most psychological and clinical research in the United States on “adverse meditation effects” has studied “meditators-in-distress” of European descent who utilize modern(ist) meditation forms. This paper, written from my dual perspective as both religious studies scholar and psychotherapist, offers a counterpoint, drawing on ethnographic interviews with Nepali psychiatrist Pawan Sharma and his treatment of “meditation-related psychosis.” Practicing in what he calls a “meditation culture,” Sharma argues that contemporary clinicians should better account for religio-cultural difference. For example, he doesn’t pathologize Nepalese temple-goers who experience “transient possession” because such episodes are socially normative. But Sharma is also resolutely biomedically-minded asserting that, ultimately, it’s “all about the neurochemicals.” He believes a “core psychopathology” remains consistent among “meditators-in-distress” throughout history across cultures. Nonetheless, Sharma is also open to healing resources typically categorized as “religious.” I conclude by considering Sharma’s vision “that clinicians and religious scholars should work together” to care for meditators-in-distress.
The paper investigates the concepts of “meditation sickness” within Chinese Buddhism, with a focus on lectures delivered by a Taiwanese monk Shengyan (1931-2009). Shengyan's approach to addressing this issue is marked by a rational perspective, contrasting with the mythical beliefs prevalent in Taiwanese religions. He distinguishes between “inner demons” (unwholesome thoughts and incorrect attitudes) and “external demons” (demonic interference) in meditation, emphasizing the importance of cultivating a healthy and confident mind to overcome these challenges. Furthermore, Shengyan highlights the necessity of having qualified teachers and recognized lineages in meditative practices to avoid adverse effects. He advocates for the preservation of the “Han transmission of Chinese Buddhism” by establishing the Dharma Drum Lineage of Chinese Chan, emphasizing standardized training and religious professionalism. This study offers a unique perspective on meditation sickness within the contexts of individual protection and institutional authenticity.
Cheung Seng Kan is a contemporary Chinese American healer in the New York City area. He is a node of transnational religious healing using acupuncture, qigong, reiki, Buddhist chants, and more. In 2012, he became the center of an immigrant healing community consisting of over three dozen relatives, friends, students, and patients. In contemporary Chinese culture, zouhuorumo or “leaving the path and demons entering,” describes deviation from proper self-cultivation or spiritual practices. It applies to martial arts, qigong, Buddhist and Daoist contexts. I interviewed Cheung on what he has learned and what he teaches to his community regarding zouhuorumo, especially qigong deviation and zen sickness. He elaborates on the various types of deviation, along with their causes and ways to avoid them. I argue that to understand his explanations, we should consider how he interweaves Confucian (filial piety), Buddhist (dukkha), Daoist (effortless action wuwei), and popular Chinese religious (astrology) principles.
This paper explores some of the particularities of the meditation-teaching models of the Burmese lay meditation master and first Accountant General of Independent Burma, Sayagyi U Ba Khin (1899–1971). While much scholarship has glossed over his and his students’ charismatic-healing modalities, I argue here that charismatic healing was at the center of U Ba Khin’s teaching practices. Because U Ba Khin’s experimentalist approach to meditation often entailed healing modalities that called for intensive approaches to meditation, he also dealt with many cases in which his students encountered serious difficulties and found themselves in states of unwellness that had to be negotiated in various ways, both medical and meditative. Through an analysis of several anecdotes related by U Ba Khin in his oral discourses, I bring to light a range of meditation challenges—and context-specific solutions to those challenges—encountered by those coming to learn vipassanā from U Ba Khin.
Institutions of Theravada Buddhism do not socially recognize women as female monks. Nevertheless, women – known as Bhikkhunis – continue to receive ordination and practice, despite this lack of formal recognition. While prior literature on bhikkhunis has focused on the personal narrative and charismatic qualities of the movement’s founder, Venerable Dhammananda, this paper instead focuses on the meditation techniques bhikkhunis apply to not only train toward enlightenment, but also ‘undo’ meditator’s prior meditation techniques that have led to forms of meditation sickness. Through a presentation of the visions some meditators experience at this bhikkhuni temple, accompanied by personal interpretations, I argue for the importance of gendered mentorship in meditation practice to alleviate the negative effects of meditation, a topic that has been generally neglected in Buddhist studies. Implicit to this argument is the prevailing cultural beliefs of female rebirth as a karmic consequence, and how these bhikkhunis’ meditation techniques and explanations reconstitute gender roles in Buddhism.