Concurrent Session 5 – The Rhetoric of Nonconceptuality and the Role of Analysis in Meditation and Mindfulness: Reconciling Traditional Buddhist and Modern Scientific Approaches

As Buddhist meditation practices have been transmitted and translated from
their traditional contexts to the modern secular domains of scientific research and clinical psychology, many of the normative dimensions of the tradition have been de-emphasized. In particular, the modern study and appropriation of Buddhist meditation practices have tended to downplay analytical, investigative practices in favor of rhetorics of nonconceptuality and direct experience. This panel will address the limitations of defining meditation in terms of a bare experiencing that requires a reduction in, or transcending of, thinking. This panel will also draw out the implications in studying and promoting an approach to meditation that is unable to take into account the various ways in which Buddhists have insisted that right view, wise discrimination, and analytical meditation are essential for both contemplative practice and ethical behavior