Submit to Special Issue Submit Abstract to Special Issue Review for Religions Propose a Special Issue

Journal Menu

Journal Browser

Buddhist Meditation: Culture, Mindfulness, and Rationality

Editor
Special Issue Information
Keywords
Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue
Published Papers

A special issue of Religions (ISSN 2077-1444). This special issue belongs to the section "Religions and Health/Psychology/Social Sciences".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 November 2026 | Viewed by 10302

Share This Special Issue

Editor

Dr. Heather Kempton

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

School of Psychology, Massey University Auckland, Auckland 0632, New Zealand
Interests: meditation; mindfulness; spirituality; Buddhism; transformation

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to invite you to contribute to a Special Issue of Religions that explores the multifaceted dimensions of Buddhist meditation, focusing on its cultural contexts, psychological mechanisms, and philosophical foundations. Buddhist meditation has long been a subject of scholarly interest across disciplines such as religious studies, anthropology, psychology, and cognitive science. In recent decades, practices such as mindfulness have gained prominence in both clinical and secular settings, yet the cultural, doctrinal, and rational underpinnings of these practices are often simplified or overlooked, making this an important area for deeper interdisciplinary inquiry.

The aim of this Special Issue is to bring together diverse scholarly perspectives to critically examine how Buddhist meditation is understood, practiced, and adapted across historical and contemporary contexts. This Special Issue aligns with the scope of Religions by fostering interdisciplinary dialogue on religious traditions, spiritual practices, and their intersections with modern life. Moreover, this Issue seeks to bridge classical Buddhist scholarship with contemporary applications, offering insights into both the spiritual and psychological dimensions of meditation.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

The historical development of meditation practices in Buddhist traditions;
The role of meditation in different Buddhist schools and cultures;
The adaptation of mindfulness in contemporary therapeutic contexts;
Cognitive and emotional effects of meditative practices;
Philosophical debates on rationality and introspection in Buddhist thought;
Ethical and epistemological implications of secularizing Buddhist practices;
Comparative approaches to Buddhist meditation across traditions;
Critiques of the modern mindfulness movement and its cultural translations.

We hope this Special Issue will deepen the understanding of Buddhist meditation as both a spiritual discipline and a tool for psychological well-being. By bringing together scholars from diverse fields, this collection will highlight Buddhist meditation as a living tradition and a dynamic area of research.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 200–300 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the Guest Editor or to the Assistant Editor of Religions. Abstracts will be reviewed by the Guest Editors for the purpose of ensuring their proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer review.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Heather Kempton
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

Buddhism
meditation
mindfulness
culture
psychology
philosophy
rationality
introspection
secularization
in-terdisciplinarity

Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue

Ease of navigation: Grouping papers by topic helps scholars navigate broad scope journals more efficiently.
Greater discoverability: Special Issues support the reach and impact of scientific research. Articles in Special Issues are more discoverable and cited more frequently.
Expansion of research network: Special Issues facilitate connections among authors, fostering scientific collaborations.
External promotion: Articles in Special Issues are often promoted through the journal's social media, increasing their visibility.
Reprint: MDPI Books provides the opportunity to republish successful Special Issues in book format, both online and in print.

Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.

Published Papers (7 papers)

Download All Papers

Order results

Result details

Show export options Show export options

Select all

Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

25 pages, 7072 KB

Open AccessArticle

Meditation and Aspiration at Kagyu Monlam Chenmo in Bodh Gaya

by Malwina Krajewska

Religions 2026, 17(8), 911; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel17080911 - 1 Aug 2026

Viewed by 216

Abstract

This article examines practices of meditation and aspiration performed during the Kagyu Monlam Chenmo in Bodh Gaya, within the Karma Kagyu institutional and devotional network associated with the 17th Karmapa Trinley Thaye Dorje. It focuses on the collective recitation of Samantabhadra’s King of Aspiration Prayers, not only as a liturgical performance, but as a contemplative practice shaped by attention, bodily endurance, repetition, and joint participation. The article argues that Bodh Gaya provides a setting in which meditation is not separated from ritual, place, institution, and religious labour. Drawing on James A. Beckford’s social constructionist approach, I examine how lay and monastic practitioners take part in forming a contemplative space under the Bodhi Tree. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, the article shows how collective aspiration works within a disciplined meditative framework, while allowing individual attention to take shape by accompanying a common ritual rhythm. The Monlam may therefore be understood as a site where lineage continuity is ritually sustained within a specific Karma Kagyu setting. By focusing on aspiration, repetition, and sacred place, the article contributes to discussions of lived Buddhism and to the study of meditation as a social and spatial practice. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Buddhist Meditation: Culture, Mindfulness, and Rationality)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

20 pages, 16364 KB

Open AccessArticle

Totemic Mediation and Visual Prajñā: How Lotus and Dharma Wheel Motifs Generate Embodied Śūnyatā Experience in the Dunhuang Mogao Caves

by Yu Wang

Religions 2026, 17(6), 707; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel17060707 - 12 Jun 2026

Viewed by 382

Abstract

This article argues that lotus and dharma wheel motifs in the Dunhuang Mogao Caves function not merely as decorative symbols but as active visual apparatuses that generate embodied religious experience through a mechanism we term “totemic mediation.” Drawing on Lévi-Strauss’s structuralist reading of totemism, Descola’s ontological framework, Gell’s theory of art as agency, Meyer’s “sensational form,” and Varela’s neurophenomenology, we define totemic mediation as a triadic mechanism encompassing material–spatial arrangement, ontological transformation of experiential states, and value structure generation. We analyze motifs from Mogao Caves 285, 329, and 361 using a five-step analytic framework: formal–visual description, reconstructed embodied viewing, doctrinal identification, mediation mechanism analysis, and evaluative assessment. The analysis demonstrates that the lotus mediates ontologically along a spatial axis, building a vertical channel between the worldly and the divine through ceiling configurations and upward gazes, while the dharma wheel mediates teleologically across the temporal axis, neutralizing linear temporality through rotational dynamics. Together, these motifs constitute “visual prajñā”—a nonconceptual, embodied cognitive effect that bypasses discursive reasoning to enable direct apprehension of śūnyatā (emptiness). This article offers a replicable analytic framework for examining how religious images operate simultaneously as visual apparatuses and ontological mediators. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Buddhist Meditation: Culture, Mindfulness, and Rationality)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

16 pages, 418 KB

Open AccessArticle

From Doctrinal Foundation to Lived Practice: A Spiritual Ecological Interpretation of Chan Meditation in the Platform Sutra and the Compendium of Five Lamps

by Lin Li

Religions 2026, 17(6), 638; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel17060638 - 25 May 2026

Viewed by 400

Abstract

This study examines Chan meditation as a resource for spiritual ecology through two foundational texts, the Platform Sutra (Tanjing 壇經) and the Compendium of Five Lamps (Wudeng Huiyuan 五燈會元). The Platform Sutra reformulates meditation as “the non-abiding of mind” (xin wu suozhu 心無所住), with “no-thought as the essence” (wunian weizong 無念為宗) and “the unity of concentration and wisdom” (dinghui yiti 定惠一體) as its core tenets, thus grounding a distinctively Chan understanding of perception and engagement. The Compendium of Five Lamps carries these principles into pedagogical practice through gong’an, in which two recurrent operations may be identified: spatial deconstruction that unsettles fixed subject–object distinctions, and temporal liberation that releases practice from teleological striving and returns awareness to the immediacy of the present. Building on these analyses, this study argues that the self-nature trikāya taught in the Platform Sutra provides an immanent articulation through which Chan awakening extends from non-dual realization to transformed perception and responsive engagement with the world. On this reading, Chan spiritual ecology is best understood not as a modern overlay on the tradition but as an unfolding of its own soteriological logic, and as one possible response to the contemporary crisis of meaning and ecological estrangement. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Buddhist Meditation: Culture, Mindfulness, and Rationality)

20 pages, 522 KB

Open AccessArticle

Meditating for Mental Health? Modern Predicaments and Buddhist Responses in Republican China

by Matteo Sgorbati

Religions 2026, 17(5), 550; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel17050550 - 2 May 2026

Viewed by 1902

Abstract

This paper examines the discourse surrounding the relationship between meditation and psychological well-being from a historical perspective. While both Buddhist practitioners and psychotherapists aspire to a state of health, they appear to diverge on what this goal entails and how to achieve it. Influential voices such as Conze and Jung have argued that psychotherapy and Buddhist meditation are incompatible: psychotherapy helps individuals adjust to contemporary society, whereas Buddhism is ultimately designed for detachment from worldly life. At its core, this view rests on an ideological opposition between “tradition” and “modernity,” with the latter interpreted as an exceptional condition. Using Buddhism in Republican China (1912–1949) as a case study, this paper examines how Master Taixu (1890–1947) and the lesser-known mental hygiene advocate Jin Sheng (ca. 1900–?) responded to emerging mental health concerns and the global diffusion of related therapeutic techniques. Analyzing the modern predicament in which the Buddhism–mental health dialogue places them, this research argues their convergence in framing mental illness as a fundamental cognitive obstruction, with meditation alone insufficient as a remedy. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Buddhist Meditation: Culture, Mindfulness, and Rationality)

20 pages, 407 KB

Open AccessArticle

Five Hundred Monks in Crisis: Meditation-Related Difficulties and Prescriptive Responses in the Pāli Commentarial Tradition

by Byoungjai Lee

Religions 2026, 17(3), 390; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel17030390 - 20 Mar 2026

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 831

Abstract

Meditation-related difficulties have been systematically documented in contemporary contemplative science, yet the prescriptive resources preserved in the ancient Buddhist commentarial literature remain underutilized in comparative research. This study analyzes the case of five hundred monks in the Paramatthajotikā I’s commentary on the Karaṇīya-metta-sutta. During intensive practice, these monks experienced complex psychosomatic symptoms—perceptual disturbances, fear, somatic distress, and cognitive impairment—and received from the Buddha an integrated prescription of five protective practices (pañca rakkhā). Through Pāli textual and comparative analysis with Lindahl et al.’s taxonomy of meditation-related difficulties, this study demonstrates that the monks’ symptoms correspond systematically to the perceptual, affective, somatic, and cognitive domains of the modern taxonomy, with the critical difference residing in interpretive frameworks rather than in the phenomena themselves. The five practices—loving-kindness meditation, protective chant recitation, contemplation of impurity, mindfulness of death, and the arousal of religious urgency—constitute a sequentially structured system progressing from the emotional reframing of fear to the deconstruction of bodily and existential attachment, culminating in the restoration of soteriological motivation. This study argues that Paramatthajotikā I’s prescriptive system provides a historically grounded, soteriologically oriented complement to contemporary contemplative science, particularly in bridging the gap between phenomenological classification and meaning-centered intervention. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Buddhist Meditation: Culture, Mindfulness, and Rationality)

23 pages, 502 KB

Open AccessArticle

Cultivating the Meditative Mind: The Philosophical Integration of Śamatha and Vipaśyanā in Early Yogācāra Thought

by Feifei Yan and Zhanguo Peng

Religions 2026, 17(2), 200; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel17020200 - 6 Feb 2026

Viewed by 1360

Abstract

This study examines the systematic development and philosophical “finalization” of śamatha (止 tranquility) and vipaśyanā (觀 insight) within the foundational texts of the Yogācāra tradition. Central to the transmission of Buddhism to East Asia was the categorization of practice (修行 caryā) through the lenses of concentration (三摩地 samādhi) and wisdom (般若 prajñā). This paper focuses on two pivotal canons: the Śrāvakabhūmi 聲聞地 section of the Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra 瑜伽師地論 and the Saṃdhinirmocana-sūtra 解深密經. In the Śrāvakabhūmi, Śamatha is presented as a rigorous, self-contained psychological system. The text outlines a cognitive progression from “worldly common paths”—including impurities meditation (不淨觀 aśubhabhāvanā) and the eight liberations (八解脫 aṣṭau vimokṣāḥ)—to the sophisticated “nine stages of mental abiding” (九住心 navākārā citta-sthitiḥ). This research analyzes the psychological mechanisms of these stages, illustrating how they facilitate a metacognitive transition from distraction (散亂 vikṣepa) to absorption (禪那 dhyāna), culminating in the eradication of afflictions (煩惱 kleśa). Furthermore, the paper explores how the Saṃdhinirmocana-sūtra provides the ultimate philosophical synthesis of these practices. By framing śamatha and vipaśyanā within the Consciousness-Only (唯識 vijñaptimātratā) framework, the sūtra finalizes the meaning of Adhicitta-śikṣā (增上心學 training in higher mind). By bridging the technical rigor of the Śrāvakabhūmi with the Mahāyāna ontological depth of the Saṃdhinirmocana-sūtra, this study clarifies the evolution of buddhist bhāvanā. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Buddhist Meditation: Culture, Mindfulness, and Rationality)

19 pages, 709 KB

Open AccessArticle

Mindful Solitude as an Antidote and Antonym to Loneliness: A Historic and Therapeutic Buddhist Perspective

by Heather Kempton and Kamla Waila

Religions 2025, 16(11), 1439; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16111439 - 12 Nov 2025

Viewed by 2993

Abstract

This article explores the concept of mindful solitude as both an antidote and antonym to loneliness, integrating Buddhist doctrinal insights with contemporary psychological research. While solitude is often conflated with isolation or loneliness, we argue that when chosen intentionally and cultivated mindfully, it becomes a space of healing, insight, and relational depth. Drawing from classical Buddhist texts, historical exemplars such as Shakyamuni and Milarepa, and modern scholarship, we trace the evolution of solitude within Buddhist traditions, highlighting its role in ethical transformation and meditative insight. We contrast this with secular mindfulness programs, noting their therapeutic benefits while acknowledging their divergence from traditional Buddhist ethics and soteriology. Through interdisciplinary analysis, we propose a framework in which mindfulness mediates the experience of solitude, fostering autonomy, inner-directedness, and meaningful solitary activities. This reframing positions solitude not as absence but as presence: an intentional engagement with the self that enhances emotional regulation and social connectedness. In an age marked by hyperconnectivity and rising loneliness, mindful solitude offers a counter-narrative: a spiritually and psychologically enriching state that supports wellbeing and compassionate re-engagement. By bridging Buddhist contemplative traditions with empirical psychological findings, this article affirms solitude as a vital condition for both personal and collective healing. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Buddhist Meditation: Culture, Mindfulness, and Rationality)

► Show Figures

Journal Menu

Journal Browser

Buddhist Meditation: Culture, Mindfulness, and Rationality

Share This Special Issue

Editor

Special Issue Information

Keywords

Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue

Published Papers (7 papers)

Research

Further Information

Guidelines

MDPI Initiatives

Follow MDPI