Defining Meditation: Foundations for an Activity-Based Phenomenological Classification System

Classifying different meditation techniques is essential for the progress of meditation research, as this will enable discerning which effects are associated with which techniques, in addition to supporting the development of increasingly effective and efficient meditation-based training programs and clinical interventions. However, both the task of defining meditation itself, as well as defining specific techniques, faces many fundamental challenges. Here we describe problems involved in this endeavor and suggest an integrated model for defining meditation. For classifying different meditation techniques, we draw on classical, contemporary, and holistic systems of classification. We analyze different techniques and propose that all meditation techniques are based on a specific set of activities, that is: focusing, releasing, imagining, and moving in relation to an object of meditation, including fields of experience. Meditative activities can be combined and unified in the activities of observing, producing, and being aware. All meditative activities are unified in awareness of awareness. Defining specific meditation techniques may be done by specifying which activities and objects are involved. The advantage of our approach is that it can potentially account for the inner workings of all current systems of classification and hence it lays the foundation for formulating an overarching system of meditation that can guide future research and practice.

Furthermore, defining techniques based on what activities are performed is vital when investigating meditation effects experimentally, as this enables linking the effects to what is actually performed during the meditation.
A problem that arises when defining meditation according to activities is that some meditative activities may be performed occasionally (such as maintaining background awareness) while others may be performed all the time (maintaining a body posture). What if a practitioner performs a focused attention meditation, but in practice their mind mostly wandered? This could lead to a false association of effects, that is, an unintended activity (e.g. mind-wandering) may be associated with certain effects while the investigators believe that a focus meditation was performed. Furthermore, it would be problematic for a practitioner to track precisely the kind of activities that they perform, especially over long periods, since continually reporting on whether one is performing an activity is likely to disturb the process of meditation.
These problems can be resolved in the following way. Techniques can be defined as collections of activities, some of which are primary, others of which are secondary. We define primary activities as those that one intends to perform as consistently as possible. In order to provide further precision, each activity can then be rated according to whether the practitioner never, rarely, sometimes, often, most of the time, or always performed that activity (or any other way of scale definition). If the practitioner never performed any of the primary activities, it cannot be said that they performed the intended meditation. What is considered the primary dimensions of the meditation technique may be negotiated by the individuals involved (researchers, meditators, teachers, etc.), the traditional and contemporary meditation handbooks, and the particular context of practice. The primary activities may be linked to what these individuals justifiably believe to be the most important aspects for inducing intended effects. Secondary activities may be understood as activities that support the main activities, or support the meditator practice when encountering difficulties with practice.
Another pragmatic approach to classifying meditative practice is to define a meditation technique as that activity which one intends to perform more than half of the time, or, relatedly, the activity that is emphasized. What is emphasized may be defined, for example, as that which the practitioner mostly intends to do (e.g., focus), in contrast to other activities that the practitioner intends to do rarely, or to avoid entirely (e.g., reflecting on the reason[s] for a specific thought appearing repeatedly). This notion is of particular importance in a retreat settings, where retreatants are investigated over many days and may potentially make use of other, complementary techniques that they have generated habituated reliance from prior meditation experience. Furthermore, defining meditation techniques according to emphasis is in accordance with the general idea of the present theory of meditation, namely: that meditative activities necessarily involve other activities, although these other activities may not be emphasized and/or performed more or less subconsciously or indirectly.
Meditative techniques can be formulated as templates that include the primary and secondary activities, which may include "if"-conditions (e.g.: if attention wanders, return to the object of focus). These templates may be written in plain language including indicated activities and meditation objects clearly identified for each instruction.

Example Definitions of Techniques
The

Release thoughts
Removes automatically generated cognitive content