Vincent Laliberté, MD, MA, FRCPC, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, McGill University
Buddhist meditation practices are being increasingly adapted to psychological and biomedical frameworks in the Western world and scholars have documented the historical process that made the alliance between these two epistemic communities possible. This study is a secondary analysis of interviews conducted in the context of the Varieties of Contemplative Experience study, examining the range of experience associated with meditation. We selected the 16 interviews with meditation practitioners and the 11 interviews with experts in which participants used neuroscientific metaphors in their narratives. Our preliminary data provide examples of the use of brain-based metaphors, and shows how participants attempt to negotiate potential differences or tensions between the two different epistemologies: either through integration or by rejecting one of them.
