Against One Method: Contemplation in Context

Lavelle, Brooke D.

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-44019-4_16

Cited by 18 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Nevertheless, it remains to be seen whether the ethical context needs to be articulated explicitly, or whether a teacher or group of facilitators can rely on modeling that context implicitly. In a similar manner, it remains to be seen whether a sense of relationality can arise implicitly through group practice, perhaps as a result of the teacher's skills in group stewardship [48], or if relationality as an explicit framework for and target of contemplation is a more robust means to promote prosocial outcomes [30].…”

Section: Codamentioning

confidence: 99%

Meditation in context: factors that facilitate prosocial behavior

Condon

2019

Current Opinion in Psychology

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Section: Codamentioning

confidence: 99%

Meditation in context: factors that facilitate prosocial behavior

Condon

2019

Current Opinion in Psychology

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“…Recently, preliminary practices have been adapted for a western audience by John Makransky into a program called Sustainable Compassion Training (SCT) [25,26; also see work by Brooke Lavelle,30]. A key feature of SCT includes the practice of receiving care.…”

Section: The Relational Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The meditator evokes the caring moment as a visible expression to help activate the love and compassion that exists as a potential in the practitioner's mind. The process of receiving care then becomes a basis for extending care to others [25,26,30].…”

Section: The Relational Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Meditation in context: factors that facilitate prosocial behavior

Condon¹

2018

Preprint

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Contemplative science experienced tremendous growth in the past five years in part through new attention to the social processes and prosocial outcomes associated with meditation. Despite this growth, questions persist about the mechanisms and contexts through which meditation increases or fails to increase prosocial behavior. In this article, I draw on Buddhist traditions and empirical efforts to understand the ethical and relational contexts that promote prosocial behavior. In summary, meditation promises a viable approach to increase prosocial behavior, but future research will require a careful, holistic examination of contemplative contexts that foster those outcomes. Highlights• Examines contemplative contexts in Buddhist traditions that are expected to impact meditation.• Reviews research on the impact of contemplative contexts on prosocial behavior.• Reviews methodological innovations that move beyond self-report measures.• Provides recommendations for future research on meditation and prosocial behavior. Meditation in context 4Mindfulness, lovingkindness, and compassion meditation appear to offer viable approaches to increase prosocial behavior. Research findings suggest these different forms of meditation increase prosocial behavior across different delivery mechanisms and social contexts,including face-to-face [1,2] and audio-based instruction [3][4][5]. Moreover, single-session meditation exercises as brief as five minutes increase prosocial behavior in virtual environments [6,7]. These findings have garnered attention for the potential impact of meditation to address societal problems (e.g., Mindful Nation UK; URL: http://themindfulnessinitiative.org.uk).Despite adoption of meditation in public sectors, questions surround its efficacy to promote prosocial behavior. Two issues in particular have surfaced. First, a recent meta-analysis concluded that randomized controlled trials of meditation yielded moderate positive effects on prosocial outcomes [8]. Meditation increased prosocial outcomes under certain conditions, for example, when the comparison group was inactive in nature, thus calling into question the conclusiveness of the evidence [8]. Second, the application of meditation in environments that may contradict prosocial goals, such as in corporate settings to foster productivity and economic gain, raises concern about the absence of ethical components [9,10]. To advance the field, future research must examine the contextual variables that determine when meditation increases or hinders prosocial behavior. In this article, I discuss contextual variables within Buddhist traditions, review current evidence on those contextual factors, and offer methodological recommendations from social psychology for future research on those variables. Contemplative Contexts in BuddhismMost scientific research on meditation investigates practices adapted from Buddhist traditions; thus, Buddhist scholarship can offer theoretical insight into the contextual variables of meditation [11,12]. In particular, this inquiry...

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“…There are four key features of SCT that distinguish it from other modern meditation-training programs 2 . First, SCT meets the varied goals of the four groups of participants noted above by constructing an open secular space (Makransky, 2012b;Lavelle, 2016). An open secular space explicitly invites practitioners to draw on their own worldviews and religious or scientific backgrounds to inform their meditation practice.…”

Section: Overview Of Sustainable Compassion Trainingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainable Compassion Training: Integrating Meditation Theory With Psychological Science

Condon

Makransky

2020

Front. Psychol.

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Meditation programs continue to proliferate in the modern world, with increasing participation from scientists and many others who seek to improve physical, mental, relational, and social flourishing. In developing such programs, the meditation practices have been adapted to meet the needs of modern cultures. However, through that adaptation, important contextual factors of traditional contemplative cultures are often dropped or forgotten. This article presents a system of compassion and mindfulness training, Sustainable Compassion Training (SCT), which is designed to help people cultivate increasingly unconditional, inclusive, and sustainable care for self and others. SCT aims to recover important contextual factors of meditation that flexibly meet the diverse needs of modern secular and religious participants. SCT draws on Tibetan Buddhism in dialogue with caregivers, other contemplative traditions and relevant scientific theories to inform meditative transformation for secular contexts. We provide an overview of SCT meditations that includes both contemplative and scientific theories that draw out important features of them. Each meditation includes novel hypotheses that are generated from this dialogical process. We also provide links to audio-guided meditations.

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Against One Method: Contemplation in Context

Cited by 18 publications

References 9 publications

Meditation in context: factors that facilitate prosocial behavior

Meditation in context: factors that facilitate prosocial behavior

Meditation in context: factors that facilitate prosocial behavior

Sustainable Compassion Training: Integrating Meditation Theory With Psychological Science

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