Our Consciousness During and After Meditation: A Study of the Neural Basis of Meditation and How the Practice Alters Our Consciousness BY ANJALI DHAR '24 Cover Image Source: Wikimedia commons
Image 1: An ancient statue of the meditating Buddha from Pakistan Image Source: Wikimedia Commons
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Meditation was also a common practice in Buddhism, an early religion that emerged around the 6th century BCE. In canonical Buddhist literature, Sidhartha Gotama, or the Buddha, attained nirvana (enlightenment) under a Bodhi tree after profuse meditation (Encyclopedia of Global Religion, 2011). Today, there are three main branches of Buddhism: Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana. Theravada, when compared to Hindu tantric practice, has a more passive discipline. In the former’s practice of bhavana (meditation), one strives to attain awareness of samatha (calm) and vipassana (insight or enlightenment). Together, these two create a practice that brings the body to a state of sunyata (emptiness), after which it is ready for the “adsorption” of true, objective knowledge (Encyclopedia of Global Religion, 2011). The goal of consistent meditation is to relieve one of their sufferings. In Buddhist literature, this suffering originates from the false belief that one’s perceptions and thoughts are real. By meditating, the consciousness becomes aware that its thoughts and perceived reality are false, revealing the impermanence of its suffering. From this point, the mind is liberated from its anguish, as its perceived reality no longer predicts its destiny. The discipline of meditation traveled West in
the late 19th century when Eastern philosophies began to be transcribed into English. It wasn’t until the counterculture movement in the United States that meditation centers were established with increasing frequency (Encyclopedia of Global Religion, 2011). In the modern day, a novel form of meditation has appeared; many
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