Even the Buddha experienced challenges with meditation: Historical texts reveal its potential downsides

While meditation has been shown to have health benefits, it may not always be the right practice for all people.

By: Pierce Salguero, Penn State, The Conversation

Outlets: The Conversation

Published: September 16, 2026

Words: 1,226

Last Updated: 1 month ago

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By Pierce Salguero, Penn State

As a scholar of “Buddhist medicine,” I have studied the connections between Buddhism and well-being since the late 1990s. During the course of that research, I would periodically run into sources claiming that meditation could sometimes have unexpected or adverse health effects. When I discovered in 2020 that psychologists were beginning to document the same thing, I began to examine more systematically how Buddhist texts address this issue.

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