Our last post explored predictive processing, the brain’s system for interpreting reality. If you haven’t read that article yet, I recommend starting here. To start from the beginning of the series, click here.
The brain constantly makes predictions about the world based on past experiences. These predictions guide how we think, act, and feel. When experience doesn’t match expectations, the brain updates to reduce prediction errors. This process keeps people safe and efficient but also reinforces habits and biases.
Meditation reduces predictive processing by bringing the mind into the present moment. This shift lowers the brain’s tendency to form complex predictive models. Instead of relying on habitual patterns, meditation encourages direct experience.
Remaining present may also change how we experience self-consciousness. Self-awareness is built on predictive models. As a result, focusing on the here and now can weaken the brain’s sense of a fixed self.
Meditation can also foster fact-free learning—insights that arise without active thinking. These insights update mental models naturally, allowing for greater cognitive flexibility.
This post explores three core meditation styles in more detail:
- Focused Attention (FA) – Directing attention to a single object.
- Open Monitoring (OM) – Observing all experiences without judgment.
- Non-Dual Awareness (ND) – Releasing the distinction between self and experience.
These categories are umbrella terms. They do not capture the full diversity of Buddhist meditation practices. Instead, this model integrates key styles to create a framework for understanding meditation.
Now, let’s explore each technique and how it reshapes predictive processing.
Focused Attention (FA): Training the Mind on One Object
Focused Attention meditation (FA) is the most common beginner meditation style. Practitioners focus on a single present-moment sensation, excluding all other stimuli. The most popular focus is the breath. Still, any sensory experience—such as walking or sounds—can serve the same purpose.
The primary goal of FA meditation is to stabilize attention in the present moment. When distractions arise, practitioners gently guide focus back to the chosen object. This process reveals quality of attention, strengthening “meta-awareness” (awareness of awareness) over time.
With continued practice, maintaining focus becomes easier, eventually requiring little to no effort.
FA also builds skills that support more advanced meditation techniques. One key insight is that experience is a process, not a fixed reality. This understanding allows practitioners to step back from rigid interpretations of situations.
From a predictive processing perspective, FA increases precision-weighting on a single experience. The brain assigns greater importance to present-moment sensations while downregulating distractions. This shift reduces reliance on habitual predictive models, possibly breaking automatic thought patterns.
Over time, FA may weaken the subjective reality of intrusive thoughts and emotions. This change can serve as a first step toward deeper meditation states. By reducing mental noise, FA makes way for expanded awareness and non-dual experiences.
Open Monitoring (OM): Expanding Awareness Beyond a Single Focus
Open Monitoring meditation (OM) often follows sufficient practice with Focused Attention (FA). Once practitioners stabilize their focus, they expand awareness to include broader experience.
In Theravada Buddhism, FA is used to prepare meditators for OM. This deeper awareness is believed to reveal key insights into the mind’s nature. These insights include:
- Impermanence (Anicca) – The recognition that all experiences are temporary.
- Non-self (Anatta) – The realization that no permanent self exists.
- Suffering (Dukkha) – The understanding that attachment to experiences leads to distress.
Unlike FA, OM does not focus on a single object. Instead, practitioners allow all experiences to arise and pass without judgment. The goal is to increase meta-awareness and reduce attachment to mental content.
OM treats all sensory input equally from the perspective of a non-judgmental observer. At first, this may require effort. Yet, experienced practitioners can effortlessly witness experience as a whole. OM reduces the tendency to get caught up in thoughts and emotions. Insodoing, it fosters a stable sense of pure experiencing.
OM and Predictive Processing
During practice, FA and OM may oscillate. However, FA directs focus, while OM removes preference for specific experiences. This means:
- OM assigns all experience contents equal and low precision in predictive processing.
- The goal is not to block experiences but to let them pass in a restful yet alert state.
OM allows practitioners to experience sensations before mental evaluation occurs. For example, one feels the sensation of sitting before labeling it as uncomfortable. This may explain why advanced meditators can sit for hours without moving.
The insights gained through OM could result from reductions in predictive models. Correspondingly, practioners may see increases in fact-free learning. By weakening rigid expectations, OM creates space for new ways of perceiving reality.
Non-Dual Awareness (ND): The Ground of All Experience
Non-dual meditation (ND) aims to uncover an awareness beyond all experience. It is often described as “the ground of all experience,” a state untouched by perception or thought.
Historians suggest that ND developed after FA and OM to emphasize deeper awareness. Unlike FA and OM, ND sees the duality of subject and object as a mental construct. This concept is shaped by past experiences rather than being an inherent truth.
FA and OM still embrace the division between an observer and what is observed. Meanwhile, ND dissolves this distinction. The practice eliminates the idea of a separate self, merging all into a single awareness. In this state, concepts, intentions, and even the sense of time disappear.
From this primordial awareness, all mental activity is thought to arise. Yet, describing ND as a “practice” is paradoxical. The word implies that someone is practicing something, which contradicts non-duality. Instead, ND creates conditions that release cognitive structures obscuring pure awareness.
ND and Predictive Processing
ND is one of the most difficult meditation states to use in the predictive processing model. However, all mental activity arises from abstraction. Thinking represents movement away from the present moment. If one stops constructing models, something like ND naturally emerges.
- All mental activity using active inference disappears, including self-awareness.
- Some form of awareness remains, though it lacks content, thoughts, or a personal self.
- Wakefulness and cognitive potential still exist, even as constructs dissolve.
Theoretically, ND is an empty experience, aligning with Mahayana Buddhist teachings. The Heart Sutra expresses this by stating:
“There is no truth of suffering, of the cause of suffering, of the cessation of suffering, or of the path. There is no wisdom, and there is no attainment whatsoever. Thus, he passes far beyond confused imagination and reaches Ultimate Nirvana.”
ND represents the final dissolution of predictive processing, going beyond all mental constructs.
Conclusion: A Diverse and Evolving Practice
Although researchers placed FA, OM, and ND on a continuum, this does not mean they form a strict hierarchy. These meditation styles are interconnected and inseparable. Each may create different effects, which may or may not be valued depending on the tradition.
For example, selfless states remain debated within Buddhism and scientific literature. Classical Buddhist traditions do not view subject-object orientation as problematic. However, later non-dual traditions sought to eliminate this duality.
Thus, it is crucial to recognize that Buddhism is not monolithic. Different schools of thought interpret meditation’s purpose in unique ways. Some traditions emphasize tranquility, others insight, and some seek the dissolution of self.
From a predictive processing perspective, meditation offers a powerful way to reshape perception. By reducing abstract mental models, it brings awareness into the present moment. Focused attention, open monitoring, and non-duality challenge habitual thinking patterns.
What’s Next?
The next section will explore the Many-to-None Model. The study unifies these meditation styles within predictive processing theory.
This blog series follows the structure of the article:
- Introduction to the Study
- Predictive Processing
- Meditation and Predictive Processing (This post)
- The Unifying Framework of the Many-to-None Model
- Key Empirical Predictions and Support
- Final Discussion
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2 responses to “The “Complete” Perspective on Meditation According to Research, #3”
Thanks for this. I’m glad to learn the new-to-me term, “meta-awareness.” Also interesting to define these 3 different states of meditation. And I’m wondering if another term for “fact-free learning” might be “intuition.” ? 😉
Thanks for your comment! I first heard about meta-awareness from the illustrious Claire McWilliams.
Intuition is a good term! Insight, or Vipassana, are also traditional Buddhist ideas that line up with “fact-free learning.”