What Monks’ Brains Reveal About Samatha And Vipassana
An MEG study suggests focused attention and open monitoring differ not just in feeling but, in kind.
Mindfulness meditation practices are usually categorised as either focused attention practices or open monitoring practices (Lutz, Slagter, Dunne, & Davidson, 2008). Focused attention practices are those where attention is deliberately rested on a single object. In open monitoring practices, there is no particular object of attention: rather, they are a family of practices directed towards resting in experience, observing the content of experience moment by moment, non-reactively.
In a later study, Dahl et al. (2015) expanded these categories to include a third: constructive practices. This category encompasses those practices that involve the cultivation of kindness and compassion – and they also renamed the focused attention category to attentional practices, and included the open monitoring category into the deconstructive practices.
Some might point out that the open monitoring might also fall under attentional practices. Dahl et al. (2015) point this out; however, they argue that they also fall under the deconstructive practices where an open stable attention is directed towards “the cultivation of insight into the nature of sensory experience” (ibid. p. 516).
If we are talking about Vipassana practice from the Theravadan tradition, I would argue that it falls under the deconstructive practices (Buddhaghosa, 1998).
Personally, I think that the Dahl et al. (2015) categories offer a more useful representation of the different practices - but that is a topic to explore in another article.
However, what I would like to explore here is a burning question that keeps popping up when teaching focused attention, “Samatha”, and open monitoring, “Vipassana” practices.
Are they, in the literal sense, different practices - or are these just loose phenomenological terms used to describe different “flavours” of attention? Or is there something deeper going on? Is the brain structurally doing something different, or are the same underlying processing happening in the background in both practices?
To answer such questions, most have relied on either subjective measures or electroencephalogram (EEG) frequency-band measures. However useful these might be, still, they do not give us a clear enough answer to settle these questions.
However, looking into this a bit deeper, I came across a study published in the journal Neuroscience of Consciousness by Pascarella et al. (2025) that might get us close to answering this.
In the study, the researchers took a novel approach, using magnetoencephalography (MEG) to record brain patterns from twelve Theravadan Buddhist monks, while they moved from a resting state into Samatha (focused attention) and Vipassana (open monitoring) practice. The monks in question were not novices - they were seasoned practitioners with a combined total of over 15,000 hours of meditation practice.
What Pascarella and colleagues (2025) noted is not only that long-term practice causes changes in the brain – science has already confirmed that (Goleman & Davidson, 2017). The difference is that this study offers insight into the kind of “qualitative change” that happens in the brain through long-term practice, and why Samatha and Vipassana might be two significantly different approaches and not two doors into the same room.
Why is this study different
Most EEG research on meditation has looked at differences in frequency bands – delta, theta, alpha, beta and gamma – and correlating these to subjective states of practice (Barrows et al., 2024; Lomas et al., 2015). Pascarella et al. (2025) study did something different.
It separated the periodic component of the bandwidth spectrum (the oscillations, the rhythmic stuff we usually call “brainwaves”) from the aperiodic component (the background 1/f-like activity that reflects the overall activity of the cortex). Making this distinction matters.
Why? Most studies have reported that an increase in gamma waves happens during meditation (Lomas et al, 2015), and these have shaped the popular narrative of what neurologically “advanced” meditators are doing.
Pascarella and colleagues’ study noted the opposite: a decrease in gamma wave power while the monks were practising Samatha and Vipassana. Does this mean this study is wrong and the earlier ones right?
The most likely explanation is that when not separating the periodic brain wave activity from the aperiodic one, a reduction in the background spectral slope could look like an increase in gamma activity, when it actually could be something different: a change in the brain’s baseline excitability.
So on separating these two components, what did Pascarella and colleagues observe?
Five things the study found – what they might mean for practice
1) The brain becomes more switched on. From the results of the study, it seems that there was a shift in the brain’s background activity. During both Vipassana and Samatha practice, the indication was that instead of brain activity slowing down – as popular perception would suggest that meditation should calm the brain – the opposite happened: the brain became more excitable and alert. I would put it more ready to respond.
On reflection, this fits within my experience, and if you are a long-term practitioner, something that you might experientially recognise. How a settled meditation does not feel like the brain zoning out or shutting down. It is more like the background noise, that incessant stream of thoughts going in the background of awareness slowing down. Like the static from a radio signal clearing up, making the channel clearer. I would translate it this way: rather than the brain becoming quieter, it becomes more available – more able to “respond” to situations rather than “react.”
2) Letting go of habitual patterns, moment to moment. One of the measures used by Pascarella and colleagues tracked how much brain signals were “replaying,” or repeating themselves – this could be taken as an indication of how caught into what just happened the brain was. What they found is that in both Samatha and Vipassana, these “replaying” signals dropped significantly. What does this indicate?
This might indicate that the brain might become less likely to be caught up in repeating the same thing – we could say more open to change, more likely to let go of what it was doing. The implication for our practice might be that this physiological measure could be mapped on what we are phenomenologically pointing to when teaching, allowing and letting be, non-clinging, letting go, acceptance and similar attitudes tied to mindfulness.
In other words, a physiological phenomenological measure that might map onto how both Samatha and Vipassana might aid in momentary experience arising in a less dependent manner – less dragged along, effected or carried away by the moment before it.
3) Both practices activated rather than dampened the brain’s activity. What I also found interesting in this study is that, counter to “expectation,” when comparing brain signals between resting state, Vipassana and Samatha, both showed an increased complexity in brain signals compared to the resting state. The change was also qualitative, in the sense that brain patterns observed were less repetitive. Interestingly enough, the patterns of changes were “similar” to brain patterns induced in research on psychedelic states (Carhart-Harris et al., 2016).
This is not to say that meditation and psychedelic states are “the same,” but this suggests that both seem to release the brain from its habitual patterns, opening us to new patterns of behaviours and ways of seeing things.
Why is this relevant to our teaching? Because it is potential evidence that shows that, counter to popular belief, meditation is not about shutting down the mind or dampening the mind. Rather, it is about, as we say when teaching Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy cultivating a new way of relating to experience, one that invites friendliness and kindness towards whatever arises in awareness (Bernard, Cullen, & Kuyken, 2025).
And this is what Pascarella and colleagues observed: how meditation diversified the brain’s functioning. An indication that these practices might open the mind to act in more flexible and novel ways.
For me, this is an important thing to point out, considering the fact that in some circles and facets of “new age” and “secular” spirituality, meditation is sometimes still being promoted as a practice to control or silence the mind.
This is also why I like the Tibetan word for meditation - “gom (or ghom)” - which broadly translates into “familiarising yourself with something” (Das Surya, 2016; Rinpoche, 2002). In the case of meditation with the mind and how the mind “moves.”
4) Samatha and Vipassana doing two different things. This brings us to the opening question: are these the same, or different “flavours” of attention? What I find most useful for teaching is that the study seems to answer this question. In the study, the researchers looked at if Samatha and Vipassana activated different patterns or brain states (Pascarella et al., 2025).
For me, this is the most curious finding. The researchers used a measure to try to identify how close, in each practice, the brain comes close to a finely-balanced, highly responsive state — Pascarella and colleagues called this a sweet spot between rigid order and total chaos.
What they noticed was that Vipassana moved noticeably closer to that sweet spot, compared to when in a resting state and Samatha, while Samatha did not If anything — it did the opposite.
Samatha showed totally distinct brain signature — one that moved towards complexity and a more excitable baseline — the recorded Samatha brain state shifted away from resting, in a way that it moved further away from that balance point between an ordered and a chaotic state, rather than closer to it.
This looks like preliminary evidence that focused attention and open monitoring appear to be two different practices, each triggering a different neural footprint — and this gives me peace of mind and reassurance in how I present open monitoring and focused attention when teaching, as them being complementary, distinct practices rather than interchangeable ones.
5) The more you practice, the more it transfers to daily life. Another interesting finding that is helpful when it comes to teaching is that Pascarella and colleagues might have found preliminary evidence that, with time, practice does translate into daily life.
This directly speaks to a question practitioners often ask: but does sitting practicing meditation really translate as a trait into daily life? This study seems to answer this question. Why?
In the study, Pascarella and colleagues measured the difference between the brain in a resting state (not meditating) and when meditating. They noted how, as practice hours increased, the neural baseline gap between a “non-meditating” brain and a “meditating” brain seems to diminish.
Although this is preliminary evidence, it echoes into what Goleman and Davidson (2017) point to as one of their argument in their book “The Science of Meditation” – that with time and practice, meditation changes the brain and mindfulness starts to move from a state to a trait of being. It starts to become a stable disposition, a baseline factor of our way of being in life.
I find this heartwarming and hopeful as it hints that with practice, “mindfulness” stops being a separate state you switch into, and starts becoming closer to the default state of mind.
Does this change how we teach mindfulness?
I do not think the findings from this study have an explicit direct impact on changing the way we teach or practice mindfulness. However, having said that, it does offer some welcome and useful insight into the practice of Samatha and Vipassana.
Primarily, and this ties into the opening question, it gives me a sense of reassurance when I present these two practices as complementary rather than as we said in the opening, two different doors into the same room. So now when students ask me why practice both, I can offer them something more tangible: that the two practices seem to engage the brain differently.
Further, it offers evidence that supports the way we present mindfulness not as a practice to control the mind or stop thoughts, but as a practice of familiarising ourselves with the mind. I think this might be helpful, especially with those students who come to mindfulness with this perception. As this study indicates, meditation lights up the brain, making it more available, so rather than turning down the volume of the mind, we are turning towards the mind to get to know it better – in the language of gom – to become more familiar with it on its own terms.
While the potential state-to-trait finding, even if preliminary, offers something tangible to those students who might ask - But will the practice result in changes? - a legitimate question and difficult to answer, as sometimes the practice feels mundane and far from transformative. However, the findings from this study that found a potential narrowing between the resting brain and meditating brain supports us as teachers when we say to students to be diligent, patient, and maintain their practice as its benefits compound quietly, over time, well beyond the threshold of any single sit.
As Feldman and Kuyken (2019) point out in their book Mindfulness: Ancient wisdom meets modern Psychology, mindfulness is not a quick nor a simple, straightforward practice that will result in easy, quick changes; rather, it requires patience and persistence.
Finally, I think this study also helps tidy up some claims about meditation and the brain – including one that I probably repeated myself, that “meditation increases gamma waves” and “meditation calms the brain.” When using them, these might be oversimplifications, as this study indicates that something deeper might be going on. One of increased complexity, an increased awaked brain, and two tangibly distinct practices doing two different things.
However, having said all of this, a note of caution: Because, however interesting this study might be, it also has its limitations, where it might not generalise cleanly onto the “general population”, and some other caveat worth mentioning, which I explore below to close the article.
A cautionary note
It is also important not to take this study at face value; as having talked about the “importance” of its findings, it is also important to mention that this study is not a silver bullet and it has its limitations.
Primarily, some would argue that ten monks is a sample that is small, and the study had no control group to which to compare results. This matters in research because without a control group, we cannot fully exclude that the finding might be a research artefact, for example a particularity specifically related to the particular population in the study, rather than something related to meditation itself.
Further, some of the study’s findings, including the differentiation between Samatha and Vipassana, did not survive what we call correction for multiple comparisons. The authors also mention this, and I think in the same way we should exercise caution when mentioning the study’s findings to people — as suggestive preliminary findings rather than settled concrete evidence.
It is also important to point out that the study used highly experienced monks as its subjects, with a combined total of over 15,000 hours of practice. This is important to mention because of generalizability. It might be that whatever is happening in the monks’ brains may not be an accurate reflection of what happens in the brain of someone after practising daily for a couple of months or after attending an 8-week mindfulness program. Why?
Because these findings are from an “expert” population who dedicate their life to meditation practice. Having said that, such findings also have their value because they indicate to us the effects of long-term practice — but because of this, they might not be what any practitioner will show from their practice; this includes myself.
Finally, we have to point out that this is a correlational study; it does not establish causality. What does this mean? So what this tells us is that particular brain signatures accompanied particular meditative states in particular practitioners. As it is only a correlation, it does not, directly, establish that Samatha “causes” a particular brain pattern and Vipassana another, in a causal way. To more directly establish this, you would need a comparable control group or conduct some type of randomised controlled study.
This does not in any way diminish the study’s value. If anything, holding it with this kind of cautionary care is important. I would argue, in line with what we teach in meditation, to cultivate a curious, kind, non-clinging attention and maybe holding this towards what the findings show, rather than to what we would like the findings to show.
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I would love to hear from you: As a practitioner or teacher, do you find these findings helpful? Do they change your perception of Vipassana and Samatha? Leave your reflections in the comments below — your insights might be exactly what another reader needs to hear today.
If you have questions about contemplative science and practice, mindfulness, compassion, insight, or a topic related to psychological well-being that you would like to know more about,
let me know in the comments, and I might consider writing articles about them. 😉
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References
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Bernard, P., Cullen, C., & Kuyken, W. (2025). Mindfulness for life: 8-week course participant handbook. Oxford: Oxford Mindfulness Centre.
Buddhaghosa, B. (1998). The path of purification: Visuddhimagga. (B. Nanamoli, Trans.) Kandy, Sri Lanka: Buddhist Publication Society.
Carhart-Harris, R. L., Muthukumaraswamy, S., Roseman, L., Kaelen, M., Droog, W., Murphy, K., . . . Nutt, D. J. (2016). Neural correlates of the LSD experience revealed by multimodal neuroimaging. PNAS, 113(17), 4853-4858. doi:https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1518377113
Dahl, C. J., Lutz, A., & Davidson, R. J. (2015). Reconstructing and deconstructing the self: cognitive mechanisms in meditation practice. Trends in Cognitive Neuroscience, 19(9), 515- 523. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2015.07.001
Das Surya, L. (2016). The heart of meditation [epub]. In J. D. Oliver (Ed.), Commit to sit: Tools for cultivating a meditation practice from the pages of Tricycle (p. 10%). Carlsbad: Hay House Inc.
Feldman, C., & Kuyken, W. (2019). Mindfulness: Ancient wisdom meets modern psychology. New York, NY: The Guilford Press.
Goleman, D., & Davidson, R. (2017). The science of meditation: How to change your brain, mind and body. London: Penguin Books Ltd.
Lomas, T., Ivtzan, I., & Fu, C. H. (2015). A systematic review of the neurophysiology of mindfulness on EEG. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 57, 401-410. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2015.09.018
Lutz, A., Slagter, H. A., Dunne, J. D., & Davidson, R. J. (2008). Attention regulation and monitoring in meditation. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12(4), 163-169. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2008.01.005
Pascarella, A., Thölke, P., Meunier, D., O’Byrne, J., Lajnef, T., Raffone, A., . . . Jerbi, K. (2025). Meditation induces shifts in neural oscillations, brain complexity, and critical dynamics: Novel insights from MEG. Neuroscience of Consciousness, 2025(1), 1-20. doi:https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/niaf047
Rinpoche, S. (2002). The Tibetan book of living and dying (2nd revised edition ed.). London: Rider & Co.