Massachusetts General Hospital is home to the largest hospital-based research enterprise in the U.S., with nearly $1.3 billion in research operations in 2022. The Mass General Research Institute comprises more than 9,500 researchers working across more than 30 institutes, centers and departments.
But what do each of these groups do? Learn more about the individual labs and centers in our #ThroughTheMagnifyingGlass series, where we take a closer look at the teams that make up the Massachusetts General Research Institute.
In this post, we are highlighting the Meditation Research Program led by Matthew Sacchet, PhD!
What research do you perform, and why is it unique?
Our Meditation Research Program is unique in its focus on what we call advanced meditation. Common conceptions of meditation are limited to workplace efficiency and addressing stress and other health-related concerns. The purpose of our research is to study deeper aspects of meditation practice. This includes states and stages of practice that may unfold over time with ongoing training, and increasing skill and ultimately mastery. We call this unfolding ‘meditative development’. Our work also includes the study of ‘meditative endpoints’, which are altered states of consciousness and ways of being, sometimes called transformations, that practitioners can experience at culminations of training.
For example, we are interested in states and stages of meditation that have been described in numerous wisdom traditions; these include experiences of deep peace, bliss, and contentment, vivid insights into consciousness including those related to a sense of self, and states of profound compassion that may motivate prosociality, altruism, and generosity. Ultimately, our goal is to scientifically study these and related states and stages of advanced meditation so that more people can experience them.
Matthew D. Sacchet, PhD, is Director of the Meditation Research Program at Massachusetts General Hospital and an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. In this role, Dr. Sacchet pursues the next frontier of meditation science, exploring advanced states and stages of meditation.
Meet the Team
We have a highly skilled team whose expertise spans a broad set of disciplines and career stages, from undergrads to senior faculty. Our team is made up of not only technical experts such as computer scientists, neuroscientists, and experimental psychologists, but also clinicians from psychiatry and clinical psychology, and individuals from disciplines that have been historically separate from life sciences, such as philosophy and contemplative studies. We have been intentional in integrating experimental science with insights from the humanities and contemplative practice traditions.
For example, we collaborate with meditation teachers to develop the highest standards of scientifically valid and relevant study designs. Moreover, some of our team members are both scientists and practicing meditators. Our team also includes philosophers who think deeply about the theory and models that we implement and how to advance new ideas and frameworks within our field. Finally, members of our team provide diverse perspectives grounded in many cultures from around the globe, hailing from different parts of the United States, and from different countries including Australia, Canada, China, Hong Kong, India, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, Turkey, and the United Kingdom.
What publication is really important to your ongoing research?
In one of our publications, Uniting contemplative theory and scientific investigation: Toward a generative and comprehensive model of the mind, we develop a theoretical framework that enables concepts and models from contemplative traditions to be rigorously and scientifically studied.
Establishing this framework is important because it informs our evaluation of insights, ideas, and claims about advanced meditation from diverse contemplative, philosophical, religious, and spiritual traditions that historically have not been studied using a science-based evidence-driven approach.
This paper outlines this path and thus provides a theoretical foundation for this kind of work, and sets the stage for considerable developments in this field toward systematically understanding, replicating, and scaling advanced meditation, ultimately to more people benefit from these practices.
How does your research apply to everyday people's lives?
A primary goal of our work is to bring awareness to what meditation is capable of, and to help more people have these kinds of experiences. This has broad and far-reaching consequences. My hope is that more people will experience states and stages of advanced meditation. As people practice ways to deepen their meditation, they have the potential to live richer and more fulfilling lives, which may help them thrive and expand their humanity.
Clinically, we are interested in applying advanced meditation to improve mental health. This may include developing trainings that integrate advanced meditation in the treatment of specific clinical conditions. More broadly, I see our program as part of a new paradigm of medicine, which has historically been predominantly concerned with addressing symptoms, to prioritize the crucial importance of happiness, thriving, meaning-making, and prosociality in our lives.
What is something you wish everyone knew about the research you perform?
Our unofficial lab motto is to “bring advanced meditation out of the monastery and into the mainstream”.
My hope is that our program’s research will help raise awareness around the incredible possibilities of meditation training and to help more people realize that they themselves can experience these incredible outcomes. Ultimately, I hope that this work contributes to shifting our society away from selfishness, hate, and ignorance, and toward generosity, compassion, and wisdom.
About the Mass General Research Institute
Massachusetts General Hospital is home to the largest hospital-based research program in the United States. Our researchers work side-by-side with physicians to develop innovative new ways to diagnose, treat and prevent disease.
Support our research
Leave a Comment