Nondualism as a Research Paradigm for Mindfulness Research and Beyond

Abstract

Many qualitative methods textbooks instruct researchers to begin by declaring their paradigm position from a standard typology, such as positivist, postpositivist, constructivist, critical, and poststructural paradigms, and to ensure methodological coherence with that position. This typology is often perceived to be a comprehensive framework for locating research positions. We argue that it is not. We examine what is at stake methodologically when a researcher’s starting commitments are nondual, that is, when the subject-object distinction that structures every position on the standard typology is itself treated as a derived rather than fundamental feature of reality. Researchers whose work is shaped by such commitments may be more common than the explicit literature suggests, particularly in mindfulness, contemplative science, and consciousness research, where Buddhist philosophical commitments implicitly underlie much of the work without being made methodologically explicit. We situate our argument by noting parallel attempts to articulate paradigm positions from non-Western philosophical traditions, and by introducing the Kyoto School’s articulation of nondualism through the work of Nishida Kitarō. We then present a recent framework called “unitlessness” that renders nondualism’s methodological consequences accessible to contemporary researchers. We close by drawing out the implications of adopting nondualism as the starting commitment. First-person and third-person methods are located at the same structural level rather than ranked on a hierarchy of fundamentality. Reflexivity is deflated rather than made constitutive: positionality statements are themselves discourse-level acts, and they cannot close a researcher–researched gap that is itself a discourse-level structuring. Research methods are left unchanged; what changes is how findings are worded and what they are taken to show. Nondualism enters paradigm debate on the same terms as any other position; it requires no contemplative practice of the researcher and claims no privileged access to truth.