Abstract

In this article, I offer an overview of the discipline known as Contemplative Studies, an emerging field of study that focuses on contemplative practices and experience from an interdisciplinary and experiential perspective. The key defining traits of the discipline are established, such as the systematic use of first-person perspective and the challenges that academics and practitioners in this field are currently facing. I argue that the theoretical framework elaborated by authors from the collective “Modernity/Coloniality/Decoloniality” adequately explains the underlying reasons behind some of the limitations of the discipline, and offers a solid conceptual background to critically engage in new forms of contemplative inquiry that contribute to the epistemic restitution of disavowed forms of knowing and being. As a corollary, I offer an outline of how some of these decolonial responses might be articulated in practice.