A Study on the Experience of Participating in a Temple Stay-based Smoking Cessation Meditation Program: Focusing on Smoking Addiction

The purpose of this study is to qualitatively confirm the experience of participating in a temple stay-based smoking cessation meditation program. The research questions of this study are as follows. First, what motivated you to participate in the temple stay-based smoking cessation meditation program? Second, what helped this temple (Guryongsa) in quitting smoking? Third, how did meditation help in quitting smoking? For this purpose, a temple stay-based smoking cessation meditation program was conducted on 23 smokers, data was collected using written questionnaires, and the collected results were analyzed using CQR-M (Consensual Qualitative Research-Modified). As a result of examining the unique characteristics of the temple stay-based smoking cessation meditation program and analyzing the experiences of participants to provide a differentiated smoking cessation meditation program, 19 categories were derived in 8 areas. Second, as a result of examining the areas in which the temple (Guryongsa Temple) helped people quit smoking, two sub-areas were identified: ‘the fact that the program was conducted in a special place called a ‘temple’’ and ‘the advantages of a ‘temple’-based program’. Third, as a result of examining the areas where meditation helped to quit smoking, two sub-areas were derived: ‘Meditation itself helped to quit smoking’ and ‘How ‘breathing’ helped to quit smoking’. The significance of this study is that by conducting a program in a ‘temple’, it presented a new approach to solving addiction by presenting meditation, a Buddhist practice, in the physical space of the temple and the internal space of the mind.