What lies within the silence of meditation: spirituality?

Through ethnographic fieldwork in a Vipassana silent retreat and a mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) training course, this article focuses on the process of transformation, the performativity of bodily perceptions that lead to the construction of the subject as a practitioner, with an emphasis on silence, sometimes interpreted as an expression of spirituality. MBSR defines itself as a “secular” practice while Vipassana is based on Theravada Buddhism. How then can practitioners of these two disciplines be led to encounter the same experiences?