Federico Divino - The Consciousness Library

Pansemioticism and Cognition: On the Semiotic Anthropology of Early Buddhism Meditation

Humans January 14, 2026 Federico Divino

This article examines the cognitive theory expressed in early Buddhist Pāli sources by situating their analyses of perception, language, and meditative experience within a psychosemiotic framework. It argues that Buddhist thinkers conceived cognition as a stratified process emerging from the dynamic interaction between sensory and effectual domains, culminating in the semiotic determinations of...

DOI: 10.3390/humans6010004 Buddhism Meditation Semiotics Parallels +13

Meditation Transcending Signs: Seven Concepts for a Buddhist Psychosemiotics

Philosophies January 12, 2026 Federico Divino

This paper aims to provide an in-depth and detailed overview of the relationship between language and cognition in Pāli Buddhist texts. These reflections will touch on several fundamental themes, such as the role of signs in structuring cognitive processes and semiosis as a force linked to the proliferation of concepts and percepts, whose organization underlies the constitution of a shared and...

DOI: 10.3390/philosophies11010007 Meditation Buddhism Cognition Constitution +9

Biopolitics of Techno-Mindfulness: Anthropological Reflections on the Issue of Modern App-Based Training of Focused Attention

Humans October 21, 2025 Federico Divino

With an emphasis on the adaptation and mediation of Buddhist meditation within Western societies, this study explores the transformative interaction of traditional contemplative practices and modern technologies. By means of an extensive ethnographic investigation carried out in multiple European locations, this study sheds light on the significant influence that digital devices—specifically,...

DOI: 10.3390/humans5040027 Meditation Buddhism Transformative learning Mediation +14

Semiosis and nāmarūpa: Exploring the Early Buddhist Theory of Signs Through Cognitive Semiotics

Philosophies August 27, 2025 Federico Divino 2 citations

This article aims to offer a comparative analysis between Buddhist thought and Peircean semiotics, situating the discussion within the framework of a Buddhist theory of signs that addresses aspects related to perceptual processes and cognitive experience. The influence of signs on cognition is what led Buddhism, from its earliest formulations, to adopt contemplative practice as a means of...

DOI: 10.3390/philosophies10040093 Full text Semiosis Semiotics Buddhist meditation

Beyond semiosis: early Buddhist phenomenology and theory of consciousness

Cogent Arts and Humanities July 16, 2025 Federico Divino 4 citations

This paper is a proposal for analyzing the Pārāyanavagga as a text that fundamentally expresses a theory of intentionality in early Buddhism. Through a comparison with Husserl’s phenomenology and Peirce’s phaneroscopy, the paper argues that the contents of the Pārāyanavagga—as reintroduced in later suttas that further develop these reflections and which will be analyzed in depth—reveal how...

DOI: 10.1080/23311983.2025.2529679 Buddhism Phenomenology philosophy Semiosis Consciousness +4

Gates of Consciousness: Buddhist Phenomenology of Cognition in the Abhidhamma

Philosophies June 10, 2025 Federico Divino

This article aims to provide a comparative analysis between Husserl’s phenomenology and the Pāli Abhidhamma. To conduct this analysis, I will mainly draw on some books of the Abhidhamma and three works by Husserl. What emerges from this study are interesting convergences between the two systems of thought, which allow us to consider, in some respects, a true Buddhist phenomenology codified in...

DOI: 10.3390/philosophies10030068 Full text

Language and Consciousness in Early Buddhist Thought: On the Early Reflections on the Theme of Language and the Perception of Reality in the Pāli Canon

Philosophies April 25, 2025 Federico Divino 5 citations

In this paper, the Buddhist view on language and its implications for perception and cognition will be analyzed. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that archaic Buddhism, as documented in the suttas of the Pāli Canon, already presents a well-articulated theory of knowledge, and that Buddhist considerations on the problem of language are comparable to Saussure’s early linguistic theories,...

DOI: 10.3390/philosophies10020031 Full text Consciousness studies Early buddhist philosophy Language theory Philosophy of language +1

Seers and Ascetics: Analyzing the Vedic Theory of Cognition and Contemplative Practice in the Development of Early Buddhist Meditation and Imaginary

Religions March 26, 2025 Federico Divino

This paper represents an attempt to investigate some aspects of Vedic religiosity, as represented in the R̥gveda (R̥V), in comparison with the Pāli Canon on the themes of cognition, contemplative practice, and the theory of knowledge. It aims to argue that the metaphors in R̥V, for instance, fire, the chariot, the yoke, light, and the ocean, bear proto-Buddhist ideas that have influenced...

DOI: 10.3390/rel16030378 Full text Meditation Contemplative practice Vedic religiosity Early buddhism +2

The dawn of division: For an anthropological theory of consciousness through contemplative ethnography

Anthropology of Consciousness January 12, 2025 Federico Divino 2 citations

Abstract The article delves into the need for an anthropological exploration of consciousness in the modern context. While anthropology's core focus has always been the study of the human subject, this study argues that consciousness has emerged as a fundamental aspect that underpins all human phenomena. The historical trajectory of anthropology, from its positivist leanings to contemporary...

DOI: 10.1111/anoc.12246 Contemplation Ethnography Consciousness Division mathematics +3

Anthropology of consciousness through contemplative practices : ethnographic investigation into meditative experience and subjectivity

2025 Federico Divino

The present work is the result of a three-year doctoral research project, which develops both on an ethnographic level and through theoretical and methodological inquiry. The research system focuses on the concept of consciousness from an anthropological perspective, studied through the examination of contemplative practices. This term is employed in a broad sense, encompassing not only...

DOI: 10.63028/10067/2140970151162165141 Meditation Subjectivity Contemplation Consciousness +5

Re-Visioning Ethnography Through Meditative Practice: The Proposal for a Contemplative Anthropology and Its Experience through Visual Elicitation Technique

Journal of Contemplative Studies August 6, 2024 Federico Divino 2 citations

This article introduces a novel method presently in development that integrates ethnography and visual elicitation techniques to explore meditative experiences and investigate consciousness. Central to this method is the utilization of mandala-like images as a means to capture the dynamic evolution of consciousness during contemplative practices. The utilization of mandala drawings has been...

DOI: 10.57010/bvhw5813 Meditation Mandala Contemplation Visual research +11

From Meditation to Techno-Mindfulness: On the Medicalization of Contemplative Practices and Future Prospects

Histories March 27, 2024 Federico Divino

This article explores the historical transformation of mindfulness, through a process of transculturation and commodification, into a biopolitical tool and analyzes possible future scenarios in which this tool will acquire even greater biopolitical strength through the integration of technological devices and artificial intelligence applications, particularly focusing on the growing divide...

DOI: 10.3390/histories4010008 Full text Contemplative practice Technology and medicine Anthropotechniques Mindfulness therapy

In This World or the Next: Investigation Over the “End of the World” in Contemplative Practice Through the Pāli Canon

Annali Sezione Orientale August 15, 2023 Federico Divino

This article is the result of a research dedicated to the analysis of the term loka (“world”) in the Pāli canon. This work consists mainly of a translation and analysis of the Pāli suttas concerning loka and related terms. What this study reveals is a peculiar conception of the world as a cognitive construct, with a close relationship to the philosophy of mind and language. The “end of the...

DOI: 10.1163/24685631-12340142

Mindful Apocalypse: Contemplative Anthropology Investigating Experiences of World-Loss in Deep Meditation

Religions July 21, 2023 Federico Divino 7 citations

This article investigates the challenge of personal crisis during deep meditation, as observed in an ethnographic inquiry into mindfulness and traditional contemplative practices. The study distinguishes between the “crisis of presence” in contemporary mindfulness practices, and the dissolution of the subject-object distinction in traditional Buddhist meditation. By analyzing Ernesto De...

DOI: 10.3390/rel14070941 Meditation Mindfulness Buddhism Contemplation +4

Reaching the End of the World: An Anthropological Reading of Early Buddhist Medicine and Ascetic Practices

Religions February 24, 2023 Federico Divino 5 citations

This article aims to analyze the ideas of health and illness in ancient Buddhism, making use of the theoretical tools of medical anthropology and historical–philological inquiry. As a contribution to the conceptual history of medicine in Buddhism, I intend to focus the present investigation on the ascetic problem of the “end of the world” as a means of achieving complete healing. The asceticism...

DOI: 10.3390/rel14020249 Full text Buddhist medicine Medical anthropology Meditation and medicine Anthropology of consciousness +1

An Anthropological Outline of the Sutta Nipāta: The Contemplative Experience in Early Buddhist Poetry

Religions January 29, 2023 Federico Divino 13 citations

By examining the Sutta Nipāta, considered one of the collections containing the oldest texts of the Pāli canon, this study aims to reconstruct social, historical, and anthropological aspects of archaic Buddhist doctrine at the time of its definition in dialectic with the forces of orthodoxy and constituted power in 6th century BCE India. This study also provides important insights into the...

DOI: 10.3390/rel14020172 Full text

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