Here we report meditative techniques, which modulate attentional control by arousal-driven influences and not by monitoring continuous thought processes as during mindfulness-related practices. We focus on Vajrayana (Tantric Buddhism) practices, during which a sequence of generation (self-visualization as a deity - Yidam) or completion with sign (inner heat -Tummo) stages necessarily precedes...
Much of what Western medicine classifies as psychiatric illness is understood by Tibetan thought as associated with imbalance of rlung (wind, breath). Rlung has a dual origin in Indian thought, combining elements from Ayurvedic medicine and Tantric Buddhism. Tibetan theories of rlung seem to correspond in significant ways with Western concepts of the autonomic nervous system (ANS), and Western...
The central aim of Tantric practice in Tibetan Buddhism is enlightenment, but the same techniques are also used to attain good health and a long life. The image of the Tantric deity and the surrounding mandala enables the imaginative recreation of a universe in which body-mind and wider environment are connected. Along with mantra recitation, secret breathing techniques, sometimes sexualized...
Healing, which I use in this chapter as a generic term for practices intended to relieve pain, restore damage or deterioration, or assist in the attainment of the best possible functioning of the human organism (Alter 1999), has been a major preoccupation within virtually all societies studied by anthropologists. Yet while practices and ideas concerning healing have been noted from the early...
Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT), and other "mindfulness"-based techniques have rapidly gained a significant presence within contemporary society. Clearly these techniques, which derive or are claimed to derive from Buddhist meditational practices, meet genuine human needs. However, questions are increasingly raised regarding what these...
While much recent scholarship on Tantra has tended to distance it from the world of pragmatic ritual healing, mediumship and spirit-possession, and treat it primarily as an elevated mode of pursuit of enlightened consciousness, Frederick Smith’s recent book The Self Possessed is the most comprehensive presentation so far of the reverse position, that all of these modes of interaction with the...
This chapter reconstructs some of the social context of the development of ‘Tantra,’ and in particular asks how Buddhist monks and lay practitioners came to adopt ‘extreme’ versions of Saiva (Kaula) practice as central parts of their own religious practice between the 8th and 12th centuries. These ‘extreme’ elements included the presence of fierce and terrifying deities, cremation-ground...