Current Research in Neurobiology
2022
Maria Kozhevnikov, Alina Veronika Irene Strasser, Elizabeth Mcdougal et al.
13 citations
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...
Journal of Religion and Health
February 20, 2019
Geoffrey Samuel
12 citations
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...
Asian Traditions of Meditation
October 31, 2016
Geoffrey Samuel
1 citation
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...
Journal of the British Association for the Study of Religions
2008
Geoffrey Samuel
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...
Indian Religions: Renaissance and Renewal
March 1, 2007
Geoffrey Samuel
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...