6 papers in the library · 6 citations · publishing 2010-2019
Mind Cure March 28, 2019 Wakoh Shannon Hickey
This chapter examines the practices of Buddhist meditation and Raja yoga in New Thought. Leaders of New Thought were first exposed to Buddhism and Vedanta philosophy through the publications of European Orientalists and the Theosophical Society and, later, though personal contacts with Asian Buddhist and Hindu missionaries. In addition to D. T. Suzuki, who helped to spark American interest in...
March 28, 2019 Wakoh Shannon Hickey
Mindfulness is widely claimed to improve health and performance, and historians typically say that efforts to promote meditation and yoga therapeutically began in the 1970s. In fact, they began much earlier, and that early history offers important lessons for the present and future. This book traces the history of mind-body medicine from eighteenth-century Mesmerism to the current Mindfulness...
Mind Cure March 28, 2019 Wakoh Shannon Hickey
This chapter asks whether mindfulness is as broadly effective and powerful as proponents claim and considers methodological and other critiques of clinical research on mindfulness. Neuroscientists have produced vivid images of meditators’ brains, using functional MRI and PET scans, which seem to show clear, positive changes attributed to meditation. Such images are effective rhetorically but...
Mind Cure March 28, 2019 Wakoh Shannon Hickey
This chapter considers whether Mindfulness can reasonably be considered a kind of religion, despite proponents’ claims to the contrary. If so, what kind? Is it Buddhist? If so, what kind of Buddhism? The rhetoric of Jon Kabat-Zinn, founder of the modern Mindfulness movement, is tested against several different theories of religion, as well as critiques by specialists in both Theravāda and...
Mind Cure March 28, 2019 Wakoh Shannon Hickey
This chapter considers the early, community-oriented wing of New Thought movement and the Mindfulness movement side by side and identifies several characteristics they have in common, as well as significant differences between them. The Mindfulness movement is similar in various ways to Individualist New Thought. This analysis reveals some of the problems and limitations inherent in the...
CrossCurrents June 1, 2010 Wakoh Shannon Hickey 6 citations
Meditation as Medicine: A Critique Wakoh Shannon Hickey Twenty‐seven adults are arrayed at the front of a large, sloping lecture hall: some lying on their backs, some upright in free‐standing chairs, some in the tiers of seats bolted to the floor. Most appear to range in age from mid‐forties to mid‐fifties. The lights are dim, most eyes are closed, and except for occasional fidgeting, everyone...