Training the Mind and Transforming Your World: Moral Phenomenology in the Tibetan Buddhist Lojong Tradition
Comparative and Continental Philosophy September 2, 2018 Jessica Locke 6 citations
Moral phenomenology, as interpreted through Jay Garfield's reading of Buddhist ethics, requires transforming the deep structures of subjectivity that shape experience, not just changing deliberate actions. This makes it an especially ambitious ethical project. The Tibetan Buddhist lojong ("Mind Training") tradition exemplifies such a project by using meditation and contemplation to disrupt habitual, affective responses rooted in conventional experience and replace them with imagined responses of radically compassionate altruism. This process aims to transform the phenomenological structures underlying both ethical action and conscious experience, thereby fulfilling the goal of moral phenomenology.