Religions
August 8, 2023
Ismail Lala, Reham Alwazzan
7 citations
Abū ‘Alī ibn Sīnā (d. 428/1027) is regarded as the most influential philosopher in Islamic intellectual history. Of his numerous contributions, none has garnered more attention than his ontological proof for the existence of God, known as ‘the Demonstration of the Truthful’ (Burhān al-ṣiddiqīn). In this proof, Ibn Sīnā argues that only one being can be ‘necessarily existent’ (wājib al-wujūd)....
Religions
July 25, 2023
Dominika Ruszkiewicz
The aim of this article is to situate Chaucer’s The House of Fame in the tradition of exercising the self as practiced by ancient philosophers and theorized by Pierre Hadot. It shows that Chaucer’s poem contains echoes of an ancient exercise referred to as ‘the view from above’, which engages the faculties of the imagination in order to enable an individual to review their life and to situate...
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...
Religions
July 20, 2023
Sophie-Anne Perkins
This article provides an in-depth exploration of the contextual, epistemic, ethical, personal, practical, religious, and socio-cultural factors that sixteen Western practitioners of Vajrayāna Buddhism highlighted as having particularly challenged their ability to learn and engage in deity yoga, including what strategies they may have adopted in attempting to overcome their impact. While these...
Religions
July 14, 2023
Gencang Meng
2 citations
This paper, taking the medical practice of Khorchin Mongolian bone-setting as an example, examines the conflict and connection between religious healing and modern (or Western) medicine as well as the transformation of shamanisms in the discourse of nation-state building in China, and argues that the relationship between shamanic healing and modern medicine is not a binary opposition. Khorchin...
Religions
June 29, 2023
M. Winkelman
22 citations
The relationship of wu (巫) to shamanism is problematic, with virtually all mentions of historical and contemporary Chinese wu ritualists translated into English as shaman. Ethnological research is presented to illustrate cross-cultural patterns of shamans and other ritualists, providing an etic framework for empirical assessments of resemblances of Chinese ritualists to shamans. This etic...
Religions
June 27, 2023
Antti Piilola
Ineffability is a long-time partner of the philosophy of religion and mysticism. Through apophatic conceptions of the divine, it can act to guarantee the transcendence of the divine, elevate it to something beyond our conceptions. It has also held the central role in defining if not the nature, then at least the characteristics of mystical experience. Sometimes it is that which affirms the...
Religions
June 27, 2023
Matteo di Placido, Stefania Palmisano
In this article, we design a preliminary genealogy of yoga in Italy, showing its positioning within the growing field of “contemporary spiritualities”, their premodern, esoteric and theosophical roots and Catholicism. Our main claim is that yoga and contemporary spiritualities as practiced in XXI-century Italy are neither entirely new nor are they clearly an alternative to more established...
Religions
May 16, 2023
Minna Sa
The restoration and reconstruction of Daur shamanism is classical and representative of the revival of shamanism in contemporary China. The case study of the Daur shamanic oboo ritual in this paper discusses the connotation and classification of oboo. Through a brief description of the main process of the ceremony, the shaman spirits, and the main contents of the divine songs, this paper...
Religions
May 9, 2023
Giulio Osto
1 citation
Pietro Rossano was an important protagonist of interreligious dialogue in the 20th century, serving for more than twenty years in the Vatican office in charge of this field. His experience and writings show how dialogue has many anthropological and theological dimensions and, because we are talking about an event between religious people, dialogue also has a mystical dimension. Rossano was very...
Religions
May 6, 2023
Shanshan Ma
4 citations
From the perspective of mysticism, the interpretation of zuowang 坐忘 as the breath-meditation technique with a transcendental goal establishes the religious basis of Zhuangzi’s cultivation. In contrast, most Chinese scholars argue instead that zuowang is primarily the mental state independent of meditative techniques, and that the techniques are devoid of philosophical significance. The pivot of...
Religions
April 27, 2023
Anja L. Winter, Pehr Granqvist
In this conceptual paper, we suggest that attachment theory is a viable framework for understanding key aspects of embodied religious and spiritual cognition, as seen in religious and spiritual metaphors, rituals, anthropomorphisms, and more. We also discuss embodied cognition as part of mystical experiences and other altered states of consciousness that may occur both within and outside of...
Religions
April 27, 2023
Roberto Catalano
The present paper offers a presentation and a phenomenological analysis of a rather unusual event in the sphere of interreligious dialogue: a Catholic woman, the protagonist of a mystical experience, shared some of the traits of this experience with people of another culture and religion. The protagonists of this experience include Chiara Lubich and a group of Hindus, some neo-Vedanta scholars...
Religions
February 24, 2023
Fraser Watts, Marius Dorobantu
9 citations
The debate about whether, and in what sense, there is ‘spiritual intelligence’ remains unresolved. We suggest it will be helpful to make a distinction between strong and weak versions of the claim. The strong version proposes that there is a separate and distinct spiritual intelligence that meets the criteria set out by Howard Gardner in his ‘multiple intelligences’ framework. This involves...
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...
Religions
February 24, 2023
José Eduardo Porcher, Fernando Carlucci
2 citations
In this paper, we take our cue from Kevin Schilbrack’s admonishment that the philosophy of religion needs to take religious practices seriously as an object of investigation. We do so by offering Afro-Brazilian traditions as an example of the methodological poverty of current philosophical engagement with religions that are not text-based, belief-focused, and institutionalized. Anthropologists...
Religions
February 20, 2023
John Calvin Chatlos
3 citations
A specific framework of spirituality is presented to direct this dialog between psychoanalysis and religion. The focus is on spirituality as a common and important area of interest. A cognitive-behavioral-theory-based exploration of spirituality identifies experiences of self-worth and dignity as keys to opening a spiritual core that is present in all people. This spiritual core has mystical...
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...
Religions
January 6, 2023
Johannes Bronkhorst
1 citation
Scholarship has not so far raised the question whether the so-called Buddhist noble truths are actually true. The present article addresses this question in light of recent developments in neuroscience and psychology. It bases itself primarily on the theory proposed in some publications by Mark Solms, and on some other recent discoveries in psychology. Concentrating on the role of memories in...
Religions
December 22, 2022
Nancy M. Martin
Rarely do members of diverse religions engaged in interreligious dialogue find agreement on metaphysics and doctrine, though such conversations may be very fruitful and lead to greater understanding and mutual illumination. In the area of religious experience, however, recognition of commonality may be much more readily apparent, and in such encounters, the life and spirituality of Jesus...
Religions
December 21, 2022
Edward Howells
1 citation
Desire is central to John of the Cross’ treatment of the mystical ascent to God. He holds that God is desire and that there is a meeting between human and divine desire in the state of union with God, which is the goal. But it is less clear how this desire is to be understood against John’s programmatic negation of desire on the spiritual journey in both its sensory and spiritual forms,...
Religions
November 4, 2022
Dana W. Sawyer
4 citations
A large body of research in the field of psychology currently points to a variety of therapeutic outcomes derived from psychedelically occasioned mystical experience. Moreover, additional research suggests that such benefits to mental and emotional well-being may depend directly upon the subjective mystical experience itself, rather than upon the substances that triggered it; for instance,...
Religions
November 2, 2022
Ismail Lala
Arguably the most influential Sufi thinker in Islam, Muḥyī l-Dīn Ibn ʻArabī (d. 638/1240), views revelatory knowledge and mystical experience, what he terms ‘spiritual unveiling’ (kashf), as a form of continuing divine revelation that is bequeathed to the spiritual elite or saints (awliyā’). As the self-proclaimed ‘Seal of Saints’ (Khātam al-awliyā’), who is the mystical heir to the wisdom of...
Religions
October 26, 2022
Ugo Dessì
This article focuses on three Zen meditation groups operating in Italy from the perspective of glocalization. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and practitioners’ narratives, it explores the dynamics underlying the making of glocal Zen with reference to the internal structure of individual religious worlds and its reshaping through the creative incorporation of zazen or zazen-like meditation. My...
Religions
October 21, 2022
Hans Henning, Max Henning
6 citations
In a previous article we proposed that spiritual traditions and practices emerged to counterbalance humans inherent “dualism”, or perceived separation from the world around us, by cultivating experiences of “subject-object nonduality” more commonly referred to as “unification with the divine” or “enlightenment”. This implies that religions (social and political institutions ostensibly based in...