In medieval India, the desire for “the unity of Brahman and Self” was present in the Vedānta tradition of Hinduism. Adi Śaṅkara, the master of Vedānta philosophy, proposed the six-fold sādhana: mind control, sense control, mental tranquility, endurance, potential faith, and concentration. These six-fold practices can help Vedānta followers realize unity with Brahman. In medieval Christianity,...
The Dhammakāya Gāthā is a Pāli Buddhist prose text that has been circulated within the cross-cultural/translocal sphere of Tai–Khmer Buddhism for over five centuries. Its earliest extant version appears on the “Braḥ Dhammakāya inscription”, an engraved stone slab from the Stūpa of Wat Suea, Phitsanulok, Thailand, dated to 1549 CE. The Dhammakāya text consists of three parts. The first part...
Julian of Norwich’s performance within her longer Revelations of Divine Love involves layers of authorizing and devotional steps that frame it as a gift for her community. She presents herself not as an author, but as a revelator, in step with John’s acts of unveiling his visions and dialogue with the divine in the Biblical Revelations. Examining Julian’s act of presenting her visions in...
ReligionsNovember 3, 2023Victoria Dos Santos6 citations
The aim of this paper is to examine and illustrate how the animistic ontology present in neopaganism allows embodied and sensuous interactions with virtual worlds. By considering animism as a strategy with which to rethink human cohabitation with the techno-digital otherness, I will show how neopagans who use computer technology for spiritual purposes experience the online context as an...
The school of phenomenology went with Edith Stein all her life and became one of the guiding strings of her thought, which deepens more and more on the experience of the crucified. The Steinian idea of freedom starts from philosophy. However, it is intimately crossed by the theological (and mystical) question, since, for the author, the historical realization of the human life is possible when...
Panikkar’s philosophy of mysticism is best understood as an attempt to overcome monistic and dualistic ways of thinking about the divine, human beings and the universe. Mysticism, for Panikkar, is irreducible to either monistic experiences of oneness without a second or to dualistic experiences where the divine is seen as wholly other. Rather, mysticism relates to holistic experiences of...
While Rosemary Radford Ruether is widely, and rightly, acknowledged as a prophetic Catholic scholar–activist, her interest in and experience of mysticism is rarely emphasized. However, Ruether had an impactful mystical experience as a young woman, and the themes of this experience echo throughout her body of work. This paper paints a portrait of Ruether as both a profoundly prophetic...
In K.E. Løgstrup’s (1905–1981) theology, the point of intersection between phenomenology and systematic theology is our life experiences. In this article, Løgstrup’s way of combining phenomenology and theology is explored from the 1930s to the 1970s. The idea that life is not an amorphous abyss, but God’s creation runs like a connecting thread throughout Løgstrup’s oeuvre. This idea negating a...
The Nibbānasukha-sutta contains Sāriputta’s statement that the pleasure (sukha) of nibbāna lies in the fact that nothing is experienced (vedayita). This statement may be seen as complementary to the proclamation in the Kaḷāra-sutta that all that is experienced is unpleasant (dukkha). In this paper, I attempt to reconstruct the ideas serving as a philosophical backdrop to these radical and...
ReligionsOctober 19, 2023Brian Claude Macallan3 citations
This paper explores Christian responses to religious and spiritual experiences (RSEs) associated with psilocybin-assisted therapy (PAT). It addresses the challenges of defining and understanding spiritual and religious experiences and examines the theological implications of PAT-induced RSEs. It highlights the growing acceptance of PAT as a therapeutic approach and its potential benefits for...
This essay relates a Heideggerian interpretation of metaphysics, as determined by an interpretation of Being in terms of a priori laws/essences, to a traditionally passive model of experience. The spiritual principles of the Christian and the Buddhist experience of the Nothing are shown as an overcoming of this model and an overcoming of metaphysics. The essay displays the ways in which...
ReligionsOctober 2, 2023Rasoul Rahbari Ghazani, Saliha Uysal2 citations
This paper examines the nature of “asceticism” (rīyāḍat) in Sufism, revolving around the works of the 13th century Persian Sufi Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī Balkī and exploring two critical inquiries: Firstly, it seeks to determine whether Rūmī’s mystical perspective on asceticism is world-rejecting or world-affirming. Secondly, it investigates potential parallels and divergences between...
In this paper, I reflect on human imagination, the intention of technology, and the future of humanity in the era of the Anthropocene. I begin by presenting the environmental crisis and declare a need to protect and safeguard nature. In the first part, I offer an explanation of a dream of an airliner and link it to the Bachelardian theory of aerial imagination and oneiric flight. I show how,...
The article first exposes a section in Edith Stein’s masterwork, Finite and Eternal Being, where she explicitly reflects upon the relation between philosophy and theology, and on the possibility of a Christian philosophy. Here, Stein enlarges the scope of rationality when propagating faith as a source of knowledge in its own right. The phenomenological first-person perspective and notions of...
The monastic reforms of the 10th century greatly increased the role of the psalter, a biblical book that became the main tool of a monk in personal and collective prayer. The Odbert Psalter, produced in Saint-Bertin around 999, opens with a scene of Pentecost in which we see Christ represented as a king who is static and in a space distinct from the apostles, exhibiting an attitude of...
Among the early medieval authors, Amalarius of Metz (8th–9th century) is one of those who discussed the impact of religious music and song on the body and soul. In his main work: the Liber Officialis, listening and singing liturgical music are depicted as having a corporeal effect that generates sensations of an intense sensory and emotional character. In Amalarius, living the musical religious...
This paper addresses the problem of polarization, which is considered one of the most pressing issues facing humanity, from the perspective of Mahāyāna Buddhism, specifically, the East Asian Buddhist teaching of the One Mind. The teaching is outlined in the Treatise on Awakening Mahāyāna Faith (Dasheng qixin lun), a significant text in East Asian Buddhism. The paper suggests that the One Mind...
Late-medieval devotional literature embraced visualization as a means of providing the reader-devotee with the experience of being a virtual witness during a text-guided meditation. Based on a new reading of Cransken van minnen, a Middle Dutch prayer book from Franciscan milieus, this paper will propose a framework based on the interrelations between visualization and other key aspects pointed...
This article explores the notion of the “magic of a place” and the way a space attracts groups and individuals who follow various forms of vernacular or lived religion and spirituality. The space is Sintra, an “enchanted” mountain facing the westernmost point of Europe, the Roca Cape. Classified by UNESCO as Cultural Landscape, Sintra is a unique place, a “sensuous sacred geography”; its...
Very rich scholarly works have been produced to perform a comparative study between Emerson and Zhuang Zi. Many scholars in their comparative research have tried to find how Emerson and the transcendentalists such as Thoreau borrow ideas from Daoism. In this article, I will take a different approach. I aim to find how Emerson and Zhuang Zi’s pursuit of spirituality in nature shapes different...
This study first examines the developmental perspective on seated meditation from Bodhidharma 達摩 to the Linji 臨濟 school of the Tang Dynasty. During this dynasty, the Linji school followed the criticism of physical seated meditation by the Southern school of Huineng 惠能 and mainly used wisdom dialogues to enlighten Buddhist disciples. Furthermore, there are very few lamp records documenting the...
Asceticism or renunciation (zuhd) is generally viewed as turning away from the world and all it has to offer in order to connect to the divine. The well-known mystical theorist, Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn ‘Arabī (d. 638/1240), adds a denotation of asceticism to this conventional definition. Ibn ‘Arabī argues that the impetus for the creation of the cosmos was the divine wish to be known by something...
The works of Aristotle left an indelible impression on Arabic philosophy after the translation movement. While many philosophers accepted the works of the revered First Teacher (Al-Mu‘allim al-awwal), as Aristotle was designated, others sought to reformulate his ideas in accordance with their own priorities. One such thinker is the hugely influential mystical theorist, Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn ‘Arabī...
The Thai forest tradition, or Thai northeastern forest tradition, which originated from King Lama IV’s religious revolution, is one of the most important meditation practice traditions in Thailand. This tradition aims to achieve final liberation through strict meditation practice. The unique meditation technique they promote is the recitation of the mantra “Buddho”. They practice the recitation...
The objective of this manuscript is to reveal that the challenge in understanding the ethical consequences of a post-human condition characterizing trans-humanist ontology is linked to postmodern epistemology lacking any metaphysical and theological essence. The introductory section provides an overview of trans-humanist thought and the concerns deliberated against it at the recent conference...