Research published in Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Tripping Toward the Real: Inducing Liminal Sensory Experiences through Psychoactive Substances in Buddhist Contemplative Practice

Journal of the American Academy of Religion July 11, 2026 James Gentry

Abstract This article analyzes passages found in Tibetan writings from the early Great Perfection tradition that prescribe the cultivation and consumption of psychoactive fungi as an integral part of the Buddhist path. It identifies these passages as the first instances discovered in premodern Buddhist literature in which the use of psychedelics is unambiguously prescribed to hasten progress...

DOI: 10.1093/jaarel/lfag046 Buddhism Meditation Mindfulness Contemplation +11

Joy as Contextualized Feeling: Two Contrasting Pictures of Joy in East Asian Yogācāra

Journal of the American Academy of Religion September 1, 2023 Jingjing Li 2 citations

Abstract In this article, I elaborate on the approach to joy preserved in East Asian Yogācāra texts authored by Xuanzang and his disciple, Kuiji. I argue that these Yogācāra Buddhists propose a contextualist approach that does not presume joy to be an emotion with an essential property but rather perceives joy as always contextualized in lifeworlds at the personal and interpersonal levels. As...

DOI: 10.1093/jaarel/lfae024 Full text Feeling East asia Aesthetics Archaeology +1

Blue Black Ecstasy: Ellen Gallagher’s Watery Ecstatic, Oceanic Feeling, and Mysticism in the Flesh

Journal of the American Academy of Religion June 1, 2023 Justine M. Bakker 9 citations

Abstract Since 2001, visual artist Ellen Gallagher has been working on “Watery Ecstatic,” an ongoing, expansive project that depicts real and imaginary underwater life through drawings, films, reliefs, and paintings. Thus far, this series—indeed, Gallagher’s oeuvre—has not been studied by scholars of religion. Arguing that the series provokes an extended conversation about mysticism,...

DOI: 10.1093/jaarel/lfad080 Full text Mysticism Ecstasy Subjectivity Immanence +8

“The Words of McKenna”: Healing, Political Critique, and the Evolution of Psychonaut Religion since the 1960s Counterculture

Journal of the American Academy of Religion March 31, 2016 Andrew Monteith 4 citations

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) spent thirty years advocating for the religious use of hallucinogenic substances. Picking up where Timothy Leary left off, McKenna inspired later generations of Psychonauts (“consciousness explorers”) and continues to do so even today. McKennan religion treats humanity as in flux, with imminent evolutionary milestones rapidly approaching. These metamorphoses will...

DOI: 10.1093/jaarel/lfw010

A Sufi-Jewish Dialogue: Philosophy and Mysticism in Bahya Ibn Paquda's Duties of the Heart. By Diana Lobel

Journal of the American Academy of Religion March 27, 2008 James Allen Grady

Since Georges Vajda's classic study, La Théologie ascétique de Baḣya ibn Paqūda, appeared in 1947, very few scholars have devoted book-length works to the thought of Baḣya. Diana Lobel's A Sufi-Jewish Dialogue represents the first widely available to English-reading audiences, and this would be enough to make it a remarkable contribution. But it is the breadth and depth of Lobel's exploration...

DOI: 10.1093/jaarel/lfn018

On Mystical Experiences as: Support for the Perennial Philosophy

Journal of the American Academy of Religion 1994 Jonathan Shear 36 citations

Journal Article On Mystical Experiences as: Support for the Perennial Philosophy Get access Jonathan Shear Jonathan Shear Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Volume LXII, Issue 2, Summer 1994, Pages 319–342, https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/LXII.2.319 Published: 01 July 1994

DOI: 10.1093/jaarel/lxii.2.319 Mysticism Perennial plant Religious studies Theology +1

NISHITANI'S BUDDHIST RESPONSE TO “NIHILISM”

Journal of the American Academy of Religion 1987 Stephen Phillips 4 citations

Keiji Nishitani presents a Buddhist philosophy that at once speaks from Buddhist religious and expresses a sensibility. It is his defense of the that above all qualifies his philosophy as Buddhist. Nishitani is a Buddhist thinker not so much in drawing on the rich history of classical Buddhist philosophy as in drawing on his sense of the value of Buddhist meditation (zazen in Japanese) and...

DOI: 10.1093/jaarel/lv.1.75

The Structure and Dynamics of the Attainment of Cessation in Theravada Meditation

Journal of the American Academy of Religion 1977 Winston L. King 4 citations

The attainment of cessation (nirodha-samāpatti) is the highest meditational state possible in Theravada Buddhism. Those in this state are to all appearances dead, for it is the extinction of all feeling and perception, continuing for as long as seven days. It is seen as the actual realization of Nibbana in this life. The basic technique of this achievement is yogic. The meditator proceeds...

DOI: 10.1093/jaarel/xlv.2.226

Interpretation, Description, and Mystical Consciousness

Journal of the American Academy of Religion 1977 William J. Wainwright 3 citations

Part I examines Walter Stace's classification of mystical experience, R. C. Zahner's criticism of that classification, and Ninian Smart's response to Zaehner. Zaehner rightly faults Stace for distorting theistic mysticism and for ignoring the Hindu tradition of love mysticism. Smart's criticisms of Zaehner are to the point, though inconclusive. However, his own thesis is incoherent. If (as he...

DOI: 10.1093/jaarel/xlv.3.358

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