abstract: This article brings together authorities in the Tibetan Mahāmudrā (“Great Seal”) tradition of the Kagyü school with a contemporary, Christian-adjacent account of mind and consciousness, drawn from the psychologist and theologian Daniel Helminiak. It draws them together on the basis of their shared affirmation that conscious states and operations are intrinsically and nontransitively...
abstract: The practice of sati , mindfulness, is a fundamental exercise of Buddhism, embedded in and explained by Buddhist philosophical reflection. In just a few decades, a largely unknown Buddhist meditation practice has become a method used by psychotherapists, hospitals, and even the U.S. military. Colonialism and the modernization of Buddhism led to a modernization of Vipassana practice....
abstract: This paper uncovers similarities and differences between Zen Buddhist and Christian understandings of contemplative practice through a comparison of the writings of the Japanese Zen master Bankei Yotaku and the contemporary Christian contemplative writer Martin Laird. Though both claim that human beings are fundamentally connected to their spiritual goal, Zen emerges from the...
abstract:This article compares and contrasts the Ignatian concept of consolation without previous cause with the Zen Buddhist concept of satori. The aim is to underscore a unique but not commonly recognized characteristic of Ignatian contemplation and promote interreligious understanding. I argue that Ignatian prayer methods, though primarily kataphatic in their approach, share common features...
abstract: This essay explores the parallels in the life and teaching of the Korean Zen master Pojo Chinul (1158–1210) and the Franciscan saint and theologian Bonaventure of Bagnoregio (ca. 1217–1274). Living during the same thirteenth century but on opposite sides of the world, both men committed their lives to reforming the religious life and to attaining the experience of awakening in their...
abstract:This paper argues that all spiritual paths and attainments are locatable only in their own traditions that have their own logic, culture, and interpretive lenses. Within this first principle, one can see that there are possibilities for a skillful use of Buddhist practices in a Christian contemplative agenda. The author argues that Buddhist practices could serve various purposes: as a...
abstract:The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola are one of the most important paths of spiritual deepening in the Christian tradition. Despite the fact that Saint Ignatius offers a detailed methodological description to live the experience, it is often approached by people who perform daily meditation practices close to Zen. In this paper, we analyze the possibilities of living the...
Yale psychologist Paul Bloom is making a case against empathy when it comes to ethical deliberation and action.According to Bloom, emotional empathy has a dark side because it causes an in-group bias that leads to parochialism and racism.Our helping behavior is selectively aimed at those like us and, as a result, blinds us to the suffering in distant global settings.In arriving at his position,...
abstract:This article explores the journey of William Johnston (1925–2010), who was born in the Falls Road District of Belfast in 1925, in a climate of intense conflict. He recalled being born in the midst of terror into a family that supported the Irish Republican Army. He studied in both Ireland and Great Britain, entered the Society of Jesus, and went to postwar Japan as a Jesuit missionary...
Buddhism has traditionally focused on epistemological and psychological causes of suffering in individuals: deluded perception, greed, and ill will.Buddhist compassionate action seeks to free people from those inner causes of suffering, through contemplative, ritual and ethical practices.Christian liberation theology focuses on oppressive social systems as main causes of suffering, and on...
By employing recent work on epistemology of white ignorance, this article argues that racial prejudice impacts both whites and Blacks in a profound way that extends beyond the cognitive discrimination to the realm of psychological and physical well-being. Given that the mechanism of racial discrimination affects the whole embodied being of both victims and oppressors, theologians need to...
The article explores the practice of oracin mental in the Iberian schools of the sixteenth century "Golden Age," concentrating on the works of two authors: the Exercitatorio de la vida spiritual / Exercitatorium vite spiritualis of Garca Jimnez de Cisneros (1455-1510), abbot of Montserrat from 1493 to 1510 and El Libro de la Vida of St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582), reformer and first prioress...
Virtually every published academic study on American Buddhist practitioners excludes the culturally specific experiences of African American Buddhist practitioners. In the Insight Meditation Community (initially created by white Jewish American practitioners who studied and practiced in Southeast Asia before bringing the Theravada-influenced practices and teachings to the United States), there...
Comparing Eckhartian and Zen1 Mysticism2 Jijimon Alakkalam Joseph Meister Eckhart (ca. 1260–1328?), often referred to as “the man from whom God hid nothing,” is one of the great Christian theologians and philosophers of all time. But it is as a mystic that Eckhart is generally known. So any serious study of mysticism, in our times, cannot overlook this Dominican whose birth, childhood, and...
Contemplative Studies and the Liberal Arts Andrew O. Fort Contemplative Studies—meaning both standard "third-person" study of contemplative traditions in history and various cultures as well as actual "first-person" practice of contemplative exercises as part of coursework—is a new field in academia, and aspects have been controversial in some quarters, seen as not completely compatible with...
Reviewed by: Hidden Dimensions: The Unification of Physics and Consciousness Benjamin J. Chicka Hidden Dimensions: The Unification of Physics and Consciousness. By B. Alan Wallace. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. xi + 158 pp. The project of B. Alan Wallace will be clear by now to those who have been following his career. He seeks the unification of a Buddhist understanding of...
Reviewed by: Healing Breath: Zen for Christians and Buddhists in a Wounded World James L. Fredericks Healing Breath: Zen for Christians and Buddhists in a Wounded World. By Ruben Habito. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2006. xiv + 164 pp. The acknowledgments offered by Ruben Habito in the first pages of his book tell quite a story. Among others, Habito gives thanks to Jesuits of the Japanese...
Reviewed by: Buddhism and Science: Breaking New Ground Amos Yong Buddhism and Science: Breaking New Ground. Edited by B. Alan Wallace. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. 444+ xvi pp. Increasingly, the world's religious traditions are making their presence felt in the science and religion dialogue that has been dominated for a long time by Christian voices. The essays collected in this...
Reviewed by: The Other Side of Nothingness: Toward a Theology of Radical Openness Paul O. Ingram The Other Side of Nothingness: Toward a Theology of Radical Openness. By Beverly J. Lanzetta. Albany: State University of New York, 2001. 182 pp. The central thesis of The Other Side of Nothingness is that apophatic mystical experience offers Christians a theology of humility sensitive to religious...
In the 1980s, the Naropa Institute, the only accredited Buddhism-related college in North America, hosted seven landmark conferences on Buddhist and Christian meditation. Papers and dialogues from these conferences were published in Speaking of Silence: Christians andBuddhists on the Contemplative Way, edited by Susan Walker (New York: Paulist Press, 1987). In this decade, the focus of Naropa's...
At the 1992 International Buddhist Conference held by the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies in Boston, the Practitioners Working Group hosted sessions on Christian Contemplation and Zen Awakening: Practice in Both Traditions. The Group found itself in lively dialogue in a room overflowing with committed and questioning seekers. As a response to this interchange, a follow-up weekend was...