5 papers in the library · publishing 2019
Mind Cure March 28, 2019 Wakoh Shannon Hickey
This chapter examines the practices of Buddhist meditation and Raja yoga in New Thought. Leaders of New Thought were first exposed to Buddhism and Vedanta philosophy through the publications of European Orientalists and the Theosophical Society and, later, though personal contacts with Asian Buddhist and Hindu missionaries. In addition to D. T. Suzuki, who helped to spark American interest in...
Mind Cure March 28, 2019 Wakoh Shannon Hickey
This chapter asks whether mindfulness is as broadly effective and powerful as proponents claim and considers methodological and other critiques of clinical research on mindfulness. Neuroscientists have produced vivid images of meditators’ brains, using functional MRI and PET scans, which seem to show clear, positive changes attributed to meditation. Such images are effective rhetorically but...
Mind Cure March 28, 2019 Wakoh Shannon Hickey
This chapter considers whether Mindfulness can reasonably be considered a kind of religion, despite proponents’ claims to the contrary. If so, what kind? Is it Buddhist? If so, what kind of Buddhism? The rhetoric of Jon Kabat-Zinn, founder of the modern Mindfulness movement, is tested against several different theories of religion, as well as critiques by specialists in both Theravāda and...
Mind Cure March 28, 2019 Wakoh Shannon Hickey
This chapter considers the early, community-oriented wing of New Thought movement and the Mindfulness movement side by side and identifies several characteristics they have in common, as well as significant differences between them. The Mindfulness movement is similar in various ways to Individualist New Thought. This analysis reveals some of the problems and limitations inherent in the...
Mind Cure March 28, 2019 Wakoh Shannon Hickey
This chapter explores the far-reaching influences in American religion and medicine of Emanuel Swedenborg, a Swedish scientist and mystic, and Franz Anton Mesmer, who developed Mesmerism, the forerunner of hypnosis. Swedenborg’s theology filtered into homeopathy and the religious movements of Shakerism, Transcendentalism, Unitarianism, Mormonism, modernist Buddhism, Theosophy, Spiritualism, and...