Asian Philosophy
September 23, 2024
Bhikkhu Akiñcano
1 citation
ABSTRACT The concept of mindfulness within the contemporary mindfulness movement was the subject of a recent phenomenological critique. The present article confronts that critique in order to develop a phenomenologically viable interpretation of mindfulness that corresponds with how the word sati is used in the Pāli suttas. By clarifying the distinction between intentional objects and...
Asian Philosophy
August 28, 2024
Sergio Cermeño-aínsa
ABSTRACT The paper looks for the similarities between illusionism—a contemporary theory of phenomenal consciousness—and the Yogācāra´s philosophy of consciousness presented in Vasubandhu´s Treatise on the Three Natures. Despite substantial divergences in writing style, the commonalities between East and West regarding phenomenal consciousness are considerable. I claim that a particular reading...
Asian Philosophy
February 21, 2023
E. Nelson
ABSTRACT This paper excavates the practice-oriented background and therapeutic significance of emptiness in the Madhyamaka philosophy attributed to Nāgārjuna and Sengzhao. Buddhist emptiness unravels experiential and linguistic reification through meditation and argumentation. The historical contexts and uses of the word indicate that it is primarily a practical diagnostic and therapeutic...
Asian Philosophy
September 12, 2022
Neil Dalal
1 citation
ABSTRACT This article analyzes Śaṅkara’s use of dreaming in Advaita Vedānta. For Śaṅkara, dreaming functions philosophically as a direct phenomenal inquiry into mind and consciousness. Dreaming also functions as a syllogistic illustration. While dreaming, we experience unreal objects that do not exist apart from our minds. Dreaming thus illustrates the waking world’s nonrealism despite...
Asian Philosophy
July 3, 2021
Vahid Taebnia
2 citations
ABSTRACT Despite all fundamental divergences, the similarities formed between some interpretations of the later-Wittgenstein’s philosophy of religion and the tradition of Islamic Mysticism (Sufism), can yet be philosophically recognized. These basic analogies are as follows: 1) The inextricability of belief and practice and the priority of practice over knowledge 2) The characterization of the...
Asian Philosophy
January 2, 2018
Gabriella Stanchina
1 citation
The ‘dream of the butterfly,’ which seals the second chapter of the Zhuangzi, is often interpreted as undergirded by the bipolarity of dreaming and awakening or by the elusive interchange of identities between Zhuangzi and the butterfly, dreamer and dreamed. In this paper I argue that the underlying structure of the story may be better interpreted as exhibiting not two, but three stages of...
Asian Philosophy
July 3, 2015
Matthew Mackenzie
13 citations
The aim of this article is to take up three closely connected questions. First, does consciousness essentially involve subjectivity? Second, what is the connection, if any, between pre-reflective self-consciousness and subjectivity? And, third, does consciousness necessarily involve an ego or self? I will draw on the Yogācāra–Madhyamaka synthesis of Śāntarakṣita (eighth century common era) to...
Asian Philosophy
January 2, 2015
Monima Chadha
11 citations
One of the major aims of this article is to provide the theoretical account of mindfulness provided by the systematic Abhidharma epistemology of conscious states. I do not claim to present the one true version of mindfulness, because there is not one version of it in Buddhism; in addition to the Abhidharma model, there is, for example, the nondual Mahāmudrā tradition. A better understanding of...
Asian Philosophy
August 1, 2011
Chien‐Te Lin
1 citation
This paper discusses the possible inspirations that might be derived from the viewpoints of Eastern Philosophy in contemporary studies of consciousness. First of all, two notions of consciousness are introduced, one of which can be explained by science. The other however cannot, and as such is also called the ‘Hard Problem’. Secondly, the special features shared by morality and the ‘Hard...
Asian Philosophy
October 21, 2009
Christian Coseru
7 citations
In this paper I propose a naturalist account of the Buddhist epistemological discussion of svasa[mdot]vitti (‘self-awareness’, ‘self-cognition’) following similar attempts in the domains of phenomenology and analytic epistemology. First, I examine the extent to which work in naturalized epistemology and phenomenology, particularly in the areas of perception and intentionality, could be...
Asian Philosophy
March 1, 2007
Thorsten Botz-Bornstein
2 citations
Several Buddhist schools in India, China and Japan concentrate on the interrelationships between waking and dreaming consciousness. In Eastern philosophy, reality can be seen as a dream and an obscure ‘reality beyond’ can be considered as real. In spite of the overwhelming Platonic–Aristotelian–Freudian influence existent in Western culture, some Western thinkers and artists—Valéry, Baudelaire,...
Asian Philosophy
July 1, 2001
Frank J. Hoffman
7 citations
The thesis of this paper is that the question of whether and how statements of the form 'p and not-p' can have religious meaning in Buddhism can be answered in the affirmative and how in terms of a movement from pre-meditative to meditative state to a post-meditative state in life. The paper focuses on the Diamond Sutra in light of Shigenori Nagatomo's study (Asian Philosophy Vol. 10, No. 3,...