From Tapas to Modern Yoga: Sādhus’ Understanding of Embodied Practices, by Daniela Bevilacqua. Sheffield: Equinox Press, 2024. 420 pp., £85 (hb), £35 (pb). ISBN 9781800504400 (hb), 9781800504417 (pb).
Botanical Ecstasies: Psychoactive Plant Formulas in India and Beyond, by Matthew Clark. London: Psychedelic Press, 2021. 69 pp. £9.99 (pb). ISBN 978191626711.
The intimate relationship between Patanjala Yoga and Buddhist contemplative traditions has attracted considerable interest in the study of Indian religion and philosophy. This is evident in the work of generations of scholars from Emile Senart and Louis de La Vallee Poussin to the present. This paper continues this comparative project with a deeper examination of the parallels and...
This article fills in a gap in the historiography of modern insight and mindfulness meditation. By providing an account of the role of S. N. Goenka in the formation and dissemination of modern insight meditation (vipassana), and his reframing of Burmese Buddhist meditation in a postcolonial South Asian context, I show how the roots of modern therapeutic forms of mindfulness emerge from...
Dan Arnold, Brains, Buddhas, and Believing: The Problem of Intentionality in Classical Buddhist and Cognitive-Scientific Philosophy of Mind. Columbia: Columbia University Press, 2012. 328 pp. $50.00/£34.50. ISBN: 978-0-231-14546-6 (hardback).
Spirit Possession and Trance. New Interdisciplinary Perspectives, edited by Bettina Schmidt and Lucy Huskinson. London and New York: Continuum, 2010. x + 246pp. ISBN: 978-0-826435-74-3 (hbk), ISBN: 978-1-441108-28-9 (pbk). £65.00/£24.99.
The Self Possessed: Deity and Spirit Possession in South Asian Literature and Civilization, by Frederick M. Smith. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. xxvii + 701pp. ISBN 0-231-13748-6 (hb), 0-231-51065-9 (electronic).