Contemplative Science and Secular Ethics

Contemplative science will be best served by incorporating a wider range of practices beyond mindfulness, including analytical styles of meditation, and by addressing ethics as a framework for understanding both the traditions behind these practices and their modern applications. The Tibetan Buddhist Lojong tradition and its secularized derivatives, now studied in contemplative science, serve as a case study illustrating the importance of these two perspectives for the field's future.

Study at a glance

Abstract

This article argues that the emerging project of contemplative science will be best served if it is informed by two perspectives. First, attention should be paid not only to non-analytical and/or mindfulness-based practices, but to a fuller range of contemplative practices, including analytical styles of meditation. Second, the issue of ethics must be addressed as a framework within which to understand contemplative practice: both theoretically in order to understand better the practices themselves and the traditions they come from, and practically in order to understand the ways in which contemplative practices are deployed in contemporary societies. The Tibetan Buddhist Lojong (blo sbyong) tradition and secularized practices derived from it, which are now an area of study in contemplative science, are examined as a kind of case study in order to make these two points and illustrate their importance and relevance for the future of this emerging field.