Transforming Death Anxiety through Meaning-Centered Contemplation: A Philosophical Dialogue between Buddhist Nianfo Practice, Logotherapy, and Neurophenomenology

Abstract

This paper addresses the contemporary crisis of existential vacuum by examining how death anxiety may be reinterpreted through meaning-centered contemplation. Drawing on Ken Wilber’s Three Eyes of Knowing, the study brings Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy, transpersonal psychology, Buddhist Nianfo practice, and selected insights from cognitive neuroscience into philosophical dialogue. Nianfo is interpreted here as a meaning- centered contemplative practice. Within this framework, Nianfo provides a religious and contemplative structure through which practitioners may reorient selfhood, mortality, and ultimate concern. The discussion of the Default Mode Network and prior beliefs is used as a limited neurophenomenological lens, rather than as empirical validation of Buddhist doctrine or a reduction of religious practice to neural mechanisms. From this perspective, contemplative practice may be understood as reshaping self-referential patterns, loosening rigid mortality-related rumination, and supporting a more stable existential orientation. By placing Buddhist Nianfo, logotherapy, and neuroscience in dialogue, this paper argues that meaning-centered contemplation, grounded in vow and action (Yuan-Xing), can contribute to contemporary spiritual care. It offers an epistemological model in which psychological resilience, religious aspiration, and preparation for death are held together while philosophical, theological, and empirical modes of knowing remain distinct.