Two Notions of Nonconceptuality in Buddhist Meditative Practice
John Spackman
Philosophy East and West February 1, 2025 DOI: 10.1353/pew.2024.a951927 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Buddhism |
| Key points | Argues that while representational contents cannot plausibly be nonconceptual, awareness itself can be, and proposes that this nonconceptual awareness has a reflexive structure akin to self-awareness (svasaṃvedana), which establishes its nonconceptual character and answers objections facing nonconceptual content accounts. |
Abstract
This paper examines two accounts of how Buddhist meditative practice has been seen as cultivating nonconceptual mental states. The first, exemplified in recent work by Evan Thompson, drawing on Dharmakīrti, views the representational contents of certain meditative states as nonconceptual. The second, found in Yogācāra texts like the Mahāyānasaṃgraha, suggests that meditation cultivates a type of awareness that is nonconceptual (nirvikalpajñāna). I argue that while there are strong epistemological and phenomenological arguments against any representational contents being nonconceptual, the view that awareness itself is nonconceptual can avoid these problems. Nonconceptual awareness is best understood, I suggest, as having a reflexive structure akin to later notions of self-awareness (svasaṃvedana), which simultaneously establishes it as nonconceptual and vouchsafes it against the challenges facing nonconceptual content accounts. I thus offer a preliminary defense of the view that certain meditative practices cultivate an awareness in which the reflexive, nonconceptual nature of consciousness is revealed.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on buddhism, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mental balance and well-being: Building bridges between Buddhism and Western psychology. | 2006 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Buddhist Modernism and the Rhetoric of Meditative Experience | 1995 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Buddhist and Psychological Perspectives on Emotions and Well-Being | 2005 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Too Early to Tell: The Potential Impact and Challenges—Ethical and Otherwise—Inherent in the Mainstreaming of Dharma in an Increasingly Dystopian World | 2017 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| From self to nonself: The Nonself Theory | 2016 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |