Attention as a Key to Buddhist-Christian Dialogue
Buddhist-Christian Studies 1994 DOI: 10.2307/1389826 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Buddhism |
| Citations | 4 |
| Key points | Argues that attention is a fundamental category of religious experience, central to both Buddhist and Christian contemplative traditions. Contends that training attention serves to restore relations with the transcendent and overcome interpersonal alienation, and proposes that the Christian meditation movement's openness to Buddhist methods offers a promising arena for interreligious dialogue that temporarily suspends conflicting truth claims. |
Abstract
The cultivation of attention, especially in the form of mindful engagement in the present moment, is recognized by many diverse schools of Buddhist practice to be the prerequisite for insight and the therapy for all forms of suffering engendered by false views. Legend has it that when Rinzai Zen poet-priest Ikkya was asked to write down the sum of his wisdom, he wrote Attention, attention, attention. What do you mean? he was asked. Attention means attention. Insistence on this theme is not unique to Buddhism, however. As Philip Novak has shown, the effort to train or purify attention is an express aim of many of the world's religious and contemplative traditions. For these traditions, the training of attention is at once a way of restoring one's relations with the transcendent source of being and a method for overcoming interpersonal alienation. As such, attention is a fundamental category of religious experience. Evidence that this has been true for Christianity can be found abundantly in the literature of the monastic movement. In monastic and contemplative literature, attention is frequently invoked as the means to uproot sin (especially the sins associated with judging others), as the handmaiden of agape (since it enables one to wait lovingly upon God and one's neighbor), and as the essential skill for those who would follow the biblical injunction to pray without ceasing. In our own day, the Christian meditation movement reflects a widespread hunger for methodical training in the arts of attention, combined with a new willingness to learn from Buddhist and other contemplative traditions. I would like to suggest that this points us toward a promising arena for dialogue, one in which we can temporarily suspend the effort to resolve conflicting religious truth claims, for the sake of deeper understanding.
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 |