Mindfulness-based practice methods are entering the Western cultural mainstream as institutionalised approaches in healthcare, education, and other public spheres. The Buddhist roots of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and comparable mindfulness-based programmes are widely acknowledged, together with the view of their religious and ideological neutrality. However, the cultural and...
The dimensions of travelling and tourism have become manifold in recent decades. People love to travel with various purposes. Religious tourism, yoga tourism, peace tourism and spiritual tourism are some dimensions. Lumbini can be a best destination for meditation tourism, which could be much rewarding for individual, social and national development. The travelers and stakeholders have yet to...
Abstract The Path of Insight is a spiritual path of Tibetan Buddhism tradition. The fundamental part consists of three elements, such like: preliminary practices, the tranquility meditation and the penetrating insight meditation. However, counted three parts one ought to perceive as aspects of one process aiming to realize of the soteriology purpose. The achievement of the nondual state has its...
High blood pressure represents an important risk factor for diseases related to cardiovascular system and is directly associated with high oxidative stress, inflammation and vascular endothelial dysfunction. Recently, there is promising data available to suggest that meditation-based low-cost and low-risk lifestyle modification strategies may provide beneficial effects on chronic inflammation,...
SOM (self-organizing map) is modified to encode the cross-bifrequency map that evaluates the cardiorespiratory interactions at Zen-meditation and resting states. The effectiveness of meditation on stress manipulation has aroused the attention of researchers. Cardiovascular and respiratory systems are very important in manipulating both mental and physical health in the stressful environment....
abstract:This article explores the journey of William Johnston (1925–2010), who was born in the Falls Road District of Belfast in 1925, in a climate of intense conflict. He recalled being born in the midst of terror into a family that supported the Irish Republican Army. He studied in both Ireland and Great Britain, entered the Society of Jesus, and went to postwar Japan as a Jesuit missionary...
Abstract Ancient Indian spiritual and philosophical approaches contain psychological theories of meditation that specify (a) what meditation is, (b) what its aim is and how it works, and (c) predictions about its effects. This chapter introduces two representative theories that date back more than two millennia, one derived from early Buddhism and the other from the classical Hindu thought...
Abstract Tibetan Buddhism is characterized by an extensively diverse corpus of contemplative practices that draws from over one thousand years of Indian historical developments in Buddhist philosophical discourse and experimentation with contemplative techniques. Traditions of Chinese and Central Asian Buddhism also played a role in influencing some of the contents and structure of the Tibetan...
In traditional China, Buddhism was not a separate religious tradition or culture practiced in isolation from the rest of Chinese religious culture. This applied not only to people outside the monastic context, but also to people within that context. Even shamanic and medium practices could take place within a Buddhist context. Shamanic is here defined as spirit travel or communication whilst...
This paper attempts to correct the unwitting reliance of much transpersonal psychology upon Indian texts that were indigenously specific to sannyasins (nonhouseholder, monastics). This includes teachings from advaita vedanta, yoga, and many Buddhist schools on releasement from desire, the diminishing role of the ego, guardedness toward “the mellow-drama” of “worldly” life (as Ram Dass famously...
Many of our experiences in hospice and palliative care medicine are challenging. We support dying patients and their families as they struggle with the transition from life to death and continue to support those in mourning. Many times, in America, it is difficult to even appreciate a glimmer of spiritual grace as our patients die. We easily remain stuck in the material and distance ourselves...
The modern mindfulness movement rests largely on the twin pillars of scientific investigation and Buddhist philosophy of mind. However, in its current form and application, the scientific study of meditation is celebrated while the Buddhist roots of these practices and modes of investigation are often obscured. This paper highlights the utility and value of Buddhist ideas in the context of...
Over the past 40 years, mindfulness-based therapies (MBTs) have gained a reputation among the biomedical community for their ability to contribute to health, mental capital, and human flourishing. Recently, however, critical mindfulness scholars have questioned the moral import of MBTs, claiming that, in modernizing meditation, they strip Buddhist practices of their ethical and soteriological...
ABSTRACT This paper examines two issues. The first is the apparent lack of auto/biographical composition within Southern Buddhism. Various reasons are suggested for this absence, such as monastic rulings, recent customs on public declaration of mental state and attainment, and the lack of the formal lineage transmissions that characterise some other forms of Buddhist practice. The paper then...
In an early discourse from the Saṃyuttanikāya, the Buddha states: “I do not see any other order of living beings so diversified as those in the animal realm. Even those beings in the animal realm have been diversified by the mind, yet the mind is even more diverse than those beings in the animal realm.” This paper explores how this key early Buddhist idea gets elaborated in various layers of...
The essay proposes that entheogenic mushrooms and shamanic experiences are encoded in the Khajuraho Temples of India. Erotic sculptures of Khajuraho have statues with limbs depicted in strange positions, separated from the body or with orientations that are anatomically impossible. These represent dismemberment experiences typical of shamanic and mystical initiation, a phenomenon with...
Background: This research aims to develop new methods to investigate the cardiorespiratory interaction of Zen-meditation practitioners (Zen-meditation group) and healthy ordinary young people (control group) by quantitatively evaluating respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) behavior. Methods: Twenty-five voluntary controls and seven Zen-meditation practitioners were recruited. The experimental...
Much of what Western medicine classifies as psychiatric illness is understood by Tibetan thought as associated with imbalance of rlung (wind, breath). Rlung has a dual origin in Indian thought, combining elements from Ayurvedic medicine and Tantric Buddhism. Tibetan theories of rlung seem to correspond in significant ways with Western concepts of the autonomic nervous system (ANS), and Western...
The article examines Allen Ginsberg’s cultural and spiritual journeys, and traces the poet’s paths as foreshadowing those of many American Jews of the last generation. Ginsberg was a unique individual, whose choices were very different other men of his era. However, it was larger developments in American society that allowed him to take steps that were virtually unthinkable during his parents’...
In contemporary Western society, meditation techniques that were previously taught within the context of Eastern religious traditions are now increasingly being practiced in secular settings. While the boundary between the secular and the religious is blurred, popular meditation techniques such as Transcendental Meditation, vipassana, and mindfulness are generally promoted as being derived from...