Studies in the psychology and phenomenology of religious experience have long acknowledged similarities with various forms of psychopathology. Consequently, it has been important for religious practitioners and mental health professionals to establish criteria by which religious, spiritual, or mystical experiences can be differentiated from psychopathological experiences. Many previous attempts...
Chief amongst the issues Toshihiko Izutsu broached is the philosophisation of Zen Buddhism in his book Toward a Philosophy of Zen Buddhism. This article aims to critically compare Izutsu’s reconstruction of Zen metaphysics with another metaphysical tradition rooted in Descartes’ cogito ergo sum. Putting Izutsu’s terminological choices into the context of Zen Buddhism, we review his argument...
ABSTRACT In this article, I explore three important claims: (1) that Buddhist meditative practice is an important way in which therapists can enhance their abilities to be empathic by helping to clear the mind of incessant predispositions that both organize and distort perceptions; (2) that empathy and compassion are different and need to be carefully distinguished insofar as empathy is a...
Abstract:Dignāga's strict non-conceptualism about perception has proven difficult to defend. Not only were there facts known to epistemologists of Dignāga's school that are hard to reconcile with his bright line of separation between perception and inference; results from neuroscience also call it into question. This essay draws on resources from both Buddhist epistemology and recent philosophy...
The purpose of the title of this piece is to suggest that behind the bland exterior of the average medieval Chinese poem (at least in English translation) there may lurk processes of composition entirely unsuspected by the modern reader, aspects of the Tang poem that might repay greater study. This approach, namely meditation as a method of creative inspiration, was far from universal in the...
Saddharmasmṛtyupasthānasūtra is an Indian Buddhist sutra dating to the first half of the first millennium. Chapter 7 of the sutra consists of a very long meditation on the body, unusual in Buddhist literature for its anatomical, especially osteological, detail. The meditation also includes extensive descriptions of many internal worms as well as the internal winds that destroy the worms at the...
Abstract: While scholarly discussions on Jesuit education are plentiful, inquiries related to Ignatian pedagogy are rare. This article examines the applications of Ignatian pedagogy by juxtaposing it with the analysis of a Buddhist‐inspired and interdisciplinary contemplation program, Cognitively‐Based Compassion Training® (CBCT®). Drawing from the author's experience in teaching CBCT® at a...
AbstractThe body is a central object of the cultivation of mindfulness, in the way this has been described in relevant Pāli discourses and their parallels. At the background of such cultivation stands the absence of positing a mind-body duality and a lack of concern with a particular physical location of the mind in early Buddhist thought. Moreover, the various exercises that involve directing...
Abstract The problem of free will is associated with a specific and significant kind of control over our actions, which is understood primarily in the sense that we have the freedom to do otherwise or the capacity for self‐determination. Is Buddhism compatible with such a conception of free will? The aim of this article is to address three critical issues concerning the free will problem: (1)...
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is applied in various fields such as medicine, cognitive science, business, and education. The mindfulness of Buddhism is at the center of MBSR, and this means that Buddhist meditation has a great effect on modern society. For Buddhist meditations on death, the Aṅguttara Nikāya suggests mindfulness of death (maraṇasati), referring to ten methods of...
ABSTRACT Insight meditation (vipassanā) originated in Theravāda Buddhism. However, participants in a “Jewish Vipassanā” meditation retreat – held at a Jewish settlement in the West Bank region controlled by Israel since 1967 – often depicted vipassanā as essentially Jewish. Indeed, to validate their adoption of insight meditation, many participants first needed to establish their exclusive...
Abstract:The article explores major changes in the dominant models of meditation that came to characterize the practice of Chinese Buddhism during the first millennium of its growth and transformation. The main line of argument centers on key transformations of the classical model of Buddhist meditation, which postulates two main approaches to contemplative practice: calmness and insight. The...
The fundamental structure of the spiritual world and consciousness of the humanity are unknown to human beings. Except for teachings of Jesus Christ, Buddha, Kim Hang and other saints of the major world religions, to my knowledge, no accepted theory is yet established. There have been countless conflicts, arguments and even prosecutions and wars in the history of mankind due to discrepancies in...
Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche (YMR) is a Tibetan Buddhist monk, and renowned meditation practitioner and teacher who has spent an extraordinary number of hours of his life meditating. The brain-aging profile of this expert meditator in comparison to a control population was examined using a machine learning framework, which estimates "brain-age" from brain imaging. YMR's brain-aging rate appeared...
Despite accumulating evidence suggesting improvement in one's well-being as a result of meditation, little is known about if or how the brain and the periphery interact to produce these behavioral and mental changes. We hypothesize that meditation reflects changes in the neural representations of visceral activity, such as cardiac behavior, and investigated the integration of neural and...
This research is about the meaning of vipassanā meditation for Syailendra Buddhist College’s students. The background of STAB Syailendra students before I started the lesson always do meditation. It is certainly influential in everyday life in the midst of advances in technology that carries a negative influence on students. Based on this it is important to conduct research to know the meaning...
Sustained ethical action is needed now more than ever, and the attitude that Western phenomenology and Buddhist meditation practices employ in investigating experience is important for creating such action. Through investigation, one can experience a nondual Reality, which in turn can lead to embodied ethical action in light of that experience. By focusing on how there is an “arc of practice”...
This paper focuses on Buddhism in America, an neglected area of inquiry in anthropological study. There is a need for modern ethnographic studies to shed light on historical issues, paradigms for comparative inquiry, and thus, explore the impact of Buddhism on modern American society (Glazier, 1997). The enormous growth of Buddhism in the last quarter century (Smith, 2002) makes this an...
Dreamwork recorded in the Malay art world questions the occult power of artistic agency. As I did participant observation in Malaysia and Singapore, the artist Mohammad Din Mohammad divulged knowledge of Sufi lore, shamanic healing, and Malay martial arts (silat). On a quest to comprehend, discover, create and articulate esoteric skills, secret knowledge and mysterious artifacts, the artist...
The inheritance of dualism from Plato to Descartes, and since, has impoverished the human relation with nature, the world, other humans, and other species. The division of soul and body, and its counterpart of mind and body, gave us a world we believe ourselves to be separate from and superior to other species. This self-othering standpoint has had devastating consequences socially,...