In the 1990s, samatha and vipassanā being introduced by Theravada monks into Japan, the interest in Buddhist meditation once again arose. One remarkable aspect of this movement is that this interest was found in ordinary society, rather than in academic circles. Later, the introduction took the form of “mindfulness,” which was less in the sense of religious practice. Much later, after the...
This chapter discusses the beneficial role meditation can play in the management of chronic pain and illness. It contains a review of the prevalence of pain within society and the high costs borne by both the individual and health systems. It then goes on to explore how meditation and awareness training can reduce the individual’s suffering with a review of the evidence base. The Breathworks’...
Does Yoga Induce Metaphysical Hallucinations?Interdisciplinarity at the Edge: Comments on Evan Thompson’s Waking, Dreaming, Being Owen Flanagan (bio) Waking, Dreaming, Being is an unusual book in many ways. I mention two. First, in some ways it is a memoir. Few philosophers started as a child doing the sort of philosophy that they did as a grown-up. Evan did. Evan grew up in the intellectually...
Summary Mindfulness is a meditation practice defined as a specific way of paying attention. It has been adapted from Buddhist traditions to Western secular use (e.g. in stress reduction, health promotion, treatment of psychological disorders). Despite its widespread application in adult populations, mindfulness remains a neglected topic in the psychological interventions designed for children...
We investigate conditions in which more accurate metacognition may lead to greater susceptibility to illusion and thus conditions under which mindfulness meditation may lead to less accurate perceptions. Specifically, greater awareness of intentions may lead to an illusory compression of time between a voluntary action and its outcome ("intentional binding"). Here, we report that experienced...
Because of the multifaceted process of weaning patients with prolonged mechanical ventilation, enhancing weaning success remains a challenge. The Care-Integrated Concentration Meditation Program was developed on the basis of Buddhist philosophy and implemented to determine its procedural feasibility. A qualitative case study with 3 participants was conducted, and the process and initial...
The distinction between explicit and implicit psychological performance is held to arise as a consequence of differences in self-related processing. In the former, outputs from sensory and memory activity gain ready access to a model of self, referred to here as 'I'. Implicit performance comes about when activity is isolated from 'I' for pathological, or other, reasons. Under normal, explicit...
This paper was originally presented at the British Psychological Society’s Transpersonal Psychology Section’s 19th annual conference – ‘Psychedelics, Psychology and Spirituality’. It was my intention, in the best spirit of academic debate and inquiry, to offer some critical perspectives and considerations related to the use of psychedelics in relation to the origins and development of...
A critical reply to the anti-mindfulness critics in the collection, who oppose the popular secularized adoption of mindfulness on various grounds (it is not Buddhism, it is Buddhism, it is a tool of neo-capitalist exploitation, etc.), I argue that mindfulness is a quality of consciousness, opposite mindlessness, that may be cultivated through practice, and is almost always beneficial to those...
Hypnosis has been an elusive concept for science for a long time. However, the explosive advances in neuroscience in the last few decades have provided a "bridge of understanding" between classical neurophysiological studies and psychophysiological studies. These studies have shed new light on the neural basis of the hypnotic experience. Furthermore, an ambitious new area of research is...