This article examines the relation of contemplative exercises with enhancement of students' experience during neuroscience studies. Short contemplative exercises inspired by the Buddhist tradition of self-inquiry were introduced in an undergraduate neuroscience course for psychology students. At the start of the class, all students were asked to participate in short "personal brain...
Based on evidence of parasympathetic activation, early studies defined meditation as a relaxation response. Later research attempted to categorize meditation as either involving focused or distributed attentional systems. Neither of these hypotheses received strong empirical support, and most of the studies investigated Theravada style meditative practices. In this study, we compared...
Dualities such as self versus other, good versus bad, and in-group versus out-group are pervasive features of human experience, structuring the majority of cognitive and affective processes. Yet, an entirely different way of experiencing, one in which such dualities are relaxed rather than fortified, is also available. It depends on recognizing, within the stream of our consciousness, the...
이 논문은 ‘종교체험(religious experience)’을 분석의 도구로 삼아 신비주의의 비교 연구(comparative study of mysticism) 관점에서 간화선을 분석한다. 간화선 전통이 속해 있는 선불교는 수행과 체험의 관계를 믿음이나 은총과 같은 개념에 의지하지 않고 이성에 호소해 설명하려는 대표적인 신비주의 전통이다. 수행 전통으로서의 간화선의 특징을 종교체험과 신비주의라는 개념을 활용해 분석하면 이 점이 훨씬 분명하게 드러난다.BR 비교의 관점에서 간화선은 여타 전통에 비해 다음과 같은 특성을 보인다. 첫째, 간화선은 인간 언어의 한계를 명확하게 인식하면서도 언어를 수행에 적극적으로 활용한다. 둘째, 간화선은 여타 전통보다 개인의 체험에 초점을 맞추는 철저한 경험주의와...
Preface Contributors General Editor's Introduction, Steven T. Katz JUDAISM, edited by Moshe Idel CHRISTIANITY, edited by Bernard McGinn ISLAM, edited by Peter Awn HINDUISM, edited by Arvind Sharma BUDDHISM, edited by John Powers CONFUCIANISM AND DAOISM, edited by Livia Kohn NATIVE AMERICAN TRADITIONS, edited by John Grim
The concept of mindfulness is based on Vipassana, a Buddhist meditation technique. The present study examines the physiological indices of attention and autonomic regulation in experienced Vipassana meditators to test the claim that mindfulness is an effective therapeutic tool due to its effects on increasing awareness of present experience and emotional self-regulation. Ten male experienced...
Buddhism teaches that ‘self’ as a substantial, enduring entity is an illusion. But for self to be an illusion there must be something in our experience that is misinterpreted as self. What is this? The notion of an experiential self plays an important role in phenomenological investigations of conscious experience. Does the illusion of self consist in mistaking a purely experiential self for a...
To better understand the neurobiological mechanisms by which mindfulness-based practices function in a psychotherapeutic context, this article details the definition, techniques, and purposes ascribed to mindfulness training as described by its Buddhist tradition of origin and by contemporary neurocognitive models. Included is theory of how maladaptive mental processes become habitual and...
The nucleus accumbens orchestrates processes related to reward and pleasure, including the addictive consequences of repeated reward (e.g., drug addiction and compulsive gambling) and the accompanying feelings of craving and anhedonia. The neurotransmitters dopamine and endogenous opiates play interactive roles in these processes. They are released by natural rewards (i.e., food, water, sex,...
Challenging earlier cognitivist approaches, recent theories of embodied cognition argue that the human mind and its functions are best understood as intimately bound up with the human body and its physiological dimensions. Some scholars have suggested that such theories, in departing from some core assumptions of the Western philosophical tradition, display significant similarities to certain...