Annals of Neurosciences
2011
Rick Hanson, Richard Mendius
The aim of the book is to educate people to enhance the power of positive emotions in their lives. In this book the author explains how our brains have evolved towards keeping us safe from external threats. Our intrinsic negativity leads to suffering. The author indicates that by using meditation and by the ways of the Buddhism, we can cause the reactions in the brain which stimulate the...
Frontiers in Neuroscience
2011
Ulrich Kirk, Jonathan Downar, P. Read Montague
167 citations
Human decision-making is often conceptualized as a competition between cognitive and emotional processes in the brain. Deviations from rational processes are believed to derive from inclusion of emotional factors in decision-making. Here, we investigate whether experienced Buddhist meditators are better equipped to regulate emotional processes compared with controls during economic...
Acta Universitatis Lodziensis Folia Psychologica
2011
Magdalena Kerestey
The article is focused on the relationship between meditation, degree of involvement in the practice and temporal orientation, in particular active concentration on present time called “Carpe diem”. Two hypotheses are tested: a) Practitioners, as compared to nonpractitioners, are presenting significantly higher active concentration on the present and lower orientation on the past, future and...
International Journal of Green Economics
2011
Peter Doran
1 citation
This article draws on recent Foucauldian scholarship and Michel Foucault’s writings on askēsis (from the Greek: ἄσκησις, áskēsis, ‘exercise’ or ‘training’) to explore the emerging role of contemporary mindfulness practices and associated teachings in advancing our understanding of consumerism and promoting sustainable consumption, as lifestyle change is forced up the international policy agenda...
Biofeedback
2011
Adam Burke, Autumn Gonzalez
6 citations
Meditation is a self-regulatory, mind-body process used to help engage attention and awareness, and to produce a state of inner quiescence. It has been used as a self-transformative practice for millennia, most notably in the Far East. Interest in meditation was evident in the United States in the late 19th century, and began to flourish during the early 1960s as Transcendental Meditation, Zen,...
Biofeedback
2011
Lawrence Edwards
Biofeedback has its beginnings in research conducted on yogis and Zen masters decades ago. Research shows the pervasive positive impact that meditative and mindfulness practices have on individuals. Mindfulness-based practices have been taken out of their broader contexts—extracted from deeper systems of yogic and Buddhist disciplines. Clinicians need to be aware of the unintended consequences...
Manusya Journal of Humanities
2011
Saipan Puriwanchana
1 citation
This article aims at studying the narratives of Phra Kechi Achan, (monks with mystical power) in central Thailand. Four monks’ life narratives, two from the Vipassana group and two from the Vidayagom group, are used as case studies. The study reveals that the narratives of all monks follow the structure of the Buddha’s life due to the Buddhist tradition of using the Buddha’s life as a paradigm...
Biofeedback
2011
Jonathan Shear
5 citations
Meditation procedures can have different types of effects and operate by very different mechanisms. Effects of Mindfulness and Vipassana procedures are often closely akin to what the meditators do in meditation and are understood as emerging via practice-makes-perfect mechanisms. Effects of major procedures from Zen and Transcendental Meditation (TM), by contrast, are often very different from...
Human Development
2011
Philip David Zelazo, Kristen E. Lyons
45 citations
Mindfulness is a way of attending – an attentional practice – that is derived from Asian contemplative traditions but has been secularized (and Westernized) in the context of clinical psychology [e.g., Segal, Williams, & Teasdale, 2002] and the emerging field of contemplative neuroscience [e.g., Lutz, Donne, & Davidson, 2007]. A major impetus for contemporary research on mindfulness was the...
Numen
2011
Homayun Sidky
13 citations
This paper is based upon five years of ethnographic research among the Tibetan exile community in Dharamsala, India, and extensive interviews with the medium of the State Oracle of Tibet and other spirit mediums. It investigates the nature of the oracular phenomenon and its place in the Tibetan Buddhist cosmology as well as the socio-political role of the Tibetan State Oracle, or Nechung. The...