Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine
December 1, 2006
Alex Hankey
This article is the first of two comparing findings of studies of advanced practitioners of Tibetan Buddhist meditation in remote regions of the Himalayas, with established results on long-term practitioners of the Transcendental Meditation programs. Many parallel levels of improvement were found, in sensory acuity, perceptual style and cognitive function, indicating stabilization of aspects of...
Biomedical Engineering: Applications, Basis and Communications
February 25, 2006
Kang-Ming Chang, Pei-Chen Lo
This paper firstly reports the visual response to the inner light (a form of qi) and the outside stimulus during Zen meditation. It has been reported literally that inner light perception is the common experience for prayers or Zen-meditation practitioners. In this paper, we propose a method to quantify the EEG (electroencephalograph) and F-VEP (flash visual evoked potential) that characterize...
2006
Nissara Horayangura, Suwanna Sath-Anand, Sombat Chantornvong
1 citation
A hallmark of the Buddhist spiritual path is the high degree of flexibility in individual interpretation, especially for laypeople as the guidelines for their practice is particularly vague. In Thai and other Theravada cultures, what has been most widely taught to laypeople is the five precepts and generosity (dana). However, in contemporary Thai society, growing numbers of laypeople have begun...
American Psychologist
2006
B. Alan Wallace, Shauna L. Shapiro
606 citations
Clinical psychology has focused primarily on the diagnosis and treatment of mental disease, and only recently has scientific attention turned to understanding and cultivating positive mental health. The Buddhist tradition, on the other hand, has focused for over 2,500 years on cultivating exceptional states of mental well-being as well as identifying and treating psychological problems. This...
Discourse
December 1, 2005
Dennis McCort
1 citation
Jena Romanticism and Zen Dennis McCort (bio) But what drew him with all its power was a tall, light blue flower that stood beside the stream and touched him with its broad, glittering petals. Surrounding it were countless flowers of all colors, and the rare fragrance filled the air. He saw nothing but the blue flower and regarded it for a long while with indescribable tenderness. Finally he...
History of Psychiatry
December 1, 2005
Fernando Tola, Carmen Dragonetti
9 citations
After some general introductory remarks on Indian philosophy, this essay deals with the structure of mind in the Yogacara Buddhist idealist school. Mind can be conceived as having two ‘parts’: the receptacle consciousness, constituted by the vasanas, or ‘marks’ left by any individual experience, which ‘remains’ in the mind in an unconscious state; and the function consciousness, constituted by...
Journal of Religious History
October 1, 2005
R. Po-chia Hsia
5 citations
Since the Church fathers, oneirology and dream revelations were regarded with considerable suspicion among theologians and ecclesiastical authorities, though dreams remained a powerful and pervasive feature of religious expression at a popular level. Among converts in Ming-Qing China, where lay initiatives were necessarily important given the paucity of European priests, holy dreams were...
European journal of applied physiology
September 1, 2005
Dirk Cysarz, Arndt Büssing
The impact of meditation on cardiorespiratory synchronization with respect to breathing oscillations and the modulations of heart rate induced by respiration (respiratory sinus arrhythmia, RSA) was investigated in this study. Four different exercises (spontaneous breathing, mental task, Zen meditation, and Kinhin meditation) were consecutively performed by nine subjects mainly without any...
August 4, 2005
Lance S. Cousins
2 citations
Lance S.Cousins There have been many attempts to define or describe the nature of mystical experience: some have argued for a uniform mystical goal, others have asserted the uniqueness of some particular type of mystical experience, still others have sought to erect a hierarchy of stages or levels of mystical experience either within one religion or across the boundaries of traditions.1 No real...
Philosophy East and West
July 1, 2005
Rui Zhu
Scholars have underestimated and misunderstood the distinction between Sōtō and Rinzai, the two major branches of Zen Buddhism, because they have either parroted the sectarian polemics of the schools themselves or, as in the case of prominent scholars Carl Bielefeldt and T. P. Kasulis, dismissed these polemics as deriving from institutional politics rather than substantive doctrinal or...