Deep feeling for life characterizes monks, healers, and scholars. However, the current context of higher education in the United States leaves behind the quest for meaning in favor of corporate cost cutting and employment-focused endeavors by which we are judged. This panel of scholars seeks to share the ongoing process of creating a master’s degree …
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Concurrent Session 2 – Contemplative Neuroscience, the Phenomenology of Attention and the Mereology of the Subject
In this paper, I argue that results from contemplative neuroscience can help resolve a dispute between Husserl and Gurwitsch regarding whether attention is endogenous or exogenous. The empirical results indicate that attention is endogenous, i.e., that we are subjectively aware — and to a certain extent in control — of the direction of our attention. …
Concurrent Session 2 – Prospects for a Empirical Research of Buddhist Religious Practice from within Buddhist Contexts
I argue for a contemporary academic theological discipline of Buddhist empirical practical theology, wherein qualitative and quantitative contemplative research of the lived experience of Buddhist religion is systematically conducted from within the historical, cultural, and social contexts of religious practice. After briefly reviewing certain philosophical issues with respect to a specifically Buddhist practical theology, I …
Concurrent Session 1 – Can We Measure Mental Balance? Scientific and Contemplative Perspectives On Equanimity
In light of a growing interest in contemplative practices such as meditation, the emerging field of contemplative science has been challenged to describe and objectively measure how these practices affect health and well-being. We recently proposed that equanimity could serve as a measurable outcome of contemplative practices, both in basic science investigations and in clinical …
Concurrent Session 1 – Ancient Western Contemplative Philosophy: An Introduction to Plotinus and Neo-Platonism
This presentation introduces the contemplative thought of Plotinus (c. 205-270 CE), the Greek philosopher who has been called the father of the Western contemplative tradition. Plotinus’s philosophy — today described as ‘Neo-Platonism’ — influenced Christian, Jewish, and Islamic mystics as well as Renaissance humanists and scientists, touching thinkers as diverse as St. Augustine, Rumi, and …
Concurrent Session 1 – Engaged Compassion: Humanizing the Sacred and Secular
How can we advance true compassion in an increasingly pluralistic society? My paper will examine some possibilities in the light of ideas postulated by His Holiness the Dalai Lama in his book Beyond Religion, in which he stated that we are born free of religion but we are not born free of the need for …
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Concurrent Session 1 – Distinctions of Contemplative Practice in Different Religious Traditions and Relevance to Neuroscience
Contemplative practices of the many traditions of the West and of the East have different characteristics. For example, the absorption of mystics (in Christian or Sufi traditions) has a different character than does Buddhist contemplation. Whereas the mystic enters into the subtle domain of mind in the experience of a higher power (in the face …
Concurrent Session 1 – Can There Be a Jewish Contemplative Studies?
As neuroscience and contemplative studies “come of age,” researchers are increasingly inquiring into non-Asian traditions, particularly Abrahamic ones. This paper addresses some of the methodological concerns implicated by this westward turn, focusing on Jewish contemplative practice. First, it provides an introduction to the major phenomenological types of Jewish mystical/contemplative practice. Second, it addresses the nature …
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Concurrent Session 1 – Dogen’s “Nonthinking”: What the Founder of Soto Zen Can Teach Us About Intentionality and Discrimination During Shikantaza Meditation
This paper investigates Zen master Eihei Dogen’s emphasis on the role of “nonthinking” (hishiryo) in shikantaza (“just sitting”) meditation by viewing nonthinking as a cognitive process existing in dynamic relation to thinking (shiryo) and not-thinking (fushiryo). Dogen’s ostensibly mysterious shift away from the Ch’an terminology of “no-thought” (munen) and “no-mind” (mushin) provides vital insight into …
Concurrent Session 1 – PTSD and Buddhism: An Analogical Mapping Model
We propose a mapping approach for relating Buddhism and trauma psychotherapy — a detailed, asymmetric analogy between a wide range of concepts on both sides. Both posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and Buddhist concepts of suffering are rooted in a stubborn, preconceptual misapprehension: on the PTSD side, vivid re-experiencing of the traumatic event as still present …
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