EMOTION IN SIKH MUSICOLOGY

Recent studies in Sikh musicology have focused on its history and theory. However, there is an absence of theoretical research which focuses on the role of emotions in Sikh music. In this paper, we contribute to this research by investigating key issues relating to emotions in Sikh musicology. We explore theories which propose that a rāga will evoke a particular emotion/mood in the listener and that there are a number of factors which influence this process. In particular, we focus on two parallel theories which we term the ‘one rāga one emotion’ and the ‘one rāga multiple emotions’ theories. We consider these theories within the context of the shabads (We are adding an ‘s’ for Punjabi plural words such as shabads and rāgas although the plural in Punjabi in this case would be Shabad or rāga. By Anglicising the words in this way we hope that it makes the paper easier to read), in particular rāgas of the Guru Granth Sahib which convey a number of emotions/moods. In this paper, we explore the problem of how to approach the interpretation of rāgas within the context of the emotions/moods presented in the shabads of those rāgas whilst adhering to the musical structure of the rāga. We use rāga Sirī to exemplify and focus the discussion. We challenge the ‘one rāga one emotion’ theory and propose that a rāga can be performed to evoke a number of emotions/moods but that certain considerations have to be taken into account by the performer during the rendition of the rāga.     

From Buddha's speech to Buddha's essence: philosophical discussions of Buddha‐vacana in India and China1

This is a comparative study of the discourses on the nature of sacred language found in Indian Abhidharma texts and those written by 7th century Chinese Buddhist scholars who, unlike the Indian Buddhists, questioned ‘the essence of the Buddha’s teaching'. This issue labeled fo‐chiao t'i lun, the theory of ‘the essence of the Buddha’s teaching', was one of the topics on which Chinese Yogācāra scholars have shown a keen interest and served as the inspiration for extensive intellectual dialogues in their texts. It is in Hsüan‐tsang's massive and organized translation works, begun in 648, that various previous translations of the term buddhavacana from Indian Abhidharma texts were given the unified translation of fo‐chiao. (Fo‐chiao literally means “the Buddha's teachings,” and is the term used in the modern period for “Buddhism.”) By combining fo‐chiao with the term t'i, meaning ‘essence’ or ‘substance’ throughout his translations, Hsüan‐tsang attempted to define ‘the essence of the Buddha’s teaching'. In Indian Abhidharma texts, the nature of the Buddha's word was either ‘sound’ (?abdha), the oral component of speech, or ‘name’ (nāma), the component of language that conveys meaning, or some combination of the two. From the time of Hsüan‐tsang's translation, however, discourse on the nature of sacred language was no longer relegated to the category of language or of epistemological investigation, but became grounded in the Chinese discussion investigating the ‘essence’ or ‘substance’ of the Buddha's teaching, and even of ‘Buddhism’ itself. As such, it sought to transcend the distinction between language and meaning. This gradual but explicit process of inquiry into the nature of ‘the Buddha’s word' was a necessary antecedent to the transition to a ‘Chinese’ Buddhism.     

Reflections on the Dichotomy Rūpakāya/Dhammakāya

In the first part of the paper, I argue against the idée reçue that rūpakāya is a Pali phrase referring to relics and images of a Buddha after his nirvana. It does not: it refers either to any human body, or to the Buddha's body while alive. In the second part I argue that appreciating how the dhammakāya is actually instantiated through time requires us to abandon the interpretive dichotomy which sets it as an ‘immaterial’, ‘spiritual’ object against ‘material objects’ such as relics, images, and amulets. As instantiated in writing and speech-events it functions in the same ways. It too is an embodied object of ritual pūjā.     

A Gricean Interpretation of Nāgārjuna’s Catuṣkoṭi and the No-Thesis View

Nāgārjuna (c. 150–250 CE), the famous founder of the Madhyamika School, proposed the positive catu?ko?i in his seminal work, Mūlamadhyamakakārikā: ‘All is real, or all is unreal, all is both real and unreal, all is neither unreal nor real; this is the graded teaching of the Buddha’. He also proposed the negative catu?ko?i: ‘“It is empty” is not to be said, nor “It is non-empty,” nor that it is both, nor that it is neither; [“empty”] is said only for the sake of instruction’ and the no-thesis view: ‘No dharma whatsoever was ever taught by the Buddha to anyone’. In this essay, I adopt Gricean pragmatics to explain the positive and negative catu?ko?i and the no-thesis view proposed by Nāgārjuna in a way that does not violate classical logic. For Nāgārjuna, all statements are false as long as the hearer understands them within a reified conceptual scheme, according to which (a) substance is a basic categorical concept; (b) substances have svabhāva, and (c) names and sentences have svabhāva.     

The Buddha counsels a theist: A reading of the Tevijjasutta (Dīghanikāya 13)

The dominant culture in India in the Buddha's day, Brahmanical culture, took as axiomatic the existence of a supernatural creator deity. This deity, termed ‘Brahmā, was conceived as being ‘the all-seeing, the allpowerful, the Lord, the maker and creator, ruler, appointer and orderer, father of all that have been and will be’. Although the Buddha completely rejected such apparent metaphysical speculation as a ‘thicket of views’, he nowhere formulated a systematic repudiation of theism. In one canonical text, however, the Buddha, encountering a young Brahmin espousing theistic beliefs, gives a series of analogies and similes that help to illuminate his views on the matter. In short, the Buddha saw such a belief as being dangerously reflexive, and hence as a symptom of a debilitating conceptual and affective disorder. Thus, in the dialogue, the Buddha aims to ease this ailment of his interlocutor through a threefold strategy: (1) displaying the language usage that under girds the problem; (2) reorienting the interlocutor towards the primacy of his conceptual apparatus as the proper locus of concern; and (3) providing a practice through which the interlocutor may develop the skills necessary for conceptual and affective health. The parameters of the discussion in this sutta are wide enough to render it of relevance to contemporary debates on theism. That is, the issue at stake in the sutta may be read as being not only about a restricted local notion of deity, but about God, broadly conceived. The article contains fresh translations from the text under consideration, the Tevijjasutta of the Dīhanikāya (13).     

Spacious Awareness in Mahāyāna Buddhism and Its Role in the Modern Mindfulness Movement

This paper investigates a particular understanding of ‘awareness’ in Mahāyāna Buddhism and its relevance for secular mindfulness. We will focus on the Zen and Mahāmudrā traditions which share a view of awareness as an innate wakefulness, described using metaphors of space, light and clarity. These traditions encourage practices in which the meditator rests in this spacious ‘non-dual’ awareness: Zen’s ‘just sitting’ and Mahāmudrā’s ‘open presence’. We explore the role of this approach within secular mindfulness, in particular Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT). We see how Jon Kabat-Zinn brought influences from Zen into the creation of MBSR, in his approach of ‘non-doing’, and in the practice of ‘choiceless awareness’, akin to Zen’s ‘just sitting’. We then examine how ‘open presence’ meditation is developed in the Tibetan Mahāmudrā tradition, using a sixteenth-century text Mahāmudrā: The Moonlight as our focal point. Turning to interviews with leading UK mindfulness teachers with Tibetan Buddhist training, we explore how this understanding of awareness can infuse meditation with a sense of ‘space’, and how that manifests in their teaching. We argue that a willingness to explore the ‘space of awareness’ can help mindfulness to offer a transformative path beyond stress reduction and therapy.     

Buddhist Meditation and the British Colonial Gaze in Nineteenth-Century Sri Lanka

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that the multiple orientalist expressions that flowed from British pens in nineteenth century Sri Lanka are of use to the scholar of Buddhism, in that they can not only shed light on the growth of Buddhist modernism and the use of the term ‘meditation’ within it, but also on Sri Lankan Buddhist practice on the ground. It first surveys the preconceptions of the British about the concept of ‘meditation’. It then examines the writings of a representative selection of scholar civil servants and Christian missionaries who were resident in Sri Lanka within the century. This data reveal that a vibrant culture of Buddhist devotion and preaching existed throughout the century, together, among the laity, with the practice of ‘meditation’ on objects related to insight into reality. Additionally, it suggests that the jhānas, although hard for westerners to understand, were an important part of Buddhist self-understanding. The paper, therefore, argues that the priority given to vipassanā as the essence of meditation within Buddhist Modernism is a reduction of the diversity within traditional practice and a distortion of the traditionally recognised interrelationship between the jhānas and other forms of mental culture.     

John Dewey and the Buddhist Philosophy of the Middle Way1

This paper argues that the central philosophical movement in the complex history of Buddhism that originated with Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha and carried on by Nāgārjuna (among other later Buddhist philosophers) shares some common themes with the pragmatic philosophy of John Dewey. These themes are the rejection of traditional metaphysics as definitive of philosophy, a return to the correct understanding of the nature of experience, and a particular view about the conduct and nature of philosophy. Dewey is used to illuminate such controversial problems in the Buddhist tradition as why the Buddha is silent about metaphysical questions, what it means to say that everything is anitya, and how we are to understand Nāgārjuna's key concepts of pratītyasamutpāda and ?únyatá.     

No Empathy for Empathy: An Existential Reading of Husserl’s Forgotten Question

ABSTRACT

Empathy is a term used to denote our experience of connecting or feeling with an Other. The term has been used both by psychologists and phenomenologists as a supplement for our biological capacity to understand an Other. In this paper I would like to challenge the possibility of such empathy. If empathy is employed to mean that we know another person’s feelings, then I argue that this is impossible. I argue that there is an equivocation in the use of the term ‘empathy’ which conditions the appropriation of the Other as we think that we know how the Other feels. To claim that we do know an Other’s feelings – or any kind of their intentional experience – means to appropriate their experience through our own. I will first reveal the equivocal use of the term ‘empathy’ and, then, I will explore Husserl’s use of the term. In Husserl, the understanding of an Other as empathy is only partial. I shall conclude by reiterating a thesis from philosophy of existence and feminist theory according to which to know another person comes from creating a community with them and not because we have a biological structure that can mirror each other’s feelings.     

Buddhist functionalism—Instrumentality reaffirmed

This article seeks to determine if Buddhism can best be understood as primarily a functionalist tradition. In pursuing this, some analogies arise with various Western strands—particularly James’ ‘pragmatism’, Dewey's ‘instrumentalism’, Braithwaite's ‘empiricism’, Wittgenstein's ‘language games’, and process thinkers like Hartshorne and Jacobson. Within the Buddhist setting, the traditional Theravāda framework of sila (ethics/precepts), samādhi (meditation) and pañña (wisdom) are examined, together with Theravāda rituals. Despite some ‘correspondence’ approaches with regard to truth claim statements, e.g. vipassanā ’insight’ and Abhidharma analysis, a more profound functionalism seems present. This is even more clear with the Mahāyāna. Apart from the basic and explicit Mahāyāna underpinning of upāya, the Mādhyamika, Tantras and Ch'an (Zen) schools are clearly functionalist. Moreover, despite initially seeming more ‘absolutist’ in their positions, other strands like the Pure Land and Nichiren faith traditions, and Dharmakirti's Vijñānavāda epistemology can also be tied into this functionalist setting.     

The Feeling Theory of Emotion and the Object‐Directed Emotions

Abstract: The ‘feeling theory of emotion’ holds that emotions are to be identified with feelings. An objection commonly made to that theory of emotion has it that emotions cannot be feelings only, as emotions have intentional objects. Jack does not just feel fear, but he feels fear‐of‐something. To explain this property of emotion we will have to ascribe to emotion a representational structure, and feelings do not have the sought after representational structure. In this paper I seek to defend the feeling theory of emotion against the challenge from the object‐directed emotions.     

From Etymology to Ontology: Vasubandhu and Candrakīrti on Various Interpretations of Pratītyasamutpāda

The main body of this article presents Vasubandhu’s and Candrakīrti’s discussion on the etymology of pratītyasamutpāda and its meaning(s) as it appears in the Bhā?ya to Abhidharmako?a 3.28ab and Prasannapadā 4.5–9.27, respectively. Both authors put forward and critically examine various Buddhist grammatical analyses and interpretations of the term. Many passages in the indicated sections parallel or nearly parallel to each other suggest that Buddhist discussions on pratītyasamutpāda were held in a very specified manner during the mature phase of Buddhist philosophy in India. In the conclusion of the article, an attempt is made to discern the reason for Buddhists’ mutually competing analyses of the term, showing that their seemingly objectively conducted discussions (i.e. argumentations) regarding pratītyasamutpāda are actually rooted in their ontological (doxic) presumptions. Thus, for example, the nearly identical etymological analyses of the term (and of the meaning of the word-formation) provided by Vaibhā?ika and Candrakīrti resulted in a completely different understanding of the ‘doctrinal’ meaning (artha) of the term. This situation seems to corroborate certain views of some ancient Indian (Buddhist included) philosophers of language, according to whom there is no internal or ‘inborn’ connection between words or word-formation and their meanings, the latter being purely mental (and hence non-verbal) and dependent on the speaker’s intention (vivak?ā).     

Is Adhikāra good enough for ‘rights'?

The paper considers the question of whether ‘rights’ as we have it in modern Western thinking has an equivalence within the Indian framework of Dharma. Under Part I we look at purusārthas to see if the desired human goals imply rights by examining the tension between aspired ‘values’ and the ‘ought’ of duty. Next, a potential cognate in the term ’adhikāra’ is investigated via the derivation of a refined signification of ‘entitlements’, especially in the exegetical hermeneutics of the Mimāmsā. Finally, adhikāra's re‐emergence in the Bhagavadgitā is considered. We suggest that while the boundary is significantly extended, the Gitā too appears to be circumspect in opening up the discourse in the more abstract and absolute sense which the term ‘rights’ nowadays enjoys.     

The Soteriology of Role-Play in the Bhagavad Gītā

I will here apply the classical Indian model of the dramatic actor as a methodology for interpreting the soteriological psychology of the Bhagavad Gītā, paying special attention to the usefulness of this approach for clarifying K???a's rationale in showing his divine form in Chapter 11. I argue that the Gītā advocates creative role-play as both the means and the end of liberation. Further, while K???a's teachings can be understood in terms of orthodox Hindu soteriologies that have in view an overcoming of the emotions, I argue that K???a looks to transform Arjuna into an ‘athlete of emotion’, much like traditional Indian-based training methods do for theatrical actors.     

Hebrew and Buddhist Selves: A Constructive Postmodern Study

Our task will be to demonstrate that there are instructive parallels between Hebrew and Buddhist concepts of self. There are at least five main constituents (skandhas in Sanskrit) of the Hebrew self: (1) nepe? as living being; (2) rūah as indwelling spirit; (3) lēb as heart-mind; (4) bā?ār as flesh; and (5) dām as blood. We will compare these with the five Buddhist skandhas: disposition (samskāra), consciousness (vijñāna), feeling (vedanā), perception (samjñā), and body (rūpa). Generally, what we will discover is that both Buddhists and Hebrews have a ‘bundle’ theory of the self; both see the body as an essential part of personal identity; both overcome the modernist distinction of the inner and the outer; and both avoid language about the will as a distinct faculty. In sum, both present us with a fully somatic and nondualistic view of being human.     

THE ‘UNIVERSAL DHARMA FOUNDATION’ OF MINDFULNESS-BASED STRESS REDUCTION: NON-DUALITY AND MAHĀYĀNA BUDDHIST INFLUENCES IN THE WORK OF JON KABAT-ZINN

ABSTRACT

The discussion on the Buddhist roots of contemporary mindfulness practices is dominated by a narrative which considers the Theravāda tradition and Theravāda-based ‘neo-vipassanā movement’ as the principal source of Buddhist influences in mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) and related mindfulness-based programmes (MBPs). This Theravāda bias fails to acknowledge the significant Mahāyāna Buddhist influences that have informed the pioneering work of Jon Kabat-Zinn in the formation of the MBSR programme. In Kabat-Zinn’s texts, the ‘universal dharma foundation’ of mindfulness practice is grounded in pan-Buddhist teachings on the origins and cessation of suffering. While MBSR methods derive from both Theravāda-based vipassanā and non-dual Mahāyāna approaches, the philosophical foundation of MBSR differs significantly from Theravāda views. Instead, the characteristic principles and insights of MBSR practice indicate significant similarities and historical continuities with contemporary Zen/S?n/Thi?n and Tibetan Dzogchen teachings based on doctrinal developments within Indian and East Asian Mahāyāna Buddhism.     

Peering into the opaque mind

Abstract

Carolyn Saarni’s pioneering research showed that young children learn how to hide their feelings—to conceal disappointment with a smile or to conceal amusement with a neutral expression. By 6 years of age, children understand the implications of such concealment. They can distinguish between: (i) an individual’s true but hidden emotion; (ii) the emotion that the individual overtly expresses; and (iii) the emotion that other people might mistakenly attribute to the individual. Effectively, young children grasp that the mind is opaque. Its contents can remain hidden from others. We examine two issues raised by this important conceptual insight. First, we ask how it emerges in young children—what experiences lead them to acknowledge the mind’s opacity? Second, in light of Saarni’s emphasis on the impact of cultural beliefs and practices, we discuss anthropological evidence that in certain cultures the mind’s opacity is regarded as a social desideratum so that enquiries into, or speculations about, a person’s private mental states are regarded as inappropriate. We consider the understanding of hidden emotion that children will acquire if they grow up in such a culture. We propose—paradoxically—that they will readily differentiate between what is actually felt and what is overtly expressed. We conclude by reviewing recent cross-cultural evidence lending initial support to that prediction.