Bringing Zen Practice Home

Buddhist meditation practice is perceived as non-relational. Yet a serious meditator develops an intimacy with herself that is an asset to being in a healthy relationship. In this essay, using composite profiles of patients, I pursue my interest in relationships and family life as a path to mental health and a home to enlightened experience. The intimacy of a relationship with oneself, with another and within family provides a container that may enable us to let go of our fixed sense of self.     

中国佛教伦理的社会意义

中国佛教伦理的社会意义值得探究 ,我们拟从三个方面来分析。首先以孝道为例来论述中国佛教是怎样与中国重家庭、重孝道的礼法制度相协调 ,使中国人认同佛教也是讲孝的 ;其次是着重通过对佛教道德规范内涵的分析 ,揭示其所包含的丰富的社会意义 ;再次是阐述中国佛教伦理对现代人类社会的三大矛盾 ,即人与自我、人与他人、人与自然的矛盾的缓解、转化作用 ,从而肯定其内在具有的现代社会意义。     

INVESTIGATING THE “SCIENCE” IN “EASTERN RELIGIONS”: A METHODOLOGICAL INQUIRY

This article explores some of the understandings of “science” that are often employed in the literature on “science and Eastern religions.” These understandings crucially shape the raging debates between the avid proponents and the keen detractors of the thesis that Eastern forms of spirituality are uniquely able to subsume the sciences into their metaphysical–axiological horizons. More specifically, the author discusses some of the proposed relations between “science” and “Eastern religions” by highlighting three themes: (a) the relation between science and metaphysics, (b) the relation between science and experience, and (c) the European origins of science. The analysis of these relations requires a methodological inquiry into some of the culturally freighted valences of “science,” “metaphysics,” and “experience.”     

Hay’s Buddhist philosophy of gestural language

The central role of gestural language in Buddhism is widely acknowledged, as in the story of the Buddha pointing at the moon, the point being the student’s seeing beyond the finger (as object) to its gesture (as act). Gesture’s role in dance is similarly central, as noted by scholars in the emerging interdisciplinary field of dance studies. Unsurprisingly, then, the intersection of these two fields is well-populated, including the formal gestures (called “mudras”) Buddhism inherited from classical Indian dance, and the masked dance of the Mani Rimdu Festival. In this investigation, I will articulate a new Buddhist philosophy of gestural language, based on a new conception of emptiness that I locate in the work of contemporary U.S. choreographer Deborah Hay, as influenced by Nāgārjuna and Zen. And this, finally, suggests that contemporary Western philosophy should incorporate this compassion as a normative dimension to its own theorizing and practice.     

Buddhist insight meditation (Vipassanā) and Jon Kabat-Zinn’s “Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction”: an example of dedifferentiation of religion and medicine?

For about 25 years, mindfulness meditation has attracted growing attention. Developed in the context of a traditional Asian religious tradition, mindfulness meditation originally served soteriological goals. In therapeutic settings, it has been claimed, it has become a secular ‘consciousness technology’. So far, studies have mainly been interested in clinical evidence for salutogenetic effects. Questions about if and how practices such as “Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction” (MBSR) are to be conceptualized as ‘religious’ still require further analysis. To provide a more fitting criteriology, we propose to distinguish between ‘salvific’ (‘liberating’) and ‘salvetive’ (‘healing’) settings of meditation, with the latter denoting a more ‘therapeutic’ outlook. It will be argued that MBSR bears elements of salvetive and salvific meditation. In the paradigm of a functional differentiation between ‘religion’ and ‘biomedicine’, MBSR’s presence in biomedical institutions seems to provide a counter-example, which will be discussed in the final section.     

Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Asian Contextual Theology in relation to Minjung and Prajna of Inter‐being

Abstract: Dietrich Bonhoeffer remains an influential figure in inspiring Asian contextual theology of minjung (the poor). In addition to political reading of minjung, a Buddhist wisdom (prajna) offers a basis for understanding of religious dimension of minjung. However, there has been no discussion about Bonhoeffer's legacy of theology after Auschwitz in critical dialogue with Asian contextual theology.     

易理与佛理本无二致——论《周易禅解》的思想创新

明末高僧(?)益智旭,通过对《周易》经传文本的禅学解释,在理解易佛关系问题上勇于创新,比较系统地构建了独特的禅易相通思想理论．本文以《周易禅解》文本内容为依据,结合《灵峰宗论》中与易学相关的内容,从“易即易理贯彻始终”、“易理即自心之易理”、“易理即无住之佛理”等方面深入分析,揭示出“易理与佛理本无二致”是智旭的一大创新思想。     

Analytic Meditative Therapy as the Inverse of Symbol Formation and Reification

Western psychotherapy tends to regard the mind and mental distress in terms of differing theoretical models. Mental distress can be also be usefully viewed as the result of erroneous reification—the confusing of symbols and concepts with reality. This paper describes the theory and practice of analytic meditative therapy. Inspired by non-dual Buddhist and other eastern wisdom traditions, it uses meditative and cognitive processes to control anxiety, deconstruct reified symbols and encourage contemplative resting in non-dual mental space, where reality and its appearance are coemergent and coalesced but distinct, and healing occurs naturally without the need for any specific additional effort.Jonathan R. Harrison was born in Manchester, England in 1943. He has a master’s degree in physics and mathematics from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. He studied non-dual therapy with Dr. Peter Fenner in France and Israel and during a personal retreat at a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in India. Inspired by non-dual Buddhist and other wisdom traditions—Dzogchen and Mahamudra, Zen and Madhyamika, Advaita and Taoism—he currently lives and works in Israel, teaching analytical meditative therapy to individuals and groups.     

CLIMATE ENGINEERING FROM HINDU‐JAIN PERSPECTIVES

Although Indic perspectives toward nature are now well documented, climate engineering discussions seem to still lack the views from Indic or other non‐Western sources. In this article, I will apply some of the Hindu and Jain concepts such as karma, nonviolence (Ahi?sā), humility (Vinaya), and renunciation (Sa?nyāsa) to analyze the two primary climate geoengineering strategies of solar radiation management (SRM) and carbon dioxide removal (CDR). I suggest that Indic philosophical and religious traditions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism offer ethical concepts to call for humility in all acts of climate engineering leading to a favoring of CDR over SRM and a favoring of lifestyle changes (particularly vegetarianism) over both. I demonstrate these concepts by introducing the five great elements from the Hindu philosophy, two Hindu legends from Hindu mythology, the Indic ethical ideas of karma, renunciation, and humility, and the moral authority of Gandhi.