AGNOSTIC MEDITATIONS ON BUDDHIST MEDITATION

I first attempt a taxonomy of meditation in traditional Indian Buddhism. Based on the main psychological or somatic function at which the meditative effort is directed, the following classes can be distinguished: (1) emotion‐centered meditation (coinciding with the traditional samatha approach); (2) consciousness‐centered meditation (with two subclasses: consciousness reduction/elimination and ideation obliteration); (3) reflection‐centered meditation (with two subtypes: morality‐directed reflection and reality‐directed observation, the latter corresponding to the vipassanā method); (4) visualization‐centered meditation; and (5) physiology‐centered meditation. In the second part of the essay I tackle the problem of the epistemic validity and happiness‐engendering value of Buddhist meditation. In my highly conjectural view, the claim that meditation represents an infallible tool for realizing the (Supreme) Truth as well as a universally valid method for attaining the highest forms of happiness is largely based on the crēdō effect, that is, a placebolike process. I do not deny that meditation may have some positive effects on mental and physical health or that its practice may bring changes to the mind. Meditation may be a valuable alternative approach in life and clinical treatment, but it is far from being a must or a panacea.     

A SCIENTIFIC BUDDHISM?

This essay endorses the argument of Donald Lopez's Buddhism and Science and shows how the general thesis of the book is consonant with other historical work on the “discovery” of Buddhism and on the emergence of Western conceptions of religion. It asks whether one of the key claims of Buddhism and Science—that Buddhism pays a price for its flirtation with the modern sciences—might be applicable to science‐and‐religion discussions more generally.     

Filial Piety: Buddhists' Way in East Asia

ABSTRACT

This article introduces the Buddhist way of practicing filial piety–repaying mothers' kindness–along with a Buddhist sutra, the Sutra about the Deep Kindness of Parents and the Difficulty of Repaying it. This sutra has been widely recited, upheld, and is endeared by East Asian people for centuries. The sutra became a vehicle that helped Buddhism assimilate with the indigenous cultural tradition of China. It contains discourses about the ten types of the kindness of a mother bestows on her child, difficulties of repaying kindness, the grave consequences of being unfilial toward parents, and how to repay kindness. The historical background of Buddhists' assimilation with the Chinese cultural system, emphasis given to the mother's kindness, and certain differences and similarities between Confucians and Buddhists in the practice of filial piety are discussed.     

BUDDHIST ETHICS: A Review Essay

I argue that three recent studies (Imagining the Life Course, by Nancy Eberhardt; Sensory Biographies, by Robert Desjarlais; and How to Behave, by Anne Hansen) advance the field of Buddhist Ethics in the direction of the empirical study of morality. I situate their work within a larger context of moral anthropology, that is, the study of human nature in its limits and capacities for moral agency. Each of these books offers a finely grained account of particular and local Buddhist ways of interpreting human life and morality, and each explores complex conceptions of moral agency. I suggest that these three studies share similar interests in moral psychology, the human being across time, the intersubjective dimensions of moral experience, and what life within a karmic framework looks like. I propose that their contributions offer some of the most refreshing and interesting work generated in Buddhist ethics in the last decade.     

MENTAL FREEDOM AND FREEDOM OF THE LOVING HEART: FREE WILL AND BUDDHIST MEDITATION

In Buddhism, Meditation and Free Will: A Theory of Mental Freedom, Rick Repetti explains how the dynamics of Buddhist meditation can result in a kind of metacognition and metavolitional control that exceeds what is required for free will and defeats the most powerful forms of free will skepticism. This article argues that although the Buddhist path requires and enhances the kind of mental and volitional control Repetti describes, the central dynamic of the path and meditation is better understood as a process of habituation. This not only involves the dis-identification from mental and emotional content that Repetti discusses—and is commonly emphasized in modern presentations of mindfulness or insight (vipassanā) meditation—but also a transformation of the heart that is effected through the complementary psychological and somatic qualities associated with calm abiding (samatha) and concentration (samādhi) and emphasized in the Pali Nikāyas and commentaries.     

庄子僧肇人生观比较研究——基于道家哲学与佛教中国化关系的研究

庄子与僧肇的人生观分属传统道家哲学和大乘佛教哲学,两者之间有本质的差别,庄子在人生价值取向上主要追求的是个体精神自由,僧肇则继承了大乘佛教“自觉觉他”、度化众生的理想。两者不同的人生价值追求在处世观、理想境界、理想人格等方面均有相应的体现。由于大乘佛教本身具有关注现实人生的特征,加上僧肇有意识地吸收融合老庄玄学的思想内容,因此,僧肇人生观中的共同点也是多方面的。僧肇哲学站在般若中观学说的立场上,承续了魏晋玄学的理论主题和体用一如的思维意向,并从思想理论的许多方面对两种思想资源进行了融通,在推进魏晋玄学向前发展的同时,对佛教的中国化和中国哲学的发展趋势具有导向作用。     

Nietzsche as ‘Europe’s Buddha’ and ‘Asia’s Superman’

Nietzsche represents in an interesting way the well-worn Western approach to Asian philosophical and religious thinking: initial excitement, then neglect by appropriation, and swift rejection when found to be incompatible with one’s own tradition, whose roots are inexorably traced back to the ‘ancient’ Greeks. Yet, Nietzsche’s philosophical critique and methods - such as ‘perspectivism’ - offer an instructive route through which to better understand another tradition even if the sole purpose of this exercise is to perceive one’s own limitations through the eyes of the other: a self-destruktion of sorts. To help correct this shortcoming and begin the long overdue task of even-handed dialogue - or contemporary comparative philosophy - we will be served well by looking at Nietzsche’s mistakes, which in turn informed the tragic critic of the West of the last century, Martin Heidegger. We may learn here not to cast others in one’s own troubled image; and not to reverse cultural icons: Europe’s Superman, and Asia’s Buddha.

Transcendental Arguments and Practical Reason in Indian Philosophy

This paper examines some Indian philosophical arguments that are understandable as transcendental arguments—i.e., arguments whose conclusions cannot be denied without self-contradiction, insofar as the truth of the claim in question is a condition of the possibility even of any such denial. This raises the question of what kind of self-contradiction is involved—e.g., pragmatic self-contradiction, or the kind that goes with logical necessity. It is suggested that these arguments involve something like practical reason—indeed, that they just are arguments against the primacy of “theoretical reason.” This characterization illuminates a characteristically Indic appeal to ordinary language.

台湾佛教发展中的经济因素

伴随着台湾社会转型和经济的快速增长,社会结构出现日益分化趋向,由此导致佛教自身的不断分化,这种分化表现为寺院、教义和经济利益的分化。财富问题已经越来越成为影响台湾佛教发展的一个重大因素,不仅佛教在规模上的迅速膨胀与台湾社会的富裕程度有着直接的关联,而且由于佛教拥有巨额的财富而使教内外对于经济利益与传统教义的矛盾提出了种种问题,这些事实上已经成为现代台湾佛教应答现实社会提出的诸多挑战中最重要的问题之一,也是台湾佛教逐步实现适应现代社会所无法回避的根本问题。