Keynote and Q&A: “Contemplative Studies: An Ecological Methodology for Multidisciplinarity”

Building on the conception of ‘ecological phenomenology’ that Maria Heim and Ram have developed, and which he has written about in his recent book, he will share that there is a deep ‘ecological’ conception of being human in the contemplative traditions that could provide a paradigm for looking at the disciplinary and reflexive phenomenology of the contemplative traditions that 1. Renders irrelevant the ontological inflexion points that inform contemporary western obsessions with dualism and physicalist reductionism, and thereby enables us to take a fresh look at cog/neuroscience and psychology; and 2. Permits a shift in the focus of attention to the environmental and prosocial dimensions of the contemplative life. In demonstration, he look at two otherwise epistemologically and metaphysically far-removed texts, Buddhaghosa’s Visuddhimagga and the 15th c Yogic Advaitic Aparoksa-Anubhuti to delineate the larger contours of contemplative psychogeography.