The Zen Roots of Contemplative Studies

Contemplative Studies is an emerging academic field that examines a distinctive subset of significant human experiences through a multi- disciplinary perspective that utilizes the sciences, humanities, and the arts. This field takes as its principal task the study of a continuum of human experiences that involve focusing the attention in a sustained fashion leading to increased concentration, tranquility, and insight into the processes of self-identification. Naturally, this involves a developing awareness of our identity as social beings, which leads to the increasing awareness of various contexts in which our self-identity arises: familial, social, political, and environmental. Such self-contextualizing experiences are the basis of other-regarding attitudes of empathy and compassion.