The paper stages a conversation between Eastern monastic spirituality and the contemporary neurophenomenology of depression. The claim is that, much as the heart once functioned as a symbol for the structured core of the human being, the brain has now come to act as a symbol around which imaginative visions of human nature are pooling. …
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Concurrent Session 5 – Grounding Ethics in the Qualities of Heart
In cases where two human cultures disagree over fundamental ethical values, questions about what could make one or the other position correct arise with great force. Philosophers committed to naturalistically plausible accounts of ethics have offered little hope of adjudicating such conflicts, leading some to embrace moral relativism. This project develops an empirically grounded response …
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Concurrent Session 5 – A Comparison of the Thematic Unfolding of Experience in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius and the Tibetan Buddhist Lamrim Meditations
As a Christian who has spent many years practicing Buddhism, I have observed a strong parallel between the unfolding of experience that occurs in the Tibetan Lamrim (Graduated Path to Enlightenment) and in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. There is a natural and predictable arc to both (as there is in vipassana meditation), suggesting …
Concurrent Session 5 – Self, Nonself, and Silencing the Self: Dangers and Possibilities
This presentation brings Buddhist teachings on anatta to research findings based on the Silencing the Self Scale to examine central concepts of self and selflessness from Buddhist and Western psychological perspectives. Anatta, realized through meditation, insight, and teachings, is an essential aspect of the Buddha’s teaching on liberation from suffering. In contrast, selflessness, and self-silencing, …
Concurrent Session 5 – Emory-Tibet Science Initiative: Sustained Engagement Between Contemplatives and Scientists Offer Insights for Contemplative Science
Over the past six years, the Emory-Tibet Science Initiative has created a science education program designed to bridge Western science and Tibetan Buddhism, and scaffold mutual engagement. The program will grow exponentially as it rolls out across Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in India and Nepal, cultivating the grounds for deep, sustained conversations between science and Buddhism. …
Concurrent Session 5 – Zen Arts Ensemble – Deep Listening and Contemplative Creativity with Sound
This unique presentation and performance experience will draw on Jay Rinsen Weik’s extensive experience with avant-garde music and the teachings of Zen. The Zen Arts Ensemble formed out of a series of workshops titled “Being Sound” that Rinsen developed to explore the intersection of sound and contemplative practice. The Zen Arts Ensemble is a chapter …
Concurrent Session 5 – The Rhetoric of Nonconceptuality and the Role of Analysis in Meditation and Mindfulness: Reconciling Traditional Buddhist and Modern Scientific Approaches
As Buddhist meditation practices have been transmitted and translated fromtheir traditional contexts to the modern secular domains of scientific research and clinical psychology, many of the normative dimensions of the tradition have been de-emphasized. In particular, the modern study and appropriation of Buddhist meditation practices have tended to downplay analytical, investigative practices in favor of …
Concurrent Session 5 – Nonlinear Contemplative Development in Contemporary Theravadin Buddhist and Jewish Mystical Traditions
This paper will present preliminary research findings from the “Varieties of Contemplative Experience” study being conducted at Brown University under Dr. Willoughby Britton (PI). The study is investigating the full range of experiences reported by contemporary contemplative practitioners within Buddhist, Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions. This paper will highlight our research into contemporary Theravadin Buddhist …
Concurrent Session 4 – Remembering What We Need to Remember: Extending the Psychotherapeutic Application of Mindfulness
Mindfulness within Tibetan Buddhism is equated with the notion of “remembrance,” and distraction as its opposite is equated with “forgetfulness.” Psychologically, it can be said that suffering arises because the tendency to “remember the things we should forget and forget the things we should remember” has become habituated. Within psychotherapy, mindfulness can be utilized from …
Concurrent Session 4 – Mapping the Mind: A Model Based on Theravada Buddhist Texts and Practices
We propose a functional model based on Theravada Buddhist texts and practices to show how the mind works in relation to our senses, and how we perceive the external world. Our model suggests that the mind acts as a common internal sense organ, receiving all sensory data from the five external senses. It shows how …
