Self and meditation in Indian Buddhism (original) (raw)

The Inception and Development of Buddhist Meditation: From Pre-Canonical to Mahāyāna Buddhism

This paper examines the advent of meditation practice in the Buddhist soteriological tradition. The Buddhist tradition's theoretical and practical creations are adaptations, responses, and replications of other traditions it is historically conversant with. These other traditions include Brahminic and Jain as well as developmental stages within the Buddhist tradition itself. From the perspective of meditation practice, a chronological, developmental progression is suggested between pre-Canonical to Mahāyāna Buddhism, which questions such divergent labels. This progression is expressed by the internal functions and culminating states of the meditations discussed.

The Concept of Self in Buddhism

Alternative Standpoints: Tribute to Kalidas Bhattacharya, 2015

In this paper my aim is to discuss Kalidas Bhattacharya's treatment of "self" with special reference to Yogacara Buddhist philosophy. Bhattacharya has started his discussion with the basic minimum sense of the term 'self'. After discussing different Indian philosophical analysis of the term self, he started discussing the treatment of self by Yogacara Buddhist philosophers. For him in the Yogacara conceptual framework a definite assertible self has not been accepted.

The Foundations of Buddhist Meditation

Our Heritage (Journal of Sanskrit College and University, Kolkata), 2018

Abstract The Foundations of Buddhist Meditation - P. P. Gokhale Central University of Tibetan Studies, Sarnath The paper is an attempt to grasp the essence of Buddhist meditation from a philosophical point of view. Here the author approaches Buddhist meditation, not from a sectarian Buddhist point of view, but from the point of view of a lay seeker. The paper explores three foundations of Buddhist meditation: ontological, epistemological and moral-psychological. By investigating into different forms of Buddhist meditation, the author observes that the Buddhist meditation is not of unitary nature, but is multifaceted. Different limbs in the Noble 8-limbed path are involved in the different kinds of meditation. Sammāsamādhi, Sammāsati, Sammāditthi and also Sammāsaṅkappo. The paper also deals with the difference between Śamatha and Vipaśyanā and the way Vipaśyanā is understood differently in Yogācāra and Mādhyamika tradition.

A Three Dimensional View of Karma in Early Buddhism

Sri Lanka International Journal of Buddhist Studies (SIJBS) Volume V, 2019

Detailing the connection between the various functions of Buddhist karma theory and rebecoming is a profoundly difficult aspect of Buddhist philosophy. While there is no definitive answer to these questions, suggestions can be found in early Buddhism that may help to reconcile the early Buddhist interpretations of karma with other philosophical and scientific theories. A great difficulty in analysing the functional aspects of Buddhist karma theory is the conflation of karma as causality with karma as ethics to create a strongly deterministic ethical theory of karmic retribution which de-emphasises notions of free will and personal responsibility that are fundamental to Buddhist practice. This research is intended as a new model to evaluate karma in light of early Buddhist karma theory. Following this model may allow karma theorists to shed our accumulated assumptions from the Abhidharma and western philosophy that bring substance metaphysics into the analysis of Buddhist karma doctrine. This essentialism is an unnecessary obstacle to understanding. When karma as causality is located within early Buddhist process metaphysics it can easily be analysed in a practical fashion and is found to accord with contemporary thought. Karma as ethics is more properly analysed as a satisfactory, but underdeveloped ethical theory. Only with these conceptions in place can the connection between karma and rebecoming can be detailed.

Reflections on Indian Buddhist Thought and the Scientific Study of Meditation, or

Oxford Scholarship Online

One of the fundamental distinctions in the modern academy is the difference between studying human life as people experience it and studying it in terms of impersonal causal processes—the so-called first- and third-person approaches. This dichotomy is reflected in the study of meditation, in which neuroscientists attempt to correlate their “objective” findings with the “subjective” reports of meditators. This very distinction, though, invites two extremes: either these discourses are ultimately incommensurable or one discourse—the subjective—should be reduced to the “true,” objective discourse. This chapter criticizes putatively pure subjectivity or objectivity from Buddhist philosophical perspectives, especially the non-duality of subject and object, and seeks to articulate a middle ground between reductionism and incommensurability.