Investigating the universality of primary metaphors: a perspective from buddhism (original) (raw)
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A Yogācāra Buddhist Theory of Metaphor (Oxford University Press, 2018)
Winner of the 2018 Toshihide Numata Book Award, 2018
Buddhist philosophy is fundamentally ambivalent toward language. Language is paradoxically seen as both obstructive and necessary for liberation. This bookdelves into the ingenious response to this tension from the Yogacara school of Indian Buddhism: that all language-use is metaphorical. Exploring the profound implications of this claim, the book makes the case for viewing the Yogacara account as a full-fledged theory of meaning, one that is not merely linguistic, but also applicable both in the world as well as in texts. Despite the overwhelming visibility of figurative language in Buddhist philosophical texts, this is the first sustained and systematic attempt to present an indigenous Buddhist theory of metaphor. By grounding the Yogacara pan-metaphorical claim in a broader intellectual context, of both Buddhist and non-Buddhist schools, the book uncovers an intense philosophical conversation about metaphor and language that reaches across sectarian lines. This analysis radically reframes the Yogacara controversy with the Madhyamaka school of philosophy, sheds light on the Yogacara application of particular metaphors, and explicates the school's unique understanding of experience. For the book's Toshihide Numata Award presentation and Symposium (with Robert Sharf, Jonardon Ganeri, Catharine Prueitt, and Evan Thompson): https://buddhiststudies.berkeley.edu/news/2018-toshihide-numata-book-award-presentation-and-symposium-%E2%80%98meaning-world-and-texts%E2%80%99-thoughts
METAPHOR AND LITERALISM IN BUDDHISM
The notion of nirvana originally used the image of extinguishing a fire. Although the attainment of nirvana, ultimate liberation, is the focus of the Buddha's teaching, its interpretation has been a constant problem to Buddhist exegetes, and has changed in different historical and doctrinal contexts. The concept is so central that changes in its understanding have necessarily involved much larger shifts in doctrine. This book studies the doctrinal development of the Pali nirvana and subsequent tradition and compares it with the Chinese Agama and its traditional interpretation. It clarifies early doctrinal developments of nirvana and traces the word and related terms back to their original metaphorical contexts. Thereby, it elucidates diverse interpretations and doctrinal and philosophical developments in the abhidharma exegeses and treatises of Southern and Northern Buddhist schools. Finally, the book examines which school, if any, kept the original meaning and reference of nirvana.
Four arguments for patterns of metaphorical thought
Acta Philologica , 2008
marks the beginning of the now common consensus view in cognitive linguistics that metaphor is not a mere figure of speech but is conceptual in nature. 2 It is now also generally agreed that, as Lakoff and Johnson put it, "[mjetaphors as linguistic expressions are possible precisely because there are metaphors in a person's conceptual system" (1980: 6). As a mode of thought, so the argument goes, metaphor guides not only our reasoning, but also our emotions, behaviour and actions. In fact, according to the standard theory, it is due to its conceptual nature that metaphor shows up so abundantly in everyday language as this is the medium via which we conventionally communicate to others about our emotions, thought, behaviour, and actions.
Conceptual Metaphor in Meditation Discourse: An Analysis of the Spiritual Perspective
GEMA Online® Journal of Language Studies, 2020
Meditation has spread beyond the frontiers of religion to go global in other areas of social practice, including secular and spiritual-but-not-religious contexts (Schedneck, 2013). Conceptual metaphor (Lakoff, 1993) has been described as a powerful mechanism to facilitate the communication of first-person experiences connected to religious and lay contemplative practice, including meditation and enlightenment (Rajandran, 2017; Richardson & Mueller, 2019; Silvestre-López, 2016). Despite the detachment of the spiritual-but-not-religious movement from other areas of practice, the question of how metaphor is used in discourse about meditation within this perspective has not been addressed. This paper investigates the role of conceptual metaphor in spiritual-but-not-religious meditation discourse through a bottom-up qualitative analysis of a corpus of talks about meditation given by three highly-recognized spiritual teachers. Results chart the topics that are addressed more frequently through metaphor in the corpus (metaphor target domains), describe the range of areas of experience (source domains) used to characterise metaphorically the three most frequent target domains (THOUGHT, THE PRESENT MOMENT, MEDITATOR), and discuss fundamental differences in non-deliberate and deliberate conceptual metaphor use (Steen, 2015) with the help of a selection of examples from the corpus. The findings provide evidence of relevant metaphors used to model the experience and practice of meditation in spiritual-but-not-religious settings and how they are rendered in discourse. Comparisons with metaphorical models already identified in religious and secular discourse contexts are also established, with a special focus on the models that have been transferred from traditional religious meditation spheres to current contexts of social practice.
Worldviews and their Core Metaphors
Driven by our individual need for contextual-meaning and by our societal need for a shared meaning system, every culture has its own worldview. This article presents a succinct introduction to the nature and function of worldviews and the meta-narratives in which they are passed from one generation to another. Recognising that no worldview can legitimately claim to have a monopoly on the truth, and that every worldview is a work-in-process that evolves over time as the society adapts to its changing circumstances, the main body of this article identifies and discusses the seven “core metaphors” that have given shape to our worldviews over the course of human history
Oxford Scholarship Online, 2018
This chapter explores the broader epistemic ramifications of the Yogācāra theory of meaning and metaphor. It points out features that this theory shares with contemporary analytical causal theories of reference—especially the solution that they offer to the problem of incommensurability. The text presents the Yogācāra understanding of this problem, notably in Sthiramati’s Triṃśikābhāṣya (TriṃśBh) and Asaṅga’s Mahāyānasaṃgraha (MS), and examines how Sthiramati’s figurative theory of meaning addresses it. The conclusion points out deep structural affinities between the Yogācāra understanding of linguistic meaning and its understanding of experience, particularly of intersubjective experiences of the external word. This allows an identification and articulation of several fundamental themes that run through Yogācāra thought in general, and through the school’s conception of meaning in particular, implying a broadly conceived theory of meaning that is not merely linguistic, but also per...
A Cognitive Linguistic Approach to Life Metaphor in Tetralogy Laskar Pelangi
Insaniyat : journal of Islam and humanities, 2021
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