Some academic scholars of Buddhism, who also practice Buddhism, are exploring new ways to serve both the critical interests of the modern academy and the constructive needs of their Buddhist communities…

This study evaluated the effectiveness of a Mahayana Buddhist teaching- and group-based intervention, the Awareness Training Program (ATP), which is textually aligned to a Mahayana Sūtra so that its theory and practice are coherent. The ATP aims to alleviate stress by enhancing participant’s compassion and wisdom of nonattachment. Middle-aged working adults (n = 122) in Hong Kong participated in this randomized waiting-list controlled trial. Self-reported psychological questionnaires were used to assess the participants’ level of stress (PSS), sense of coherence (SOC), psychological well-being (GHQ), and nonattachment (NAS) at pretest, posttest, and 3 months later. The data showed significant improvements in the intervention group over the controls for all outcome measures at posttest and 3 months later. A mediation analysis demonstrated that nonattachment mediated both the treatment and the maintenance effects for all outcome variables.

While mindfulness meditation improves pain and depression symptoms and quality of life, additional well-designed, rigorous, and large-scale RCTs are needed to decisively provide estimates of [its] efficacy

Despite heterogeneity of outcomes across studies, there is evidence that brief MBIs can impact numerous health-related outcomes after only one session and with interventions as brief as 5 min.

This meta-analysis of 85 meditation interventions shows that even a small amount of meditation is beneficial.

Collectively, the 12 eligible studies suggest that incorporating the Buddhist wisdom practices of contemplating interdependence, emptiness, and perspective-taking on self and others may enhance prosocial behaviour through various mechanisms, such as (i) developing a sense of interdependence and common humanity, (ii) fostering the altruistic desire to help others, and (iii) experiencing a state of oneness. However, concerns were raised about the overuse and reliability of self-report measures for accurately assessing prosocial behaviour

The most frequently co-occurring keywords were meditation, depression, stress, and anxiety. Co-citation analysis of the early period (1966–2015) revealed how scholarly work on spiritual themes inspired early mindfulness research. Recent trends (2016–2021) revealed a rising interest in mechanisms and moderators, long-term meditators, neuroscientific studies, and smartphone/online delivery of interventions.

the significance of the Japanese Buddhist cartography of Xuanzang’s Great Tang Record of the Western Regions for the origins of the academic study of Buddhism in Europe.

the Western tradition of virtue ethics and an introductory sketch of how it might provide a foundation for ecology in Buddhism

… the belief that all engagement is Western-influenced seems to endure, so Buddhists who avoid doctrinal hybridization may be assumed to not engage. These assumptions persist because relatively few studies are done on Buddhists’ and especially traditionalists’ actual engagement; some studies mischaracterize engaged traditionalists as modernists; and little research on today’s traditionalists, engaged or not, is done because scholars of contemporary Buddhism gravitate toward modernists.

The article was followed up in the same journal with a practical example of such an organization: The FPMT.

These, and other, statements of his have been reinterpreted in ways that I feel Nāgārjuna would find difficult to recognize as fitting into his Buddhist worldview.

On taking Nāgārjuna seriously as both a philosopher and as a Buddhist

The essay connects the field of Buddhist studies to a larger conversation in the field of global education, arguing that Buddhist studies travel courses must interrogate concepts of global citizenship, address the legacies of colonialism, and teach the principles of ethical travel, in addition to introducing students to the living traditions of global Buddhism.

A total of 315 participants (26%) reported having had particularly unpleasant meditation-related experiences, which they thought may have been caused by their meditation practice. Logistic regression models indicated that unpleasant meditation-related experiences were less likely to occur in female participants and religious participants. Participants with higher levels of repetitive negative thinking, those who only engaged in deconstructive types of meditation (e.g., vipassana), and those who had attended a meditation retreat were more likely to report unpleasant meditation-related experiences.

Underscoring the importance of engaging in meditation practices in a balanced way.

mindfulness is proposed to introduce flexibility in the generation of cognitive appraisals by enhancing interoceptive attention, thereby expanding the scope of cognition to facilitate reappraisal of adversity and savoring of positive experience. This process is proposed to culminate in a deepened capacity for meaning-making and greater engagement with life.

An attempt at explaining mindfulness through the lens of “positive thinking.”

Nagarjuna seems willing to embrace contradictions while at the same time making use of classic reductio arguments. He asserts that he rejects all philosophical views including his own-that he asserts nothing-and appears to mean it. It is argued here that he, like many philosophers in the West and, indeed, like many of his Buddhist colleagues, discovers and explores true contradictions arising at the limits of thought. For those who share a dialetheist’s comfort with the possibility of true contradictions commanding rational assent, for Nagarjuna to endorse such contradictions would not undermine but instead confirm the impression that he is indeed a highly rational thinker. It is argued that the contradictions he discovers are structurally analogous to many discovered by Western philosophers and mathematicians.

One of the early functions of the talisman was for a ruler to authorize the conduct and scope of authority of a general (e.g., how many troops he could command). The military context of talismans later found a corollary in the spiritual realm and permitted their possessor to summon and control a variety of deities that could be drawn on in battles with spirits.

When it came to such significant acts, such as warding off disease demons and protecting or extending one’s life, Buddhist and Daoists were occupied with the same types of concerns and employed a similar arsenal of powerful techniques that drew on the powers embedded in esoteric talismans.

While mindfulness is a growing field of research, divergent and conflated meanings are limiting deeper interdisciplinary research. Interventions designed in one practice context may not be useful in other contexts because meaning is not transferred between settings. This review clarifies the various research domains that study mindfulness and the conceptual and operational definitions in each domain.

The results from the scoping review show three shared domains in mindfulness classifications: short-term effects of mindfulness, long-term effects of mindfulness, and mindfulness practices. The results from the content mapping show four domains of mindfulness research: mental health, behavioural change, cognitive neuroscience, and ethical mindfulness. Operational definitions of mindfulness are not articulated clearly in these domains.

Scholars in the ethical mindfulness domain will need solid conceptual and operational definitions to support their research efforts.

Widely read as he was in Western philosophy, one of Nishida’s main concerns was to find possible points of contact between his own heritage and the philosophical background of the modern civilization that was taking shape in Japan during his lifetime.

A comparative analysis of Kitarō Nishida and Dōgen Kigen’s thoughts on space and time and how these concepts are presented throughout their life’s work. The article largely focuses on the thought of Nishida, a 20th-century Japanese philosopher. While it is known that Nishida was greatly influenced by Western philosophy, the author brings Nishida into dialogue with Dōgen, particularly his Being-Time, in an attempt to show that Nishida was firmly rooted in Asian thought.

For an important task of the Zen philosopher is to police the border between the factual and the non-factual, between the sayable and the non-sayable, between the contingent and the necessary. But this task cannot be reduced to just policing. The Zen master must somehow point the disciple to the realm of the non-sayable while at the same time keeping him or her firmly anchored in the sayable.

Looking at Wittgenstein’s Tractatus logico-philosophicus and Philosophical Investigations, this article compares the philosopher’s analysis of language to that of Zen Buddhism, particularly “koan Zen.” The author begins by highlighting the seeming resemblance between Wittgenstein’s idea of only saying “what can be said” and Zen’s attempts to use words to point to what is beyond words. Much of the remaining article compares Wittenstein’s methodology with Zen’s usage of koans.

In healthy adults, we found that compassion training increased altruistic redistribution of funds to a victim encountered outside of the training context. Furthermore, increased altruistic behavior after compassion training was associated with altered activation in brain regions implicated in social cognition and emotion regulation, including the inferior parietal cortex and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), and in DLPFC connectivity with the nucleus accumbens.

These results suggest that compassion can be cultivated with training and that greater altruistic behavior may emerge

Is the aim to have right view, or go beyond views; or is right view about not being attached to any view?

If the sense of self is doxastically anchored, then it will be anchored in the sort of belief that is ascribed along an action-based rather than judgement-based avenue.

A Western-philosophical exploration of the different levels of the “self” delusion.

Contemporary Buddhist studies has been strongly affected by its origins in the Victorian era, when Western religious scholars sought to rationalize and historicize the study of religion. Modern Asian scholars, trained within the Western scholarly paradigm, share this prejudice. The result is a skewed understanding of Buddhism, emphasizing its philosophical and theoretical aspects at the expense of seemingly ‘irrational’ religious elements based on the direct experience of meditation practice.

This meaning, the author holds, might best be characterized as “lucid awareness.” He questions the common explanation of mindfulness as “bare attention,” pointing out problems that lurk behind both words in this expression.

You can also listen to Jonathan Nelson read the paper aloud on YouTube if you prefer.

Being unfamiliar with tantra, they cannot recognize that what they’re looking at has a tantric origin, and they may think of it as simply (unproblematically) part of whatever tradition they are looking at…

On how elements of Buddhist tantra circulated across Buddhist Asia.

Currently, mindfulness is most often assessed [by psychologists] with self-report questionnaires. Although additional work is required, mindfulness questionnaires have reasonable psychometric properties and are making important contributions …

Measurement of mindfulness as a multidimensional construct shows that present-moment awareness can be unhelpful unless accompanied by a nonjudgmental, nonreactive stance; moreover, nonjudgment and nonreactivity may be only weakly related to present-moment awareness in people with no meditation experience.

After reviewing 18,753 citations, we included 47 trials with 3515 participants. Mindfulness meditation programs had moderate evidence of improved anxiety (effect size, 0.38 [95% CI, 0.12-0.64] at 8 weeks and 0.22 [0.02-0.43] at 3-6 months), depression (0.30 [0.00-0.59] at 8 weeks and 0.23 [0.05-0.42] at 3-6 months), and pain (0.33 [0.03- 0.62]) and low evidence of improved stress/distress and mental health-related quality of life.

Stronger study designs are needed to determine the effects of meditation programs in improving the positive dimensions of mental health and stress-related behavior.

While hell realms seem pretty distant from the serenely meditating monks and mindful contemplation that Buddhism is usually associated with in the Western imagination, Buddhism has some of the most elaborate hell realms in the history of religion.

So long as researchers are investigating “meditation” in the abstract, they will miss out on the process by focusing too much on the goals. They will assume that the “goal” is a particular state that can be attained and stabilized, and will fail to understand the various techniques that are required for getting there in the first place.

A comparison of the path of meditative attainment as presented by the fifth-century, Sri Lankan author Buddhaghosa and by the sixteenth-century, Tibetan author Dakpo Tashi Namgyal along with some reflections on what this might mean for contemporary, “scientific” research on meditative states of consciousness.

… a group randomly assigned to 5 days of meditation practice with the integrative body–mind training method shows significantly better attention and control of stress than a similarly chosen control group given relaxation training.

A randomized, controlled trial shows that even just a few days of meditation is effective beyond a simple calming effect.

Tuning in, meditatively, all these things can loosen up. And it’s the loosening that’s the main thing.

… in sketching out what the councils were, I hope to indicate how they might be fruitfully studied

The wonder is not that these intuitive translators were sometimes incorrect, but that they were correct so often.

This Qi-based worldview—where Qi is this energy matrix that sustains existence—seems to explain why Kim Iryeop is talking about “emptiness” as power that a person can wield: Emptiness is a kind of energy that the creative human being is able to use to manifest value.

… the effects of a brief mindfulness program for emotional regulation and levels of mindfulness on senior students in Brazil.

The final confirmation of the historicity of the Buddha and the religion founded by him was taken, however, from the records of Chinese Buddhist travellers who had visited the major sacred places of Buddhism in India and collected other information about the history of the religion.

Japanese Buddhology today is highly specialized, placing great emphasis on intense textual studies.

How Chinese and Western scholastic approaches have informed the contemporary approach to Buddhist Studies in Japan.

This volume emerges from a symposium entitled ‘Inevitable Ends: Meditations on Impermanence’, held at Aarhus University in May 2019, and an accompanying exhibition at the Moesgaard Museum, ‘Museum of Impermanence: Stories from Nepal, Papua New Guinea and Tibet’ (on display from 9 February to 19 May 2019)

… a view of our sense of self as an emergent process of “I-making” that is constructed in relation to our environment and the body on which it depends

Tzu Chi was founded in a small town in eastern Taiwan in 1966 by a lady who has become known by the title and name Master Cheng Yen (b.1937).

… an ethical theory centered on the experience of an individual where perception and affect are the loci of moral development

… when the Japanese kept insisting that Buddhism was a specific religion that originated in north India, westerners were puzzled. There was no cult of Buddha in India, and northern India in particular was largely Muslim.

On the early modern encounters between Europeans and Japanese Buddhists and how they shaped each other’s understanding of Asia.

… the discontinuity [with premodern forms of Buddhism] that the modernists emphasize is just that, an emphasis—it is less an observation than it is an ideologically motivated construction

An important note about how and why Western scholarship is reshaping the Buddhism it claims to study.

The third, and most important, reason [Buddhism uses narratives to communicate its ethics] is that we are narratives ourselves.

A defense of Buddhism as Philosophy from the Western perspective.

There’s enough overlap to make conversation possible and enough difference to make that conversation worthwhile.

Philosopher Jay Garfield talks about getting into Buddhist philosophy from the Western, academic tradition, and introduces the classic book of Mahāyana ethics by Śāntideva.

The three major aspects of computer technology that most visibly have taken over older technologies are word processing, electronic communication, and the development of large scale archives of both text and visual materials. These in turn have led to many other changes that raise interesting questions about our professional life, including aspects of pedagogy, intellectual community, economics, ownership of our work and our texts, and, perhaps most importantly, the quality of our work.

… what we have is the product of centuries of careful copying, careless copying, knowledge, incompetence, inspired emendation and bungling. And none of that stopped with the beginning of Western scholarship.

The brahmins would indeed take umbrage at being closely associated with the officiant, because the very fact of his being there as an officiant means that he is doing a paid job and so lowers his status below theirs. [The brahmins, in contrast,] have no duties; they are gracing the occasion.

On (one of) the differences between a priest and a Buddhist monk.

To deal with social dukkha, habitual tendencies rooted in the Three Poisons have to be identified and redressed in the constitutive social, cultural, and political environments too. In other words, Buddhist social theory recognizes that the manifestations of the Three Poisons are as much a matter of institutionalized, normative knowledge-practices as they are private, personal tendencies.

… anything that offers success in our unjust society without trying to change it is not revolutionary—it just helps people cope.

… both works typify a style of writing in Buddhist Studies that seems to blur the line between religious writing and academic analysis

One does not obtain sīla, let alone the Dhamma, from the historical process.

… how to interpret Buddhist Sanskrit texts in such a way as to avoid unnecessary bastardization of the English language, while still performing the scholarly task of making available the meaning of such texts to the scholarly community

… hypnotic response and meditation involve opposite processes

Meditation plunges us into the depths of the (normally) subconscious processes of intentions forming and contending in the mind. As we become more familiar with these processes, we can more quickly and accurately identify when, how and why the mind moves: pushing back the curtain of ignorance on the workings of our subconscious mind and reducing our tendency to be hypnotized and controlled.

And for a more recent study confirming the result, see “The association between mindfulness and hypnotizability” American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis. 2018 Jul; 61(1):4–17. doi: 10.1080/00029157.2017.1419458

I do recommend actually reading this paper. It has a good summary of other research done on meditation and a rather thoughtful analysis section. It’s less dense and jargon-heavy than other papers I’ve reviewed and gives a good window into the state of scientific research on Buddhist meditation circa 2012.

Buddhist ethics corresponds to a more generic, act-centered virtue ethics.

Notice especially how the Westerner philosophers tie themselves into knots trying to classify Buddhist Ethics according to their inferior theories and dogmatic rejection of karma.

Helpful for avoiding cults, for reassuring Westerners that Buddhist religious authority isn’t regressive, and a fascinating example of the West grappling with unfamiliar forms of spiritual education.