About the Book
The scientific study of Buddhist forms of meditation has surged in recent years. Such study has captured the popular imagination, reshaping conceptions of what meditation is and what it can do. Within the lab and now beyond it, people have come to see meditation as a practical matter, a rewiring of the brain or an optimization of consciousness as a means to better health, more fulfilling relationships, and increasing productivity. Often suppressed if not dropped from this pragmatic approach are the beliefs, values, and cosmologies that underpin such practice from the Buddhist point of view.
Propelled by the imperatives of empirical practicality, for perhaps the first time in history meditation has shifted from Buddhist monasteries and practice centers to some of the most prominent and powerful modern institutions in the world-hospitals, universities, corporations, and the military-as well as many non-institutional settings. As the contributions to this volume show, as their contexts change, so do the practices, sometimes drastically. New ways of thinking about meditation, ways that profoundly affect millions of lives all over the world, are emerging from its move to these more strictly secular settings.
To understand these changes and their effects, the essays in this volume explore the unaddressed complexities in the interrelations between Buddhist history and thought and the scientific study of meditation. The contributors bring philosophical, cultural, historical, and ethnographic perspectives to bear, considering such issues as the philosophical presumptions of practice, the secularization of meditation, the values and goods assumed in clinical approaches, and the sorts of subjects that take shape under the influence of these transformed and transformative practices-all the more powerful for being so often formulated with the authority of scientific discourse.
Table of Contents:
1. Introduction: From Colonialism to Brainscans: Modern Transformations of Buddhist Meditation
David L. McMahan and Erik Braun
2. How Meditation Works: Theorizing the Role of Cultural Context in Buddhist Contemplative Practices
David L. McMahan
3. Looping Effects and the Cognitive Science of Mindfulness Meditation
Evan Thompson
4. Buddhism, Happiness, and the Science of Meditation
William Edelglass
5. Reflections on Indian Buddhist Thought and the Scientific Study of Meditation, Or: Why Scientists Should Talk More with Their Monks
William S. Waldron
6. "Mind the Gap:" Appearance and Reality in Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy
Joanna Cook
7. "Wherever You Go, There You . . . Aren't?" Non-self, Spirits, and the Concept of the Person in Thai Buddhist Mindfulness
Julia Cassaniti
8. "Mindfulness Makes You a Way Better Lover": Mindful Sex and the Adaption of Buddhism to New Cultural Desires
Jeff Wilson
9. Mindful but not Religious: Meditation and Enchantment in the Work of Jon Kabat-Zinn
Erik Braun
10. Is Mindfulness Buddhist? (And Why It Matters)
Robert H. Sharf
About the Author :
David L. McMahan is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Religious Studies at Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania. He is the editor of Buddhism in the Modern World and author of The Making of Buddhist Modernism and Empty Vision: Metaphor and Visionary Imagery in Mahayana Buddhism.
Erik Braun is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. He is the author of The Birth of Insight: Meditation, Modern Buddhism, and the Burmese Monk Ledi Sayadaw , which won a Toshihide Numata Book Award in Buddhism.
Review :
"there are insights into these issues throughout, and readers will be rewarded with different approaches to these issues, which are sure to remain ... With this volume, such readers will be able to assess for themselves the relative weight of these positions and how the trajectory of the scientific Buddhist meditation project should proceed." -- Edward Arnold, Sophia
"Meditation, Buddhism, and Science is as imaginative as it is critical, and its authors deserve praise for pioneering new territory." --Michael Sheehy, Buddhadharma
"This volume inspires one to re-read the classical Buddhist writings with a similarly critical eye to uncover their implicit messages." --Inken Prohl, Religion
"Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers." -- Choice
"This top-rate collection is essential reading for researchers of modern Buddhism and highly recommended for undergraduate and graduate classes on Buddhism in the West, religion and science, and religion and medicine." -- Ann Gleig (University of Central Florida), Religious Studies Review Vol. 44.1
"The editors are to be commended for ensuring that the essays are, by and large, brief and accessible, ensuring that the book will be digestible for researchers, students, and nonscholarly readers alike. Oxford's decision to release a reasonably-priced paperback copy of this book simultaneously with the hardcover is also appreciated. This alone is enough to ensure that this book will eclipse other scholarly introductions to the sociocultural dimensions of
Buddhist meditation that are currently being sold at prohibitively expensive prices. Given these advantages of breadth, accessibility, and price, I am of the opinion that this book would be put to
particularly good use in the classroom."--C. Pierce Salguero, Reading Religion
"McMahan and Braun's multi-dimensioned collection grounds meditation practice in historical time and social place. The essays include historical, cultural, philosophical, textual, cognitive, psychological, and sociological critiques of the all-too-often decontextualized scientific study of meditation. These perspectives enable us to better understand how the complexities of lived human existence influence meditation practice and meditation experiences. Taken
together the essays further demonstrate the importance of interdisciplinarity for the study of Buddhism."--Richard K. Payne, Yehan Numata Professor of Japanese Buddhist Studies at the Institute of
Buddhist Studies
