‘사마타(samatha, 止)’와 ‘위빠사나(vipassanā, 觀)’는 불교 명상을 의미하는 대표적인 술어의 하나로서 초기불교에서 후기불교의 경론에 이르기까지 지속적으로 나타나고 있다. 이것은 바로 ‘사마타/위빠사나’ 개념이 다양한 불교 명상법의 핵심적 의미를 드러내주는 위치에 있음을 보여주고 있다.BR 이 글은 지금까지 사마타/위빠사나 명상의 의미와 그 체계를 분석한 연구에서 초기아비달마의 문헌들에 대한 분석이 전혀 시도되지 않았던 사정을 고려하여 『구사론』과 『청정도론』 이전의 논의구조, 즉 ‘사마타/위빠사나’라는 불교명상의 해석 구도가 어떻게 전개되었는지를 살펴보려는 하나의 시도이다.BR 이 글에서는 남북 양전의 7론을 ‘초기아비달마 논서’로 부르며, 이들 문헌에 나타난 사마타/위빠사나의 개념 분석을 연구의 중심으로 (...) 삼는다. 이는 초기불교 경전들에서 자리매김 된 사마타/위빠사나 명상법이 아비달마 시대에 와서 어떤 측면에서 동일성과 차별성이 드러나고 있는지에 주목하여 사상사적 추이를 분석하려는 작업이다. 이 결과는 사마타/위빠사나 명상의 의미와 그 위상을 파악하는 데 하나의 실마리를 제공할 수 있을 것이다.BR 초기 아비달마 문헌 분석의 결과를 정리하면, 먼저 사마타는 탐욕, 의도, 감정 등의 부적절한 마음 상태의 그침 또는 멈춤을 지향한다. 위빠사나는 좀 더 분명하고 구체적인 언어들을 동원하고 있는데 이들의 의미를 종합해보면, 앎, 반성적이고 철학적인 사유를 포괄하고, 명상수행이 실제로 전개되고 있는 바로 그 지점을 지속적으로 인지하여 수행이 원만하게 진행될 수 있도록 기능하는 역할을 감당하고 있는 것이다. (shrink)

In this contribution, I will focus on Chogyam Trungpa's presentation of the basic practice of samatha-vipassana sitting meditation, assuming that his description is almost scientifically meticulous, similarly to Husserl's phenomenological descriptions, and allows the latter to be endowed with concrete richness and practical operability. Meditation is an activity that develops attentional qualities which are extremely accurate, i.e. both very well-defined and remarkably embodied. I will first detail the different forms of attention inherent to meditation, then show how they surprisingly (...) echo some of the gestures specific to the phenomenological Husserlian reduction. In other words, I will adopt a circular method of random comings and goings between the two, in order to gradually create, in the reader's mind, echoes and resonances between practices that reveal experiential relationships between them. (shrink)

[opening paragraph]: Buddhist inquiry into the natural world proceeds from a radically different point of departure than western science, and its methods differ correspondingly. Early pioneers of the scientific revolution, including Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo, expressed an initial interest in the nature of physical objects most far removed from human subjectivity: such issues as the relative motions of the sun and earth, the surface of the moon, and the revolutions of the planets. And a central principle of scientific naturalism is (...) the pure objectification of the natural world, free of any contamination of subjectivity. This principle of objectivism demands that science deals with empirical facts testable by empirical methods entailing testability by third-person means; and such facts must, therefore, be public rather than private, which is to say, they must be accessible to more than one observer. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Theravāda Buddhism has travelled. This article gives some history of the practice of samatha breathing mindfulness, in the Theravāda tradition, in the UK. It first gives some background in Britain to the arrival of the meditation in the 1960s, then summarises the life of Nai Boonman Poonyathiro, who introduced this method into the UK, a story that is not generally known. The paper describes some aspects of the development of the Samatha Trust in the UK, attempting to (...) show ways a system that was popular in Thailand when it arrived in a new region has prospered, even while becoming markedly less prominent in its own regions. As I am a practitioner in this tradition, before the conclusion I make some personal comment. To conclude, I speculate about features which appear to characterise Buddhist groups in general in the UK, before considering ways that this specialised tradition has adapted in a new setting. (shrink)

This paper offers an interpretive reading of the Diamond Sutra centered on the concept of ordinary mind, understood as the integrated functioning of samatha and vipassanā. Rather than treating the sutra as a purely paradoxical or nihilistic text, this study argues that its primary concern lies in the transformation of ordinary cognition through the dissolution of discriminative and boundary-making mental activity. Samatha is interpreted as the cessation of conceptual fixation and dualistic boundaries, while vipassanā is understood as the (...) observation of phenomena within causal and dependent arising once such fixation has ceased. Special attention is given to the sutra’s recurring linguistic pattern, “A is not A, therefore it is called A,” which this paper reads as expressing the dynamic relationship between non-discrimination and functional language. In addition to conventional interpretations, the author proposes a personal reflective insight: that naming itself may arise only after the dissolution of discriminative boundaries, allowing language to operate without reification. Through close analysis of key verses—including “If one sees all forms as non-forms, one sees the Tathāgata” and “All conditioned phenomena are like dreams or illusions”—the paper argues that the Diamond Sutra presents awakening not as transcendence of ordinary life, but as a radical reorientation within it. Ordinary mind thus emerges as a post-discriminative mode of awareness in which ethical action, language, and everyday activity continue without attachment or grasping. (shrink)

This commentary note expands upon the cognitive framework established in the author’s previous study, "Understanding the Diamond Sutra through the Lens of Ordinary Mind." It seeks to deepen the earlier discussion by proposing a “phenomenological turn” in the interpretation of the sutra’s core linguistic formula: “A is not A, therefore it is called A.” While the previous work emphasized the integration of samatha and vipassanā, this note focuses on the radical reorientation found in the act of naming. The author (...) argues that this second "A" is not merely a pragmatic return to conventional language, but a phenomenological recognition that arises only after discriminative boundary-making has ceased. By acknowledging vivid, transient phenomena through the lens of Dependent Arising (Pratītyasamutpāda), this study demonstrates how language can be used in a state of "Ordinary Mind" without the "glue" of conceptual fixation. (shrink)

This paper explores the concept of ordinary mind and its political significance, arguing that ordinary mind does not arise from advanced theory, rare insight, or demanding spiritual discipline. Instead, it becomes evident when habitual patterns of ego-centered interpretation loosen and perception returns to a simple awareness of causes and effects. Ordinary mind is not extraordinary; it is accessible, practical, and already implicit in everyday experience. By reframing ordinary mind in this way, the paper challenges the assumption that political clarity requires (...) moral intensity or ideological certainty. Contemporary politics is often shaped by identity-driven judgment, emotional escalation, and the need for moral self-affirmation. Under such conditions, political phenomena are easily transformed into symbolic struggles rather than examined as processes that produce concrete outcomes in human life. Drawing on Buddhist insights into sameness (samathā), the distinction between representation and reality, and the absence of a fixed ego, as well as on Schopenhauer’s notion of the identity of the will, the paper proposes a causal approach to political judgment. From this perspective, policies and institutions are evaluated not by their symbolic meaning or moral rhetoric, but by their actual effects on suffering, stability, and shared well-being. The paper introduces the concept of non-egoic politics to describe a form of political action that is free from egoic ownership, moralized identity, and the need for recognition. In non-egoic politics, leadership becomes functional rather than heroic, power is treated as instrumental rather than possessive, and responsibility is shared rather than claimed. Such politics is not passive; on the contrary, it enables clearer, more flexible, and more effective action. Finally, the paper argues that ordinary mind is not a pre-political retreat, but the psychological condition that makes non-egoic politics possible. Resonating with the Daoist principle of wei wu wei—acting without forcing—ordinary mind allows political life to become effective without domination and ethical without aggression. In a time of heightened polarization and moral conflict, ordinary mind offers a quiet but realistic foundation for political judgment grounded in causality, humility, and care for human flourishing. (shrink)

Meditation research has a labeling problem. Studies often place very different mental practices under one broad word, such as mindfulness or meditation. This hides real differences in how each tradition trains attention and how each tradition understands the mind. As a result, EEG and brain scan studies often produce results that do not agree with each other. This paper builds a knowledge graph ontology, not just a descriptive table, that connects specific brain measurements to the actual experiences described by practitioners (...) through a layered pipeline: practice, training objective, phenomenological operation, computational mechanism, predicted neural signature, observed EEG, observed fMRI, and evidence strength. We look at six traditions: Samatha Jhana, Vipassana, Dzogchen Rigpa, devotional and deity practices, Korean Seon (hwadu investigation), and Jōdo Shinshū (nembutsu recitation). We also add a third axis to the usual two part model of consciousness, one that tracks how much a state has moved toward open, nondual awareness. This ontology is implemented as an actual knowledge graph, openly available in a public repository alongside this paper, so that its claims can be queried and checked rather than only read once. One finding deserves special attention. A study that directly compared six traditions in a single experiment found no meaningful difference in EEG power between the styles. This limits how confidently we can say these traditions produce distinct brain signatures. We conclude that meditation is not one single brain state, but the evidence for this claim is much stronger at the level of subjective experience and religious doctrine than at the level of raw brain signals. We point out exactly where more research is needed, especially for Korean Seon and Jōdo Shinshū. (shrink)

I first attempt a taxonomy of meditation in traditional Indian Buddhism. Based on the main psychological or somatic function at which the meditative effort is directed, the following classes can be distinguished: (1) emotion-centered meditation (coinciding with the traditional samatha approach); (2) consciousness-centered meditation (with two subclasses: consciousness reduction/elimination and ideation obliteration); (3) reflection-centered meditation (with two subtypes: morality-directed reflection and reality-directed observation, the latter corresponding to the vipassanā method); (4) visualization-centered meditation; and (5) physiology-centered meditation. In the second (...) part of the essay I tackle the problem of the epistemic validity and happiness-engendering value of Buddhist meditation. In my highly conjectural view, the claim that meditation represents an infallible tool for realizing the (Supreme) Truth as well as a universally valid method for attaining the highest forms of happiness is largely based on the crēdō effect, that is, a placebolike process. I do not deny that meditation may have some positive effects on mental and physical health or that its practice may bring changes to the mind. Meditation may be a valuable alternative approach in life and clinical treatment, but it is far from being a must or a panacea. (shrink)

1. Samatha Matherne’s reading of Ernst Cassirer’s complex and multifaceted oeuvre demonstrates a remarkably strong systematic grasp.1 By identifying the themes, ideas, and working concepts that are...

Abstractabstract:This paper revisits debates on a tension in Cassirer's philosophy of culture. On the one hand, Cassirer describes a plurality of symbolic forms and claims that each needs to be assessed by its own internal standards of validity. On the other hand, he ranks the symbolic forms in terms of a developmental hierarchy and states that one form, mathematical natural science, constitutes the highest achievement of culture. In my paper, I do not seek to resolve this tension. Rather, I aim (...) to arrive at a better understanding of how it arises, and of the different options that it presents for understanding the development of culture. I discuss three recent attempts at resolving the tension, put forward by Sebastian Luft, Samatha Matherne, and Simon Truwant, respectively. Based on a reconstruction of Cassirer's system of symbolic forms that centralizes the concept of function, I show that the most promising of these attempts, formulated by Truwant, is not successful. I then turn to Cassirer's philosophy of the cultural sciences, the implications of which for the present problem have not yet been sufficiently explored. I argue that in this context, Cassirer develops the contours of an alternative to the function-based view of cultural development. I conclude that this alternative does not resolve the tension either, but that it allows for a reconceptualization of the teleology of culture as open. (shrink)

Bridging the gap between the world of science and the realm of the spiritual, B. Alan Wallace introduces a natural theory of human consciousness that has its roots in contemporary physics and Buddhism. Wallace's "special theory of ontological relativity" suggests that mental phenomena are _conditioned_ by the brain, but do not _emerge_ from it. Rather, the entire natural world of mind and matter, subjects and objects, arises from a unitary dimension of reality that is more fundamental than these dualities, as (...) proposed by Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung. To test his hypothesis, Wallace employs the Buddhist meditative practice of _samatha_, refining one's attention and metacognition, to create a kind of telescope to examine the space of the mind. Drawing on the work of the physicist John Wheeler, he then proposes a more general theory in which the participatory nature of reality is envisioned as a self-excited circuit. In comparing these ideas to the Buddhist theory known as the Middle Way philosophy, Wallace explores further aspects of his "general theory of ontological relativity," which can be investigated by means of _vipasyana_, or insight, meditation. Wallace then focuses on the theme of symmetry in reference to quantum cosmology and the "problem of frozen time," relating these issues to the theory and practices of the Great Perfection school of Tibetan Buddhism. He concludes with a discussion of the general theme of complementarity as it relates to science and religion. The theories of relativity and quantum mechanics were major achievements in the physical sciences, and the theory of evolution has had an equally deep impact on the life sciences. However, rigorous scientific methods do not yet exist to observe mental phenomena, and naturalism has its limits for shedding light on the workings of the mind. A pioneer of modern consciousness research, Wallace offers a practical and revolutionary method for exploring the mind that combines the keenest insights of contemporary physicists and philosophers with the time-honored meditative traditions of Buddhism. (shrink)

In Buddhism, Meditation and Free Will: A Theory of Mental Freedom , Rick Repetti explains how the dynamics of Buddhist meditation can result in a kind of metacognition and metavolitional control that exceeds what is required for free will and defeats the most powerful forms of free will skepticism. This article argues that although the Buddhist path requires and enhances the kind of mental and volitional control Repetti describes, the central dynamic of the path and meditation is better understood as (...) a process of habituation. This not only involves the dis‐identification from mental and emotional content that Repetti discusses—and is commonly emphasized in modern presentations of mindfulness or insight (vipassanā ) meditation—but also a transformation of the heart that is effected through the complementary psychological and somatic qualities associated with calm abiding (samatha ) and concentration (samādhi ) and emphasized in the Pali Nikāyas and commentaries. (shrink)

This paper interprets Buddhist meditation from perspectives of Western psychology and explores the common grounds shared by the two disciplines. Cognitive operations in Buddhist meditation are mainly characterized by mindfulness and concentration in relation to attention. Mindfulness in particular plays a pivotal role in regulating attention. My study based on Buddhist literature corroborates significant correspondence between mindfulness and metacognition as propounded by some psychologists. In vipassanā meditation, mindfulness regulates attention in such a way that attention is directed to monitor the (...) ever-changing experiences from moment to moment so that the practitioner attains the ‘metacognitive insight’ into the nature of things. In samatha meditation, mindfulness picks an object as the focus of ‘selective attention' and monitors whether attention is concentrated on the chosen object so as to attain the state of ‘concentration’. Nimitta that appears in a deep state of concentration resembles ‘imagery’ in psychology. Mindfulness consists in the wholesome functioning of saññā. A finding by psychologists supports my view that saññā can act as perception on the one hand and, on the other hand, it can produce nimitta ‘imagery’ in deep meditation where perception is suspended. (shrink)

In this article I share some of my experiences of practising Korean Zen meditation and how, without ever mentioning the word ‘mindfulness,’ this practice helps us to become mindful. This leads me to suggest that the main ingredients of Buddhist meditation are samatha (which I will translate here as ‘concentration’) and vipassanā (which I will call ‘experiential enquiry’). No matter which Buddhist tradition one follows, the practice of samatha and vipassanā will lead to the cultivation of mindfulness. I (...) also intend to show how the traditional doctrine of the ‘four great efforts’ is very close to therapeutic methods advocated in MBCT. I will also propose that the Buddha's five methods of dealing with difficult thoughts as presented in the Vitakkhasa hāna Sutta (Majjhima Nikāya 20) are examples of an early Buddhist cognitive behavioural strategy. (shrink)

The technique of ‘examining meditative topics’ is one of the emblematic practices of the ‘Zen’ traditions of East Asia. An emblematic feature of this technique is the generation of a sense of inquiry, or more literally a ‘feeling’ or ‘sensation of doubt’. This inquiry creates an intense introspective focus that, in some strands of the practice, may be accompanied by palpable physical sensations; these sensations seem to be analogous to the experience of ‘excitation’ or ‘rapture’ described in contemporary samatha/śamatha (...) and vipassanā/vipaśyanā practice. I explore the treatment of prīti in Abhidharma theory and suggest that, where prīti is not classified as a discrete dharma, it might best be classified as a type of otherworldly vedanā that is ‘free from carnality’. I conclude with a discussion of an explicit questioning dimension in commentarial discussions of satipaṭṭhāna practice in the Pāli tradition, where inquiring ‘Who goes? Whose is this going?’ helps to transform the act of walking into an act of mindfulness. This questioning dimension suggests possible parallels with the Zen notion of ‘doubt’. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article examines the term kammaṭṭhāna in three contexts. It begins by looking at the rare usage in the Pali canon where it denotes secular work, but is extended to include the work of the ascetic. It then looks at its usage in the commentarial period to denote the meditation subjects for samatha meditation, and where extensions of this to include vipassanā also occur. Finally, the article looks at kammaṭṭhāna in early modern Southeast Asia (primarily Siam) in the (...) context of a variety of pre-modern meditation, boran kammathan, where the number of meditation subjects is increased, the patterns of their usage has changed with a new emphasis on experiencing nimitta, and kammathan is employed as a general term for meditation per se. The article also considers some ancillary features of boran kammathan texts, offering suggestions to enhance the search for new boran kammathan texts in manuscript archives and libraries. (shrink)

Mastering the Art of Meditation is an instructional guide to various forms of meditation, representing several spiritual traditions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and Shamanism. Readers are led through the three aspects of meditation: Concentrative, Receptive, and Expressive. Techniques include: Breathing, Imaging, Icon, Mandala, Shamanic Nature Gazing, Music, Mantra, Sacred Words, Centering Prayer, Body Awareness, Movement, Koans, Compassion, Samatha, Vipassana, Zazen, Tapas, Kundalini, Chi, and Tonglen. Dr. Don Giles, the author, spent over a decade learning these practices from a variety (...) of masters from around the world. Dr. Giles, a Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies, has been teaching students both in and outside of the classroom for over 25 years. (shrink)

A strong strand of the scholarship of Lance Cousins focussed on the jh?nas and related matters, and he was also a practitioner and teacher of samatha meditation, which aims at the jh?nas. In this dual tradition, this paper explores subtle questions about the nature of each jh?na as dealt with in the Pali Nik?yas, Abhidhamma and commentaries. Its aim is to help illuminate what it is like to be in any of these jh?nas: what is going on in them, (...) and what has been transcended? What do the similes for each jh?na convey about the overall situation in them? What kind` of thought and feelings are understood to occur in them? To what extent does breathing stop in deep jh?na? To what extent is hearing transcended in them? What happens in moving between them? How are they related to developing insight? (shrink)

Meditations of the Pali Tradition: Illuminating Buddhist Doctrine, History, and Practice, by L. S. Cousins. Edited by Sarah Shaw. Shambhala, 2022. 336pp., Pb $24.95, ISBN-13: 9781611809879.