Buddhism under Capitalism. Edited by Richard K. Payne and Fabio Rambelli. London: Bloomsbury, 2022, 280 pages, ISBN 978-1-350-22832-0 (hardback), $90.00, 978-1-350-22833-7 (paperback), $29.95, 978-1-350-22835-1 (e-book), $26.95.
Reviewed by Stephen Christopher
Marc-Henri Deroche
Kyoto University
This article investigates the role of mindfulness in the so-called foundational practices exposed in Dza Patrul Orgyan Jigme Chökyi Wangpo’s (1808–1887) famous manual, Words of My Perfect Teacher, which belongs to the Dzogchen lineage of the Heart Essence of the Vast Expanse within the Nyingma tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. It argues that, according to these spiritual instructions, the continual exercise of mindfulness, meta-awareness, and carefulness forms the “ethos of the Great Perfection”—the constant ethical base and the consistent way of life that supports the path of Dzogchen. Sources of Words of My Perfect Teacher (including Śāntideva’s Bodhicaryāvatāra) and selected passages are analyzed in order to elucidate Patrul’s moral philosophy of mindful awareness and self-examination. The mnemonic, reflective, and attentional facets of the cultivation of mindfulness all work to internalize the ethical principles that govern the conduct of life, shaping new habits, exercising free will, and forming moral agency. They define the very ethos that articulates the value system and the re-orientation of attention. Such deliberate moment-by-moment mindfulness paves the way for discovering “instantaneous awareness,” the distinctive feature of Dzogchen, and for resting in its uninterrupted flow, from within to respond compassionately to other individuals and various circumstances.
Dogen: Japan’s Original Zen Teacher. By Steven Heine. Boulder, Colorado: Shambhala Publications, 2021, 360 pages, ISBN 978-1-61180-980-0 (paperback), $29.95.
Reviewed by Zuzana Kubovčáková
American JewBu: Jews, Buddhists, and Religious Change. By Emily Sigalow. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2019, 280 pages, ISBN 978-0-691-17459-4 (hard-back), $29.95/978-0-691-22805-1 (paperback), $21.95.
Jewish Encounters with Buddhism in German Culture: Between Moses and Buddha, 1890–1940. Palgrave Series in Asian German Studies. By Sebastian Musch. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, ix + 289 pages, ISBN 978-3-030-27468-9 (hardback), $99.99/978-3-030-27471-9 (paperback), $69.99/978-3-030-27469-6 (e-book), $54.99.
Reviewed by Mira Niculescu
Lisa Liang and Brianna K. Morseth
Dharma Realm Buddhist University
Across the globe, our continued existence in light of present conditions is uncertain. Rapid spread of disease and risk of complications endanger the human population. Such challenging circumstances may shock and devastate us, inducing mass panic and pandemonium amid the pervasive threat of pandemic. Yet according to Buddhist philosophy, existential unease can also spawn deep transformation. In this paper, we examine a pair of aesthetic emotions (saṃvega/pasāda) from the early Buddhist tradition that together hold the potential to induce critical reflection and productive engagement in response to existential threat. By referring to saṃvega/pasāda as aesthetic emotions, we intend to draw out their distinctive, often visually-oriented soteriological function. While initially disorienting and perhaps even paralyzing, saṃvega and pasāda are ultimately reorienting and motivating factors on the path to liberation from the suffering entailed by cyclic existence.
Wilfrid Sellars and Buddhist Philosophy: Freedom from Foundations. Edited by Jay L. Garfield. Routledge Studies in American Philosophy. London and New York: Routledge, 2019, 254 pages. ISBN 978-0-367-11209-7 (hardback), $128/978-1-03-209415-1 (paperback), $39.16/978-0-429-02794-9 (e-book), $44.05.
Reviewed by Matthew T. Kapstein
Mindfully Facing Climate Change. By Bhikkhu Anālayo. Barre, Massachusetts: Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, 2019, 206 pp., ISBN 978-1-7067-1988-5 (paperback), $9.95. Open access e-book: https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/MindfullyFacingClimateChange.pdf.
Reviewed by Abhinav Anand
Inward: Vipassana Meditation and the Embodiment of the Self. By Michal Pagis. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2019, x + 216 pp, ISBN 978-0-226-36187-1 (paperback), $27.50.
Reviewed by Joseph Loss
If You Meet the Buddha on the Road: Buddhism, Politics, and Violence. By Michael Jerryson. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018, 240 pp., ISBN 978-0-19-068356-6 (hardback), $115.00.
Reviewed by Manuel Litalien
Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy. By Evan Thompson. New York: Columbia University Press, 2017, 496 pages, ISBN 9780231136952 (paperback), $22.95 / £17.99.
Reviewed by Jesse Butler
21 Lessons for the 21st Century. By Yuval Noah Harari. New York: Spiegel and Grau, 2018, ISBN 9780525512172 (hardback), U.S. $28.00.
Reviewed by Victor Forte
Asaf Federman
Sagol Center for Brain and Mind, Muda Institute, IDC Herzliya
Oren Ergas
Beit Berl College, Israel
In this paper, we discuss the issue of free will as it may be informed by an analysis of originally Buddhism-based meditative disciplines such as mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT), and related mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) that are deployed in a variety of therapeutic contexts. We analyze the mechanics of these forms of mindfulness meditation, paying particular attention to the ways in which they appear to enable individual practitioners to reduce a variety of otherwise unwholesome mental and behavioral factors, such as habituated or conditioned dispositions to reactivity, that are intuitively associated with increasingly ineffective agency or diminished free will, while increasing wholesome mental and behavioral tendencies, such as spontaneous responsiveness. We pay particular attention to a somewhat paradoxical way in which direct efforts at control are counter-productive, on the one hand, while meditative practices designed to cultivate “choiceless awareness,” a sort of non-control associated with a non-judgmental acceptance of things beyond our control, tend to indirectly increase self-regulative abilities, on the other hand.
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Josef Mattes
University of Vienna
Motivated by recent controversies concerning the relationship between modern mindfulness-based interventions and Buddhism, this article discusses the relationship between mindfulness and dogmatism in general, and dogmatism in ethics in particular. The point of view taken is primarily that of the psychology of judgment and decision making: Various cognitive illusions affect the feelings of righteousness and certainty that tend to accompany ethical and moral judgments. I argue that even though there is some evidence that mindfulness practice improves judgment and decision making, this improvement is rarely as strong as is implied in various contributions to the above-mentioned controversies. In addition, I reflect on claims that “the original teachings of the Buddha” justify the moral stances taken. I argue that these stances likely arise, at least in part, due to the cultural transmission of cognitive dissonance of early Christianity rather than being inherent in the Buddha’s teachings.
Paul Nietupski
John Carroll University
This essay is based on sūtras 70–102 in Guṇaprabha’s seventh century Vinayasūtra, his Autocommentary, and the associated sections in all Indian and Tibetan commentaries on the Vinayasūtra. In this excerpt Guṇaprabha and the commentators include remarks on the requirements for monastic community authority and references to relevant authoritative doctrines. The guidelines for monastic authority include applications of procedures in medieval Indian monastic life, including prerequisites and exceptions in the ordination process. The references to authoritative doctrine in Guṇaprabha’s and the commentators’ works include comments on the interface of ethics, concentration, and wisdom, and how ethical guidelines are based on the correct understanding of epistemological value as presented in canonical treatises on doctrine.
Lajos Brons
Nihon University and Lakeland University
Saṃvega is a morally motivating state of shock that—according to Buddhaghosa—should be evoked by meditating on death. What kind of mental state it is exactly, and how it is morally motivating is unclear, however. This article presents a theory of saṃvega—what it is and how it works—based on recent insights in psychology. According to dual process theories there are two kinds of mental processes organized in two “systems”: the experiential, automatic system 1, and the rational, controlled system 2. In normal circumstances, system 1 does not believe in its own mortality. Saṃvega occurs when system 1 suddenly realizes that the “subjective self” will inevitably die (while system 2 is already disposed to affirm the subject’s mortality). This results in a state of shock that is morally motivating under certain conditions. Saṃvega increases mortality salience and produces insight in suffering, and in combination with a strengthened sense of loving-kindness or empathic concern both mortality salience and insight in suffering produce moral motivation.
The Birth of Insight: meditation, modern Buddhism, and the Burmese Monk Ledi Sayadaw. By Erik Braun. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013, xvi + 257, ISBN 13: 978-0-226-00080-0 (cloth), US $45.00, ISBN 13: 978-0-226-00094-7 (e-book), US $7.00 to $36.00.
Reviewed by Douglas Ober
The Yogin & the Madman: Reading the Biographical Corpus of Tibet’s Great Saint Milarepa. By Andrew Quintman. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014, 336 pages, ISBN 978-0-231-16415-3 (paperback), $35.00 / £24.00; ISBN 978-0-231-16414-6 (cloth), $105.00 / £72.50.
Reviewed by Massimo Rondolino
Edwin Ng
Deakin University
This article stages a conversation between an emergent Buddhist social theory and current thinking in the humanities and social sciences on the affective and visceral registers of everyday experience—or what falls under the rubric of “affect studies.” The article takes the premise that prevailing models of Buddhist social theory need updating as they remain largely confined to macropolitical accounts of power, even though they argue for the importance of a mode of sociocultural analysis that would anchor itself on the “self” end of the self–society continuum. The article will thus explore ways to develop a micropolitical account of the ethical and political implications of Buddhist spiritual-social praxis—specifically mindfulness training—by formulating some hypotheses for dialogical exchange between Buddhist understandings and the multidisciplinary ideas informing the so-called “affective turn.”
Meditations of a Buddhist Skeptic: A Manifesto for the Mind Sciences and Contemplative Practice. B. Alan Wallace. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012. xi+292 pages, ISBN-13: 9780231158343 (pbk), $27.95.
Reviewed by Eric Haynie
An American Buddhist Life: Memoirs of a Modern Dharma Pioneer. By Charles S. Prebish. Toronto: Sumeru, 2011, 266 pages, ISBN 978-1-896559-09-4 (pbk), $24.95 US/CAD; £17.50.
Reviewed by Nicole Heather Libin
Riccardo Repetti
Kingsborough College, City University of New York
I argue that central Buddhist tenets and meditation methodology support a view of free will similar to Harry Frankfurt’s optimistic view and contrary to Galen Strawson’s pessimistic view. For Frankfurt, free will involves a relationship between actions, volitions, and “metavolitions” (volitions about volitions): simplifying greatly, volitional actions are free if the agent approves of them. For Buddhists, mental freedom involves a relationship between mental states and “metamental” states (mental attitudes toward mental states): simplifying greatly, one has mental freedom if one is able to control one’s mental states, and to the extent one has mental freedom when choosing, one has free will. Philosophical challenges to free will typically question whether it is compatible with “determinism,” the thesis of lawful universal causation. Both Frankfurt’s metavolitional approval and the Buddhist’s metamental control are consistent with determinism. Strawson has argued, however, that free will is impossible, determinism notwithstanding, because one’s choice is always influenced by one’s mental state. I argue, however, that Buddhist meditation cultivates control over mental states that undermine freedom, whether they are deterministic or not, making both mental freedom and free will possible. The model I develop is only a sketch of a minimally risky theory of free will, but one that highlights the similarities and differences between Buddhist thought on this subject and relevantly-related Western thought and has explanatory promise.
Ethan Mills
Augsburg College
There are two groups of scholars writing on the two main types of Buddhist meditation: one group that considers insight (vipassanā) to be essential and tranquility (samatha) to be inessential in the pursuit of nirvana, and a second group that views both samatha and vipassanā to be essential. I approach an answer to the question of which group is correct in two steps: (1) an outline of the disagreement between Paul Griffiths (of the first group) and Damien Keown (of the second group); and (2), an augmentation of Keown’s assertion that samatha can cultivate moral concern. I am not definitively solving the problem of the relationship between samatha and vipassanā, but rather I show that by making Keown’s theory of the cultivation of moral concern more plausible we have more reasons to accept his larger theory of the importance of both samatha and vipassanā.
Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics. By Gustaaf Houtman. Tokyo: ILCAA Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa Monograph Series, no. 33, Publication of the Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, 1999, viii + 392 pages, ISBN 4-87297-748-3 (paperback), Free.
Reviewed By Karen Derris
Buddhism in a Foreign Land: Essays on Meditation. By Robert Mann. Bradford on Avon: Aukana, 1996, 160 pages, £7.50.
Reviewed by Amadeo Solé-Leris
Georges Dreyfus
Williams College
Despite the fact that the various Tibetan Buddhist traditions developed substantive ethical systems on the personal, interpersonal and social levels, they did not develop systematic theoretical reflections on the nature and scope of ethics. Precisely because very little attention is devoted to the nature of ethical concepts, problems are created for modern scholars who are thus hindered in making comparisons between Buddhist and Western ethics. This paper thus examines the continuity between meditation and daily life in the context of understanding the ethical character of meditation as practiced by Tibetan Buddhists. The discussion is largely limited to the practice of meditation as taught in the lam rim (or Gradual Stages of the Path).