TY  - JOUR
A1  - Schneider, Hans Julius
T1  - Buddhist Meditation as a Mystical Practice
JF  - Philosophia : philosophical quarterly of Israel
N2  - On the basis of many years of personal experience the paper describes Buddhist meditation (Zazen, Vipassanā) as a mystical practice. After a short discussion of the role of some central concepts (longing, suffering, and love) in Buddhism, William James’ concept of religious experience is used to explain the goal of meditators as the achievement of a special kind of an experience of this kind. Systematically, its main point is to explain the difference between (on the one hand) a craving for pleasant ‘mental events’ in the sense of short-term moods, and (on the other) the long-term project of achieving a deep change in one’s attitude to life as a whole, a change that allows the acceptance of suffering and death. The last part argues that there is no reason to call the discussed practice irrational in a negative sense. Changes of attitude of the discussed kind cannot be brought about by argument alone. Therefore, a considered use of age-old practices like meditation should be seen as an addition, not as an undermining of reason.
KW  - Experience
KW  - Mood
KW  - Meditation
KW  - Mysticism
KW  - William James
KW  - Rationality
Y1  - 2017
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-017-9925-x
SN  - 0048-3893
SN  - 1574-9274
VL  - 45
SP  - 1621
EP  - 1622
PB  - Springer
CY  - Dordrecht
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Schneider, Hans Julius
T1  - Buddhist Meditation as a Mystical Practice
JF  - Philosophia
N2  - On the basis of many years of personal experience the paper describes Buddhist meditation (Zazen, Vipassanā) as a mystical practice. After a short discussion of the role of some central concepts (longing, suffering, and love) in Buddhism, William James’ concept of religious experience is used to explain the goal of meditators as the achievement of a special kind of an experience of this kind. Systematically, its main point is to explain the difference between (on the one hand) a craving for pleasant ‘mental events’ in the sense of short-term moods, and (on the other) the long-term project of achieving a deep change in one’s attitude to life as a whole, a change that allows the acceptance of suffering and death. The last part argues that there is no reason to call the discussed practice irrational in a negative sense. Changes of attitude of the discussed kind cannot be brought about by argument alone. Therefore, a considered use of age-old practices like meditation should be seen as an addition, not as an undermining of reason.
KW  - Experience
KW  - Mood
KW  - Meditation
KW  - Mysticism
KW  - William James
KW  - Rationality
Y1  - 2017
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-016-9783-y
SN  - 0048-3893
SN  - 1574-9274
VL  - 45
SP  - 773
EP  - 787
PB  - Springer
CY  - Dordrecht
ER  -