These papers offer engaging new discourse on contemplative praxis as a means of teasing out precisely what we mean when we discuss practices like meditation. The first paper addresses meditation praxis within a historical Tibetan context by examining the healing effects of praxis within the context of the use of sound in the Unimpeded Sound Tantra (Sgra thal ‘gyur). The second paper in this panel draws from the writings of Tsongkhapa (1357-1419), (Gampopa (1079-1153) and Longchen pa (1308-1363) to discuss the Tibetan practice, thukdam, where the body of an advanced Tibetan practitioner exhibits signs of though clinically dead. The third paper offers an analysis of meditation practice through two different lenses, one derived from a religious context and one that exhibits something more akin to a technological reading of meditation praxis.
This paper explores a contemplative theory of medical healing found within the Great Perfection (Rdzogs chen) tantra, the Unimpeded Sound (Sgra thal ‘gyur), and its 12th-century commentary linked to Vimalamitra. Recasting traditional Buddhist theorizations of the person in terms of “body, speech, and mind,” as a model of disease pathology and treatment, this system proposes contemplative yogic techniques of body, mantric techniques of speech, and attentional practices of mind for treating physical illnesses. The paper considers the ways that Great Perfection Buddhist contemplative-scholarly communities in the 12th century drew upon conventional Buddhist doctrinal knowledge frameworks—such as body, speech, and mind—to address the decidedly this-worldly concern of healing the human suffering of illness.
Certain Tibetan monks demonstrate signs of vitality or being “alive” for up to 10-20 days following clinical death. In recent years, scientists have initiated studies on this occurrence, monitoring their brain activity during what is referred to as their thukdam meditation phase. However, what exactly is this contemplative practice, and within what context is such a post-clinical death meditation undertaken? Mahāyāna Buddhism emphasizes that meditation focused on perceiving reality and cultivating compassion is significantly more potent when conducted with the "subtle mind" rather than the "gross mind," wherein conceptual states, including dualism, persist. The subtle mind of the mind refers to innate clarity of the mind that is nonceptual and nondual. This paper will explore the three main contemplative practices associated with thukdam meditation: tantric, Mahāmudrā, and Dzogchen practices. Following that, I will analyze them from a broader Buddhist philosophical and soteriological perspective.
Approaching the term ‘meditation’ in the American milieu, one encounters a wide range of use cases. Meditation is sometimes represented as a distinct religious practice, other times a perennial human behavior, and popularly a kind of secular wellness practice. Depending on the context in which one encounters the term, meditation can be a specific technique or a therapeutic category. As an intervention to make sense of these competing conceptions, one can articulate meditation as appearing either as a ‘technological’ or a ‘cultural’ artifact. These categories can represent alternating and conflated epistemic identities inherent in the approaches taken by researchers, educators, and practitioners of meditation. Providing this distinction for how meditation is treated in different contexts allows scholars to more accurately assess the state of the term within societies, and engage in reflexive inquiry into how epistemologies of meditation are informed by implicit expectations concerning each identity.