Contemplative Embodiment Across Traditions

Following the work of Niklaus Largier and Sandra Schneiders, this presnetation will explore the question of the body and human embodiment as it relates to the experience of Evangelical Christianity’s engagement with the world. Specifically, I argue that evangelicalism’s traditional biblicism broadly conceived across the fundamentalist - progressive spectrum of evangelical theology prioritizes a rationalized hermeneutical strategy of text and word over and against human experience in a way that relativizes the role of the body and reflections on embodiment, both as a means of sustained contemplative engagement with the divine, and with its sustained lived-engagement in this world.

The seventeenth-century kabbalist Naftali Bakrakh of Frankfurt developed several innovative and hyper-visualized contemplative practices. In this paper, I will discuss these meditations to rethink the complicated relations between interiority and exteriority, the visual and the spiritual, and the ritualized and the contemplative. This discussion will demonstrate the potential contribution of integrating Jewish traditions into the interdisciplinary discourse of Contemplative Studies.

This paper addresses the absence of the Ruist (Confucian) perspective in contemplative studies and explores Cheng Yi (程頤 1033-1107)'s contemplative practices as a case study. Cheng Yi is considered the foundational Ruist thinker in the Cheng-Zhu lineage of pattern-principle learning. The social context in which his practices emerged was characterized by political and social crises, diverse interpretations of classics, and the influence of Buddhism and Daoism. Cheng Yi's contemplative practice involves specific techniques such as sitting postures, breathing, and quieting the mind, but also emphasizes the virtues of "reverence" and "righteousness." Cheng Yi's metaphysics emphasizes the non-temporality of the regulative role of the pattern-principle, enhancing the pan-contemplative nature of Ruist lifestyle. His approach offers comparative insights for contemporary contemplative studies, providing inspiration for practitioners seeking to balance intellectualism with contemplation and ethical action. The paper provides original translations and scholarly analysis of Cheng Yi's Ruist contemplative practices.

This paper examines the role of contemplative practices in the construction of transcendental, gendered, and devotional subjectivities according to the 16th century Gaudīya Vaiṣṇava tradition. The foundation of such devotional subjectivities is theorized as Kṛṣṇa-rāga: the advanced devotional desire for Kṛṣṇa. Such desire is inherently embodied, in that it required a devotee to experience one of five "flavors" of desire relating to Kṛṣṇa's transcendental bodily form. The highest expression of this is madhura-bhakti-rasa, the amorous desire for Kṛṣṇa experienced by the young cowherd gopīs. Philosophers Rūpa and Jīva Gosvāmin carefully distinguish such desire as transcendental: beyond and separate from normative embodied sexual desire. According to the 16th century tradition, such desire is therefore confined to the internal realm of contemplation. And yet, through contemplative practice, such desire also generates transcendental bodily forms. Therefore, this paper offers insight into the Gaudiya recontextualization of gender as an imaginal - yet embodied - construct.