Articles

Original scholarship published on a rolling basis

About

The Journal of Contemplative Studies regularly publishes original research and scholarship on topics related to the world’s contemplative traditions — historical and contemporary, religious and secular. Articles are not restricted to a particular disciplinary or methodological approach as long as scholarship is deeply grounded in the humanities or transdisciplinary scholarship with a humanistic core, and adheres to the journal’s Focus and Scope. Articles are reviewed and published on a rolling basis, either independently, or within a Special Issue. Details about how to submit an article are on the Submissions page.

Recent Articles

Self-Transformative Research: Effects on Researchers of a Holistic Collaborative Study of Spiritual Exemplars

Amir Freimann, Ofra Mayseless, Tobin Hart, Aostre Johnson
What happens to researchers interested in spirituality, as they engage with a large number of spiritual exemplars? This question is explored, based on the experience of 14 research collaborators in a qualitative phenomenological study of spiritual exemplars of different traditions, paths, and cultures. Over 5.5 months, two groups of research collaborators watched video recordings of interviews with 20 spiritual exemplars, analyzed their transcripts, wrote down their impressions of each exemplar, and discussed them in biweekly meetings. At the end of that period, the effects of the process on the collaborators were explored through individual interviews and group discussions. The conditions that contributed to the effects of the process and the potential of its application to facilitate interreligious dialogue and personal growth are discussed.

Read article

Riven: A Mysticism of Place in Times of Grief

Patricia M. Zimmerman
What does a particular place and its unique yet integrated life-force do for our lamentation amid ecocide? Do we suppose that nature mourns for us? Restores us to full resurrection? I avoid either/or solutions as at best a misplaced romantic optimism and at worst escapism enabling capitalist exploitation. Rather, I draw upon Christian mystics Julian of Norwich, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and John of the Cross alongside contemporary nonfiction authors Robert Macfarlane and Annie Dillard to move us beyond metaphor into the material. Masters of holding complicated paradoxical truths in real bodies and time, they wake the dying and entice us into spiritual practices as poets of apocatastasis, postulants of apophatic energy, and epistemologies of integration.

Read article

Supreme Patriarch Suk Kai Thuean’s Method of Visualizing the Elements

Potprecha Cholvijarn
The paper aims to shed further light on the boran kammaṭṭhāna, or “old meditation,” tradition by providing a summary and an analysis of a meditation manual titled “Baep Doen That” (literally, “Model for walking the elements”) attributed to the Supreme Patriarch Suk Kai Thuean (1733–1822), the fourth Saṅgharāja of Bangkok, Thailand. The analysis of the manual incorporates the author’s interviews with Phra Khru Sitthisangwon (Wira Ṭhanāvīro) of Wat Ratchasittharam, the current lineage holder of Supreme Patriarch Suk’s meditation.

Read article

Contemplative Life amidst Mass Extinction: Catholic Revisions of Spirituality, Law, and Multispecies Justice

Willis Jenkins
Contemplative ecologies seem to face two liabilities of injustice. This essay examines how Contemplative Ecology may matter for multispecies justice by following Pope Francis’s attempt to redefine human dominion in contemplative terms for the sake of response to climate and extinction crises. That theological shift is accompanied by elevations of Indigenous governance rights and of rights for nature, although neither is endorsed fully or consistently. Ambiguities in this case can illuminate overarching questions about the relation of contemplative practice to ecological justice. 

Read article

The Art of Imagination at the Intersection of Pramāṇa and Samaya: Normative Epistemology and Tantric Ethics in Early Philosophical Vajrayāna

Dominic D. Z. Sur
Buddhist thinkers in Tibet, most especially those associated with Tibet’s Nyingma or Old School of Buddhism, have produced a rich and understudied current of tantric philosophy advancing the authority, validity, and rationality of the tantric view. This paper examines the text, Establishing Appearance as Divine (Snang ba lhar bsgrub pa) by Rongzom (fl. 11th–12th c.). It is our earliest documented instance of a Tibetan “tantric pramāṇa”—that is, an approach characterized by the philosophical integration of exoteric philosophical thought and esoteric ritual and ideology. As such, and in contrast to more narrowly focused studies of Tibetan ritual or Tibetan philosophy, this paper details the form, content, and context of Rongzom’s tantric pramāṇa or epistemological discourse in terms of both classical epistemology and Buddhist Tantra. This study thus sheds light on the relationship envisioned between ritual and philosophy in traditions of Vajrayāna.

Read article

Practicing the “Threefold Mystery”: Rethinking a Shingon Ritual from Dichotomy to Dialectic

Richard K. Payne
After a century and a half of focus on Buddhist doctrine, academic attention is increasingly being paid to practice. What remains undertheorized, however, is the relation between the two. Despite its prevalence, the dichotomous representation of doctrine and practice is methodologically dysfunctional. As an alternative, it is proposed that the relation between doctrine and practice is better understood as dialectical, sometimes represented in Buddhist literature by the image of “the two wings of a bird.” This relation is explored by examining a particular tantric ritual, a Shingon homa.

Read article

No Attainment, Nothing to Attain: A Buddhist Reflection on Psychedelics

Peter D. Hershock
The religious or spiritual value of contemplative practices and the use of psychedelics is not intrinsic to experiences obtained through them and is instead relational—a function of how they alter consciousness. Hershock presents a nonreductive, nondualist Buddhist account of consciousness that calls critically into question the merits of both physicalist and phenomenalist reductionism, makes a Buddhist case for seeing that changes in subjective experience are at best provisional goals of these alterations, and draws some challenging inferences regarding the dynamics of contemplative practice, and more.

Read article

Re-Visioning Ethnography Through Meditative Practice: The Proposal for a Contemplative Anthropology and Its Experience through Visual Elicitation Technique

Federico Divino
This article introduces a novel method presently in development that integrates ethnography and visual elicitation techniques to explore meditative experiences and investigate consciousness. Central to this method is the utilization of mandala-like images as a means to capture the dynamic evolution of consciousness during contemplative practices. This article provides an illustrative case study that scrutinizes the method’s potential applications and contributions within the domain of anthropological research on contemplative practices.

Read article

Hesychasm and Psychedelics: Altered States, Purgation, and the Question of Authentic Mysticism

Thomas Cattoi
Hesychasm is a form of monastic asceticism rooted in the tradition of the Desert Fathers and given a systematic articulation by the Byzantine author Gregory Palamas (1296–1359). This article considers how the mystical experiences described in Palamas’s Triads compare to the altered states at the center of contemporary psychedelic research, turning to the discipline of Comparative Theology as a helpful framework to bring into dialogue the hesychastic understanding of deification as a trajectory grounded in the reception of the sacraments and the therapeutic impact of psychedelic experiences.

Read article

Portrait of a Poison: Datura in Buddhist Magic

Samuel M. Grimes
The psychoactive plant Datura metel appears across a range of traditions in premodern South Asia including the form of tantric Buddhism (Vajrayāna) located in the yoginī tantras, where the plant is most prominently used in instructions for bringing about magical acts (ṣaṭkarman). This paper explores the possibility that datura was consumed for its hallucination-inducing potential by considering how the plant was viewed and used in premodern South Asia through an ethnobotanical approach to relevant texts. It argues that the material potency of the plant as a dangerous poison gave it a magical potency that made it a favored ingredient in several hostile magic rites (abhicāra) and suggests that the line between material and magical is an inappropriate distinction to draw when examining these tantras.

Read article

A Study of Cheng Yi’s Quiet-Sitting Meditation and Other Contemplative Practices in the Confucian Context

Bin Song
This study delves into Cheng Yi’s Ruist (Confucian) contemplative practices, addressing a gap in contemplative studies from a Ruist perspective. These practices, including quiet-sitting meditation, beholding, calligraphy, and restful sleep, emerged during political and social crises, amid diverse interpretations of Ruist classics and the influences of Buddhism and Daoism. Cheng Yi’s approach provides valuable comparative insights for contemporary contemplative studies and guidance for practitioners seeking to balance intellectualism, contemplation, and ethical action.

Read article

Relationships between Religious and Scientific Worldviews in the Narratives of Western Buddhists Reporting Meditation-Related Challenges

Roman Palitsky, David J. Cooper, Jared R. Lindahl, Willoughby B. Britton (PDF)
Relationships between religious and scientific worldviews are important factors in exploring meditation-related challenges for Western Buddhist meditators. Interviews with sixty-eight meditators and thirty-three meditation experts were analyzed to examine how they understand these relationships, which were observed to be conflicting, compatible, nested, discrete, and complementary. These dynamics suggest an expansion of existing understandings of the relationships between science and religion as they apply to Buddhist meditators.

Read article

Recent Reviews

Review of Night of Beginnings: A Passover Haggadah

Ariel Evan Mayse
This review discusses Marcia Falk’s Night of Beginnings, a reimagined Passover Haggadah designed to inspire contemplative practice. Falk combines poetic liturgy, gender-inclusive language, and mystical reflections to offer new interpretations of traditional Jewish texts. She emphasizes the importance of personal and communal transformation, focusing on connection, humility, and compassion rather than power and exclusion. Through her creative blessings, storytelling, and visual art, Falk invites readers to experience the Passover Seder as a dynamic ritual filled with beauty, renewal, and spiritual depth.

Read article

Review of Neuroscience for Designing Green Spaces: Contemplative Landscapes

Ariel Evan Mayse
This review explores how urban green spaces can promote mental well-being through intentional design informed by neuroscience, as discussed by Agnieszka Olszewska-Guizzo in Neuroscience for Designing Green Spaces: Contemplative
Landscapes, published in 2023. The book introduces the Contemplative Landscape Model, a framework identifying seven features that enhance contemplative experiences in built environments. Mayse discusses why the book is a significant contribution to the field of Contemplative Studies, and what more there is to be done.

Read article

Review of The Oxford Handbook of Meditation

Stephen Dawson
This review examines this expansive and valuable recently edited volume on the study of meditation. Dawson attends to larger conceptual orientations of the volume and its specific contributions in his review, and finds that “the breadth of different approaches to meditation is, in fact, one of the Handbook’s prime virtues…. Discussions of meditation are polyphonic—they comprise many voices. The plurality of voices is, however, balanced by listening; conversations take place on these pages. The Handbook amply displays the diverse multidisciplinary discussions underway in the field of meditation studies.”

Read article

Review of Routledge Handbook of Yoga and Meditation Studies

Alan Brill
This review discusses a helpful edited volume featuring recent scholarship on yoga and meditation studies that address the question: “What exactly is meditation?” In response, the editors “aim to expand the focus of meditation studies to show the diversity of South Asian meditation, including discussions of teachers writing in Telegu, Tamil, Malayalam, and other languages and texts including not only texts about meditation but also songs, poems, letters, and popular devotions. These discussions show the multiplicity of Hindu and South Asian forms of meditation and yoga, engaged in interreligious encounter with Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Islam, and Christianity.”

Read article

Review of Routledge Handbook on the Philosophy of Meditation

Francisco Figueroa Medina
This review outlines and evaluates the contributions of this important edited volume on recent scholarship about the philosophy of meditation. “Throughout this Handbook, we find different ways of understanding both philosophy and meditation, as well as their relationship. Some authors highlight the apparent tensions between the two, while others, the apparent harmony…. Anyone interested in the philosophy of meditation will undoubtedly be inspired by [this]… meaningful contribution to establishing this subfield within the academe.”

Read article