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JCS Editor • February 7, 2025
Special Issue Article
SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE: Supreme Patriarch Suk Kai Thuean’s Method of Visualizing the Elements
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. An example of this is the idea that tantric practice is… -
JCS Editor • January 19, 2025
Book Review
Review of Night of Beginnings: A Passover Haggadah
Reviewed by 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… -
JCS Editor • January 13, 2025
Book Review
Review of Neuroscience for Designing Green Spaces: Contemplative Landscapes
Reviewed by 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… -
JCS Editor • January 6, 2025
Special Issue Article
Practicing the “Threefold Mystery”: Rethinking a Shingon Ritual from Dichotomy to Dialectic
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. An example of this is the idea that tantric practice is… -
JCS Editor • December 30, 2024
Special Issue Article
No Attainment, Nothing to Attain: A Buddhist Reflection on Psychedelics
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. In support of that claim, I first present a… -
JCS Editor • August 15, 2024
Special Issue Article
Re-Visioning Ethnography Through Meditative Practice
“Re-Visioning Ethnography Through Meditative Practice: The Proposal for a Contemplative Anthropology and Its Experience through Visual Elicitation Technique” by Federico Divino, Visual and Digital Cultures research center at the University of Antwerp Abstract: This article introduces a novel method presently… -
JCS Editor • May 9, 2024
SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE
Hesychasm and Psychedelics
“Hesychasm and Psychedelics: Altered States, Purgation, and the Question of Authentic Mysticism,” by Thomas Cattoi, Jesuit School of Theology at Santa Clara University Abstract: The purpose of this essay is to introduce the reader to the tradition of Hesychasm—a form… -
JCS Editor • February 29, 2024
NEW SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE
Portrait of a Poison: Datura in Buddhist Magic
“Portrait of a Poison: Datura in Buddhist Magic,” by Samuel M. Grimes, University of California, Berkeley Abstract: The psychoactive plant Datura metel appears across a range of traditions in premodern South Asia preserved in texts. Among those traditions is the… -
JCS Editor • September 19, 2023
NEW ARTICLE
A Study of Cheng Yi’s Quiet-Sitting Meditation
“A Study of Cheng Yi’s Quiet-Sitting Meditation and Other Contemplative Practices in the Confucian Context” Abstract: This study delves into Cheng Yi’s (程頤, 1033–1107) Ruist (Confucian) contemplative practices, addressing a gap in contemplative studies from a Ruist perspective. As a…
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JCS Editor • February 7, 2025
Special Issue Article
SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE: Supreme Patriarch Suk Kai Thuean’s Method of Visualizing the Elements
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. An example of this is the idea that tantric practice is… -
JCS Editor • January 30, 2025
Contemplation + Nature
An Interview With Agnieszka Olszewska-Guizzo
Agnieszka Olszewska-Guizzo is the president and founder of NeuroLandscape and editor in chief of the Journal of Urban Design and Mental Health. She is the author of Neuroscience for Designing Green Spaces: Contemplative Landscapes (2023). -
JCS Editor • January 19, 2025
Book Review
Review of Night of Beginnings: A Passover Haggadah
Reviewed by 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… -
JCS Editor • January 13, 2025
Book Review
Review of Neuroscience for Designing Green Spaces: Contemplative Landscapes
Reviewed by 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… -
Ame Wren • January 9, 2025
Sharath Jois
The Active Series
On November 8, 2024, the Contemplative Sciences Center hosted teacher, practitioner, and lineage holder of Ashtanga yoga, Sharath Jois, for an event revealing his new series, The Active Series, and accompanying book by the same name. The event was cohosted… -
JCS Editor • January 6, 2025
Special Issue Article
Practicing the “Threefold Mystery”: Rethinking a Shingon Ritual from Dichotomy to Dialectic
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. An example of this is the idea that tantric practice is…