Contemplative Studies Unit

Whither the future? Forward-looking Frameworks for Contemplative Research 

Hosted by: Contemplative Studies Unit 
Sunday, 5:00 PM – 6:30 PM.

This panel draws on forward-looking methodologies for understanding contemplative praxis. Drawing from a range of traditions, from Indigenous traditions, to Judaism, to Buddhism to Jazz, these papers propose new models for furthering our understanding of contemplative practices and their impacts. 

Presiding
Loriliai Biernacki

Panelists
Yuria Celidwen, University of California, Berkeley
The EofB Scale: An Indigenous Contemplative Measurement 

Jes Golden, Indiana University, Bloomington
Matthew Sacchet, Harvard University
Cleaving to the Divine: Devekut, Jewish Mysticism, and the Science of Advanced Meditation 

Maria Guarino
“Don’t play what’s there. Play what’s not there.” The contemplative spirituality of Jazz improvisation, musical creativity, and transformational research methods  

Namdrol Miranda Adams
The Knower and the Known: Lamrim as Developmental Epistemology and the Its Role in Contemplative Studies 

Responding
Loriliai Biernacki

Business Meeting
Loriliai Biernacki 
Michael Sheehy, University of Virginia 

Contemplative Foodways in Vaiṣṇava, Jaina, and Yoga Traditions 

Hosted by: Contemplative Studies Unit and Religion and Food Unit
Monday, 9:00 AM – 11:00 AM

Food is a powerful analytical category for the study of contemplative traditions, with this panel introducing four new studies of contemplative foodways in Vaiṣṇava, Jaina, and Yoga traditions. It begins in the sixteenth-century, considering how the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava tradition reinterprets the tāntric practice of offering food to the deity as a bhakti practice that serves as devotional contemplation of Kṛṣṇa. The panel then pivots to two papers from Jaina contemplative traditions. The first demonstrates how Jaina contemplative teachings can reinvigorate contemporary debates on faux meat, with the second demonstrating how Jaina contemplative teachings have become entangled in contemporary transnational anti-vegan cognitive dissonance alleviation strategies. The final paper, presented by an engaged public scholar, examines through ethnography how yoga spaces engage with animal and environmental ethics, asking how contemplative concepts and practices inspire awareness of relationality with animals and ecosystems, as well as what yogis consider as “food” in contemplative practice. 

Presiding
Alba Rodriguez Juan, University of California, Riverside

Panelists
Eileen Goddard 
Cooking for Kṛṣṇa: Bhakti Food Contemplations in Naivedya 

Joseph Tuminello, McNeese State University 
Faux Flesh and Violent Thought: Jain Contemplative Diet Ethics and Plant-Based Meat

Christopher Miller, Arihanta Institute / Claremont School of Theology 
Contemplating Dairy: Jain vegetarian cognitive dissonance alleviation strategies in Jain foodways  

Diana Hulet, Arihanta Institute 
From Śavāsana to the Slaughterhouse: Yoga, Animals, Food, and Ethical Tensions in Contemporary Contemplative Practice  

Beyond the Human: Sentience, Awareness, and Moral Regard in Contemplative Traditions 

Hosted by: Contemplative Studies Unit
Monday, 5:00 PM – 6:30 PM

This panel explores how diverse contemplative traditions have articulated the interconnected concepts of “life” and “awareness” in forms beyond the human being— including animals, plants, elementals, and materials. In bringing attention to how these concepts are engaged in contemplative discourses and practices, the panel advocates for contemplation as a site in which ecological epistemologies and ethics are formed, metabolized, and transmitted. Panelists include scholars working across Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, and South American Indigenous traditions, representing methods in text criticism, historical analysis, ethnographic fieldwork, and autoethnographic practice. We aim to convene a diverse range of perspectives on the boundaries of sentience in contemplation in order to open contemplative studies to a pressing future horizon: How might contemplation animate moral concern for beings typically excluded from “the circle of regard”? 

Papers
Loriliai Biernacki 
The Grammatical Practice of Tantric Nonduality 

Devin Zuckerman, University of Virginia 
The Natural Freedom of Non-Living Things in a Tibetan Buddhist Rdzogs chen Tantra  

Munjed Murad 
Rumi on Knowing Cosmic Life, Sentience, and Love 

Peter Dziedzic, Harvard University
The Waters as Wayfarers: The Rishi Sufis, Human-Elemental Silsilas, and a Kashmiri Ecopoetics 

Michelle Bentsman
Voicing Beyond Humanity: The Audacity of Care in Efficacious Ritual Song 

Contemplative Studies in Related Units

Prāṇa and the Yogic Body: Histories and Philosophies of the Breath in South Asia 

Hosted by: Body and Religion Unit, Tantric Studies Unit and Yoga in Theory and Practice Unit
Sunday, 9:00 AM – 11:00 AM 

This panel examines breathing practices as a lens for understanding the history of yoga and the body across South Asian religious traditions. Drawing on Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain sources spanning the Vedic period to the late twentieth century, five papers illuminate understudied episodes and debates in this history. Topics include the expiatory logic of breath-control rooted in Vedic ritual theory; prāṇāyāma’s role in tantric Buddhist six-phased yoga; early Śaiva tantric breath observation and its connections to divination and svarodaya; Jain ambivalence toward and reinterpretation of prāṇāyāma; and Tibetan Buddhist engagement with neuroscience in the 1990s. Together, these papers demonstrate the importance of tracing historical and conceptual links in breath practice over more than two millennia, bringing new light to Indic ascetic, ritual, and yogic traditions for which theories of prāṇa and prāṇāyāma are central. 

Presiding
Ben Williams

Papers
Ana Laura Funes Maderey 
Wind, Fire, and Water: The Elemental Logic of Expiatory Prāṇāyāma 

Vesna Wallace, University of California, Santa Barbara 
Multifunctional Characteristics of Prāṇāyāṃa in the Unexcelled Yoga Tantras 

Shaman Hatley 
Bodily Channels, Movements of Soul, and Inner Time: the Roots of Breath Prognostication (Svarodaya) in Early Tantric Śaivism 

Alba Rodriguez Juan, University of California, Riverside 
Breath Regulation and Inner Transformation: Yaśovijaya’s Jain Reframing of Prāṇāyāma 

Matthew King
Like a Rider Upon His Mount: Reconciling the Nervous System with the ‘Subtle Life Supporting Wind’ (Tib. Srog ‘dzin gyi rlung phra mo) in the Decade of the Brain 

Business Meeting 
Christopher Miller, Arihanta Institute / Claremont School of Theology 
Alba Rodriguez Juan, University of California, Riverside 

Philosophy of Meditation 

Hosted by: Buddhist Philosophy Unit 
Sunday, 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM

This panel explores meditations as practices of becoming, investigating how emotion, imagination, and attention are marshaled within distinct Buddhist meditation practices to cultivate specific soteriological, ethical, and epistemic visions of character. Resisting the tendency to ask what “meditation in general” contributes to philosophy, our papers pursue specificity, attending closely to how Buddhist philosophers have theorized these practices within their own frameworks. The first paper examines how macabre visualizations in Indian Buddhist traditions can cultivate “retrofit” emotions that are, despite appearances, fitting and rational. The second investigates vividness (sphuṭatva) in works on yogic perception, arguing that vividness and knowledge-hood (prāmāṇya) are distinct issues requiring separate treatment. The third argues that the suspension of minding attention (dran pa) in Dzokchen breakthrough practice constitutes a distinctive epistemic virtue of radical humility and openness. Together, the papers advance richer, more specific understandings of how Buddhists have theorized about cultivation and transformation. 

Presiding
Sonam Kachru, Yale University

Papers
Emily Lawson 
Mastering Disgust: Macabre Visualizations and Retrofitted Emotions 

Davey Tomlinson
The Role of Vividness in Buddhist Philosophy of Meditation 

James MacNee, University of Virginia 
A Mad Yogi’s Laugh: Longchenpa’s Critique of Mindfulness 

Responding
John Dunne

Beyond Optimization and Utility: Confucian Self-cultivation and the Spiritual Dimensions of Wellness 

Hosted by: Confucian Traditions Unit 
Monday, 9:00 AM – 11:00 AM

This panel brings Confucian self-cultivation traditions into conversation with key features of the contemporary American culture of self-optimization and “wellness.” Each paper draws on Confucian thought to illuminate modern concerns: Mengzi’s reflections on restorative sleep; empirical research on Confucian contemplative practices in college classrooms; early Confucian theories of ritualized substance use as an alternative framing for cannabis and psychedelics; and Neo-Confucian debates on education as either capability formation or moral self‑cultivation. Together, the papers demonstrate the interpretive power of Confucian self-cultivation traditions for understanding and critiquing wellness and self-optimization as products of late capitalism. By applying insights from a tradition often presumed conservative or distant from American culture, the panel showcases Confucianism’s contemporary relevance and expands theoretical engagement beyond Western critical paradigms. It highlights new avenues for scholarship across units interested in religion, wellness, pedagogy, ritual, and the cultural dynamics of late capitalism. 

Presiding
Matthew Duperon

Papers
Matthew Duperon 
“Neither Poison nor Medicine: a Confucian Ritual Paradigm for Cannabis and Psychedelic Consumption” 

Jung Lee 
Preserving the Goodness of the Heart-Mind (xin 心): Mencius on the Practice of Restorative Sleep 

Judson Murray 
Confucian Contemplation, Contemplative Pedagogy, and Student Wellness 

Timothy Gutmann, University of Southern Mississippi 
Capabilities of Self-Cultivation: Zhu Xi’s Educational Thought in the Era of Permanent Reform 

HAN SEOK LEE, Seoul National University 
Beyond Moral Censorship: Zhu Xi’s Inward Gaze (Xingcha 省察) as a response to the Violence of Universalism 

Responding
Bin Song

Innovating Tradition: Adapting Buddhist Practices for the Future 

Hosted by: Buddhist Critical-Constructive Reflection Unit
Monday, 12:30 PM – 2:30 PM

In an era of profound uncertainty, this roundtable explores “futuring”—the deliberate recalibration of Buddhist tradition to address contemporary suffering. Through the concept of “skillful means,” our roundtable of scholar-practitioners uses a critical-constructive approach to address contemporary suffering beyond a solely academic approach to Buddhism. We demonstrate how the identity of “scholar-practitioner” is deeply relevant to how we shape our collective future. 

The session is divided into two parts: In Part One, six panelists provide 5-minute reflections on their specific areas of research and practice, including monastic education reform, clinical healthcare, psychospiritual therapies, digital sanghas, gender equality, and Ambedkarite social justice. In Part Two, our respondent leads a 40-minute internal discussion to synthesize these themes, followed by 10 minutes of audience engagement. 

Presiding
Rachel Pang

Panelist
Jon Keune, Michigan State Univerity
Lisa Battaglia
Chulthim Gurung
Dixuan Chen, Grinnell College
Jennifer Bright, Emmanuel College, University of Toronto

Responding
Michael Sheehy, University of Virginia

Business Meeting 
Barbra R. Clayton
Melissa Anne-Marie Curely