Buddhism, meditation, and ‘the inner world’

Abstract

Buddhist meditation seems to involve giving attention to one's thoughts and feelings, to one's ‘inner world’. In this article I explore what is involved in such talk of one's inner world, with special reference to Wittgenstein's claim that ‘the inner’ is a delusion. The article explores the nature of thoughts and feelings, and suggests that we cannot fully understand what is involved in meditation without some consideration of its ethical and religious context. I conclude with some reflections on how the pictures we naturally employ in thinking about meditation can lead us into a misleading metaphysical view of ‘the inner’.

Buddhist Meditation, Ascetic Education, and Emotional Intelligence

“…The ultimate goal is to separate worldly desires from within. I reflect that during my temporary monk education, I was educated to always be contemplative of life as an ethos of detachment from sensual desires (Purton, 2017).…”

Five Great Families and Telepathy: Folk Religion and Buddhism in Neo-Dongbei Fiction by Zheng Zhi

“…In this section, I explore Zheng Zhi"s another novella entitled 他心通 Taxintong "Telepathy" that is collected in the same anthology. The title, taxintong, or ceto-pariya-ñāṇa "mind-penetrating knowledge; mind-reading ability" (Wen 2009: 42, Cholvijarn 2019, is a Buddhist terminology denoting "higher knowledge" concerning observability and awareness of others" thoughts and feelings, which is asserted to be realised by advanced practitioners of meditation (Clough 2012, Purton 2017). In the narrative, Zheng Zhi explicitly depicts Buddhists and Buddhist practices that have been localised in Dongbei since the imperial era (Wang2009).…”