Possible Selves, Body Schemas, and Sādhana: Using Cognitive Science and Neuroscience in the Study of Medieval Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyā Hindu Tantric Texts

A qualitative study of Western practitioners of Buddhist meditation investigated unexpected, challenging, difficult, and distressing experiences. This paper reports on a subset of 12 practitioners within Tibetan Vajrayāna lineages who described energy flowing through their body, knots of pain, pressure or tension, and/or concurrent emotional changes. In some cases, somatic changes were appraised as practice-related transient states, and in other cases practitioners were given a Tibetan medical diagnosis of rlung disorder. Releases of tension in the body or subtle body also sometimes coincided with an upwelling of emotionally charged content. Practitioners reported emotional upwelling during subtle body practices as well as during other Vajrayāna practices, such as visualizations. While some practitioners viewed these experiences in relation to a normative Tantric soteriology of purification, almost all practitioners with a trauma history reported traumatic re-experiencing and tended not to adopt a purification framework. These practitioners were also more likely to seek additional psychotherapeutic or medical treatment to help resolve their practice-related challenges. The manner in which somatic and affective experiences manifest, how they are appraised, and how they affect the practitioner's ability to engage in the Vajrayāna path depends upon many individual, interpersonal, and cultural factors.

Section: Some Teachers' Perspectives On Somatic and Affective Purificmentioning

confidence: 99%

Somatic Energies and Emotional Traumas: A Qualitative Study of Practice-Related Challenges Reported by Vajrayāna Buddhists

Lindahl

2017

“…In developing this new field at the intersection between contemplative practices and cognitive science, the first challenge is the need for a new vocabulary, as suggested by Hayes (2014). However, it can be difficult to negotiate the boundary between the liberating and transforming experiences found in tantric and yogic practices on one hand and the reductive and embodied domains of cognitive science.…”

Section: Essays In This Special Issuementioning

confidence: 99%

“…ha yoga using cognitive science in a useful essay (Goldberg 2005). Finally, the co-editors of this special issue, Glen Hayes (2003Hayes ( , 2005Hayes ( , 2006Hayes ( , 2012cHayes ( , 2014 and Sthaneshwar Timalsina (2007Timalsina ( , 2012Timalsina ( , 2013Timalsina ( , 2015aTimalsina ( , 2015bTimalsina ( , 2016, have also published numerous works in recent years dealing with various aspects of CSR in the study of Tantra and Yoga.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction to “Cognitive Science and the Study of Yoga and Tantra”

Hayes

Timalsina

2017

Self Cite

The range of disciplines known as the Cognitive Science of Religions (CSR), which has emerged in recent decades, embraces many areas and specializations within the Academy, including cognitive science, linguistics, neuroscience, and religious studies. The results of this exploration, some of which are offered in this Special Issue before you, are intriguing, profound, and yet still preliminary. As will be noted below, this "preliminary" nature of CSR is due to the fact that our scientific knowledge of the neurological system-let alone of how the mind "works"-is still in mostly early phases. Techniques in imaging and scanning the brain, as well as in understanding patterns and processes in perception and cognition, are advancing with every day, yet we are still at some remove from making all but the most general or speculative statements. This does not, of course, mean that we have to stand by and wait for the technology to improve or to reach some critical point. As with any meaningful discipline in scholarship and science, CSR proceeds in halting but definite steps, and we hope that the essays in this issue demonstrate what some of us in the area of Tantric Studies can provide to the dialogue. None of these essays are by cognitive scientists, so we ask our colleagues in the sciences to consider how the dialogue might be furthered through their own efforts in understanding Tantra.For those unfamiliar with Tantric Studies (itself a fairly recent interdisciplinary field of academic pursuits), 1 the field is one which examines "Tantra", a broad range of originally pan-Asian religious traditions connected to Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Taoism, and various indigenous communities. As with the ongoing scholarly dispute over basic methodologies, terminology and vocabulary in CSR, there has been lively debate over the key term of "Tantra", as well as how far back it goes in history. 2 Dating from no later than the 4th century CE in South Asia, Tantra is difficult to define, but perhaps best regarded through the lens of a "polythetic" category as proposed by Douglas Renfrew Brooks. 3 Tantra may be regarded as historical systems of ritual practices in which an individual engages with a layered cosmology, utilizing diverse senses, cognitive capacities, and sexuality in order to achieve elevated states of consciousness and embodied liberation. There are innumerable iterations of Tantra, ranging from theistic to nontheistic, although most seek to "reverse" the flow of cosmic process and manifestation in order to lead the individual to some heightened, typically unitive, state. On the history of Tantric Studies and the Society for Tantric Studies (STS), see (Hayes 2011(Hayes , 2012a. As recent scholarship is most prolific, the essays in this Special Issue of Religions only examine small segments of the field. For an excellent introduction to the study of Tantra, including translations of many texts, see White (2000). On selected aspects of the history of scholarship on Hindu Tantra see Brooks (1998), Urban (2003) and Hayes (...

“…Of particular relevance for this argument, one should pay special attention to Hayes' discussion of what might be going on with the transformation of mind, brain, and body via modification of the prenoetic body schema (the triggering of mirror neurons and relevant neural networks associated with visual, tactile, olfactory, and emotional centers) ( [4], p. 689). Hayes combines this with insights from neuroscientist Patrick McNamara and others to show that there are important overlaps between a human's self-consciousness and sense of self and religious experience.…”

Section: A New "New Vocabulary": Exploring Cognition Neurosciencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Glen Hayes [4] recently suggested that scholars of religions in general, the cognitive science of religion (CSR), metaphor and conceptual blend theorists (broadly construed), and the disciplines collectively known as neurosciences need to develop a "new vocabulary" to express what we are learning and researching regarding contemplative and esoteric traditions ( [4], p. 688). On the one hand, it is likely that collectively we do not yet know what we are doing, yet on the other hand this not knowing is an especially constructive form of not knowing that will help us get a proper perspective on what we are doing and where we should go from here.…”

Section: A New "New Vocabulary": Exploring Cognition Neurosciencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Strange Bedfellows: Meditations on the Indispensable Virtues of Confusion, Mindfulness and Humor in the Neuroscientific and Cognitive Study of Esoteric and Contemplative Traditions1

Ruff

2016

Several recent publications in the study of esoteric traditions have drawn together insights from scholars of religions and philosophy, contemplative communities, metaphor and conceptual blend theories, cognitive sciences, neurosciences, and physical anthropology. These interdisciplinary explorations revolve around contemplative practices (meditation, mindfulness, ritual traditions, etc.). This includes both ethnographic and textual expressions of these traditions. This paper is a response to the questions and insights of some recent articles, books, and two 2015 conference papers, with the specific purpose of contributing to what Glen Hayes (2014) called "the need to develop and 'new vocabulary' for this interdisciplinary study" of contemplative and esoteric traditions (Hayes' call was specifically in reference to Hindu Tantra). To do this, I have referred to some other scientific approaches to which the scholars of esoteric and contemplative communities have not made much mention, and then to offer a form of reflection and meditation on what this new vocabulary and these research projects call us to do: their concepts, logic, and meaning. To this end, I have given some careful attention to the concepts of confusion, mindfulness, humor, and dispassionate vulnerability to help us better understand what we are doing, and where we should go from here.