ABSTRACTIn this paper, I will show that classical Chinese artists adopted either Daoist or Chan Buddhist meditation to cultivate their mind to be in accord with the Dao, and that their view of the...

This paper questions the nature and existence of the ego and I from a Western and Eastern viewpoint, which has been a question for 2,500 years when the Buddha rejected the Brahman idea of ātman. The answer for an ego depends partly on the state of consciousness; the existence of the Western objectifying ego is undeniable in ordinary consciousness, but not in extraordinary consciousness with no objectifying. The subtle question remains about the existence of an I that is distinct from (...) the ego and that is best represented by most meditative or contemplative states. Here a subjectified, witnessing, consciousness-maintaining I still seems to exist. This may be called the "High-I," which appears to provide for all states of consciousness a constancy and awareness not provided by the ego. This finding has implications for psychology and religion as well as philosophy. (shrink)

Zen/Chan, which used to be a Far Eastern philosophy-cum-religion, has evolved into a global cultural phenomenon. Despite the many views expressed by numerous thinkers in the world, the consensus on Chan and Chan enlightenment remains an agnostic Oriental mysticism. By exploring Chan and enlightenment from a combined perspective of history, philosophy, psychology, religion and linguistics, this article proposes a hitherto unexpressed view. Chan enlightenment is a prenatal physico-psychological existence, which grows out of a fetal subject’s perception of the womb. Although (...) this primordial mode of perception is unconscious, it is cosmic in nature because for the fetal subject the womb is the whole world with which it feels to be at one. This unconscious oneness may be termed the ‘cosmic unconscious’. Once born, no one can return to the prenatal mental state, but through personal cultivation and Chan practice one can experience a fleeting moment of the cosmic unconscious. In the final analysis, the essence o.. (shrink)

Zen students described their experiences when working with koans, and a phenomenological method was used to identify the structure of those experiences. Zen koans are statements or stories developed in China and Japan by Zen masters in order to help students transform their conscious awareness of the world. Eight participants including 3 females and 5 males from Southern California with 1 to 30 years of experience in Zen answered open-ended questions about koan practice in one tape-recorded session for each participant. (...) Refl ection yielded the following thematic clusters: (a) motivation, (b) approaches to working with koans, (c) experiences while working with koans, (d) experiences of insight into koans, (e) working with a teacher, and (f ) transformation. Participants described positive transformations including better control of emotions and concentration, better awareness of prejudices and biases with the ability to suppress those types of habitual associations, and a new relation to and acceptance of spiritual questions and doubts. (shrink)

Purpose. This paper aims to analyze Eastern spiritual traditions in the context of modern scientific worldview. Methodology. The author has used hermeneutical methodology, along with integrative approach. Theoretical basis and results. Modern perception of the world is undergoing drastic changes: it shifts towards plurality, temporality, and complexity. Increasingly, people feel that their familiar world of order and stability gives way to chaotic, unpredictable world, which exists under its own rules. Old scientific theories, ideologies, and values are destroyed. This leads to (...) awareness of imbalance, ambiguity of human existence and, thus, to the new explanation and understanding of reality. Today the universe is perceived through the lens of syncretism: it is impossible to separate human from nature, consciousness from matter, subject from object. Humanity faces such a chaotic, uncertain worldview not for the first time. Duality and attempts to overcome it permeate the entire history: from traditional archaic cultures to modern civilized societies. M. Foucault, J. Derrida, R. Barthes, U. Eco, G. Deleuze, J.-F.Lyotard urged to abandon dogmatism, monologue perception and explanation, interpretation based on binary oppositions. The world, which is necessary to reach, occurs to be Nothing, Nothingness. In this world, people are seeking for reality regardless of any rules, regulations, notions, and concepts. Here artificial constructs of the human mind, such as Material – Ideal, Determinism - Indeterminism, Finiteness - Infinity, Necessity – Randomness, are united. Trying to reconcile continuity of being with discreteness of consciousness, they appeal to Eastern mystical teachings, in particular, to Zen Buddhism. The core concept of this school is also based on the unity of all things and the idea of the singularity of the world. The main goal of Eastern mystical traditions is to achieve the state of absolute unity through meditative techniques that have been mastered over centuries. Meditation acts as a means of overcoming binary oppositions inherent to any given culture. It contributes to the experience of one absolute unity of all existence. Scientific novelty. Modern science reaffirmed one of the basic statements of Eastern mysticism: our concepts that we use to explain the world are not fundamental characteristics of reality. They are products of thinking, that is, they are the map rather than the territory. Conclusion. In contrast to Western paradigm, the main characteristic of Eastern philosophy and science is the non-mathematical, non-technical approach to an understanding of the universe. Eastern sage has never separated himself from the Nature. He has experienced all phenomena in the world as manifestations of a basic Oneness, Wholeness, as the various aspects of spiritual unity. (shrink)

This paper distinguishes between two conceptions of philosophical counseling. The one focuses on the clarification of the individual's psychological and philosophical self and the other on the transcendence of that self. A comparison of the latter conception with the self-transcendence that takes place through Zen Buddhism contributes to the examination of the question of whether philosophical counseling can indeed overcome potential psychological obstacles to attaining a transcendent aim. Possible influences of the integration of psychological intervention into the philosophical search for (...) transcendence are also discussed. (shrink)

Are we really sure to correctly know what do we feel in front ofan artwork and to correctly verbalize it? How do we know what weappreciate and why we appreciate it? This paper deals with the problem ofintrospective opacity in aesthetics (that is, the unreliability of self-knowledge) in the light of traditional philosophical issues, but also of recentpsychological insights, according to which there are many instances ofmisleading intuition about one’s own mental processes, affective states orpreferences. Usually, it is assumed that (...) aesthetic statements are intuitivelyclear and self-evident. However, a long tradition in psychological researchhas called the idea of introspective transparency and the infallibility of self-knowledge into question (Wilson 2002). This topic has only recently beenrecognized as an interesting problem in aesthetics (Melchionne 2011, Irvin2014). In this paper I will discuss the main shortcomings in introspective self-knowledge, mostly referring to psychological findings. As a consequence, thedevelopment of a folk psychological account of aesthetic experience could beneeded, investigating how people develop intuitive and naïve theories abouttheir aesthetic reactions, taste, and feelings, distinct from a more objectiveand empirically grounded account of how judgment and preferences areactually formed in ourselves, even on a neurobiological level. However, itwill also be argued that bypassing the individual judgment and his expressedchoices in favor of allegedly more objective levels of description would notbe an innocent step to take. (shrink)

Rafael Malach is currently a professor in the department of Neurobiology at the Weizmann Institute in Israel. His current research is aimed at understanding how the neuronal circuitry in the human brain translates a stream of sensory stimuli into meaningful perception. Rafael Malach received his PhD in physiological optics from UC Berkeley and did his post-doctorate research at MIT. Originally doing research on the organization of neuronal connections in the primate brain, his focus has recently shifted to the study of (...) the human cerebral cortex using fMRI. Professor Malach has begun this research at Massachusetts General Hospital, exploring a new object-related region called the lateral occipital complex. Since then he expanded this research, studying the human visual cortex using a variety of methods, including adaptation paradigms, backward masking, and more recently naturalistic stimuli--all aimed at deciphering the intriguing link between perceptual experience and brain activity. (shrink)