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Dear list members,
Our next seminar will be at 6:00-7:30pm on Wednesday August 19 in
the Common Room (N480) of the John Woolley Building, University of
Sydney.
We hope you can attend.
Kind regards,
AABS Executive
Mindfulness Within the Full Range of Buddhist and Asian
Meditative Practices
The initial stages of the Mindfulness movement involved, for the most
part, a limited set of meditative practices derived from modernist forms
of Buddhism in Asia and the West, and restated in terms relatively
distant from those of life and practice in Asian Buddhist societies. Much
initial research was also focussed on the effects and therapeutic
efficacy of this modernised and secularised set of practices, in part
because of the relative ease with which it could be assimilated within
contemporary scientific thought and biomedical practice. However, as the
Mindfulness movement has grown, it has provided an invitation to consider
the much wider range of meditative forms existing within Asian Buddhist
traditions. This seminar discusses some of these meditative forms, also
considering similar and parallel contemplative practices within Hindu and
Daoist traditions. A better understanding of this multiplicity of
contemplative forms and techniques, and of the cultural and philosophical
context which they assume and imply, can both stimulate an expansion and
rethinking of Western modes of scientific thought, and aid us to develop
a more varied and productive range of therapeutic applications.
Geoffrey Samuel is Emeritus
Professor in the School of History, Archaeology and Religion at Cardiff
University and Director of the Body, Health and Religion (BAHAR) Research
Group, and an Honorary Associate of the Department of Indian
Sub-Continental Studies at the University of Sydney. From September 2012
to April 2013 he was Tung Lin Kok Yuen Visiting Professor in Buddhist
Studies at the University of Toronto, Scarborough, in Canada.
Geoffrey's academic background is in physics and social anthropology. His
PhD (Cambridge 1976) was on Tibetan religion and society, and based on
field research with Tibetans in Nepal and India in 1971-72. Subsequent
fieldwork, focussing on religion and on medical and health practices, has
included several further research trips to India, Nepal, Tibet and
Bhutan, and shorter visits to other Asian societies.
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