Pub Date : 2024-02-20DOI: 10.24972/ijts.2023.42.2.63
Michael R. Sheehy
A classic set of eight similes of illusion (sgyu ma’i dpe brgyad) are employed recurrently throughout Indian and Tibetan Buddhist literature to illustrate the operations of cognition, its correlative perceptions, and experiences that emerge. To illustrate a Buddhist psychology of metaphor, the fourteenth century Tibetan scholar and synthesizer of the Dzogchen (rdzogs chen) or Great Perfection system, Longchen Rabjam Drimé Ödzer (1308-1363), composed his poetic text, Being at Ease with Illusion. This work on illusion is the third volume in Longchenpa’s Trilogy of Being at Ease (Ngal gso skor gsum) in which he presents a series of Dzogchen instructions on how to settle totally at ease. To complement each volume in his trilogy, Longchenpa composed auxiliary contemplative guidance instructions on their meaning (don khrid). This article contextualizes Longchenpa’s meditation manual on Being at Ease with Illusion, a translation of which is included in the appendix. Special attention is given to Dzogchen practices of lucid dreaming and working with cognitive illusions to spotlight underlying contemplative dynamics and correlative psychological effects. To analogically map these Tibetan language instructions in translation, this article interprets Buddhist psychological understandings of cognitive and perceptual processes in dialogue with current theories in the cognitive sciences.
在印度和西藏的佛教文献中，经常出现一组经典的八个幻觉譬喻（sgyu ma'i dpe brgyad），用来说明认知的运作、与之相关的感知以及由此产生的体验。为了说明佛教的隐喻心理学，十四世纪的藏族学者和大圆满法（Dzogchen (rdzogs chen) or Great Perfection system）的集大成者龙钦（Longchen Rabjam Drimé Ödzer，1308-1363 年）创作了他的诗集《幻觉自在》（Being at Ease with Illusion）。这本关于幻觉的著作是龙钦巴 "自在三部曲"（Ngal gso skor gsum）的第三卷。为了补充三部曲中的每一卷，龙钦巴还就其意义编写了辅助性的沉思指导说明（don khrid）。本文介绍了龙钦巴的禅修手册《幻化自在》的来龙去脉，附录中附有该手册的译文。文章特别关注了地藏菩萨的清醒梦境和认知幻觉的修持方法，以揭示潜在的沉思动力和相关的心理效应。为了类比这些藏语翻译说明，本文通过与当前认知科学理论的对话，诠释了佛教心理学对认知和感知过程的理解。
{"title":"Cognitive Illusion, Lucid Dreaming, and the Psychology of Metaphor in Tibetan Buddhist Dzogchen Contemplative Practices","authors":"Michael R. Sheehy","doi":"10.24972/ijts.2023.42.2.63","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24972/ijts.2023.42.2.63","url":null,"abstract":"A classic set of eight similes of illusion (sgyu ma’i dpe brgyad) are employed recurrently throughout Indian and Tibetan Buddhist literature to illustrate the operations of cognition, its correlative perceptions, and experiences that emerge. To illustrate a Buddhist psychology of metaphor, the fourteenth century Tibetan scholar and synthesizer of the Dzogchen (rdzogs chen) or Great Perfection system, Longchen Rabjam Drimé Ödzer (1308-1363), composed his poetic text, Being at Ease with Illusion. This work on illusion is the third volume in Longchenpa’s Trilogy of Being at Ease (Ngal gso skor gsum) in which he presents a series of Dzogchen instructions on how to settle totally at ease. To complement each volume in his trilogy, Longchenpa composed auxiliary contemplative guidance instructions on their meaning (don khrid). This article contextualizes Longchenpa’s meditation manual on Being at Ease with Illusion, a translation of which is included in the appendix. Special attention is given to Dzogchen practices of lucid dreaming and working with cognitive illusions to spotlight underlying contemplative dynamics and correlative psychological effects. To analogically map these Tibetan language instructions in translation, this article interprets Buddhist psychological understandings of cognitive and perceptual processes in dialogue with current theories in the cognitive sciences.","PeriodicalId":38668,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Transpersonal Studies","volume":"1081 ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140445899","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-02-20DOI: 10.24972/ijts.2023.42.2.1
Harry T. Hunt
Numinous experience—as the felt sense of the sacred—evokes feelings of allone unity, communality, humility, and healing. Its schematization in the absolutes of traditional religion can also be seen as all-encompassing symbolic unifications of an otherwise fragmented human life-world—as more analytically depicted in the life-world phenomenologies of Husserl and Heidegger. In both feeling and concept the numinous would be the semantic amplification of the more concrete organism-surround nonduality of non symbolic organisms—as reflected in a primary consciousness shared across Uexkuell’s sentient animal umwelten and Gibson’s “envelopes of flow.” H usserl’s phenomenology of passive synthesis and James on pure experience can be understood as intuiting the implicit forms underlying such a primary transspecies consciousness, as both differentiated into these concrete lifeworlds, to the level of the inferably sentient protozoa, and abstractly amplified as the human numinous. The latter, with its original social template in an ethically responsible shamanism, becomes similarly responsible in the contemporary context of a human caused global climate crisis for the care and conservation of that Spirit it both develops as such and accurately intuits as a universal is-like shared with all sentient beings.
{"title":"Continuities of Consciousness, Life-Worlds, and Numinous Experience: Cognitive-Phenomenological Foundations for an Empirical Neo-Shamanism","authors":"Harry T. Hunt","doi":"10.24972/ijts.2023.42.2.1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24972/ijts.2023.42.2.1","url":null,"abstract":"Numinous experience—as the felt sense of the sacred—evokes feelings of allone unity, communality, humility, and healing. Its schematization in the absolutes of traditional religion can also be seen as all-encompassing symbolic unifications of an otherwise fragmented human life-world—as more analytically depicted in the life-world phenomenologies of Husserl and Heidegger. In both feeling and concept the numinous would be the semantic amplification of the more concrete organism-surround nonduality of non symbolic organisms—as reflected in a primary consciousness shared across Uexkuell’s sentient animal umwelten and Gibson’s “envelopes of flow.” H usserl’s phenomenology of passive synthesis and James on pure experience can be understood as intuiting the implicit forms underlying such a primary transspecies consciousness, as both differentiated into these concrete lifeworlds, to the level of the inferably sentient protozoa, and abstractly amplified as the human numinous. The latter, with its original social template in an ethically responsible shamanism, becomes similarly responsible in the contemporary context of a human caused global climate crisis for the care and conservation of that Spirit it both develops as such and accurately intuits as a universal is-like shared with all sentient beings.","PeriodicalId":38668,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Transpersonal Studies","volume":"242 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140447017","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-02-20DOI: 10.24972/ijts.2023.42.2.121
Peter Doran
Kate Raworth's celebrated book, Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist, calls for a reconciliation of our design principles for society and the economy with the rhythms and tolerances of ecological systems. It will demand something akin to a new axial revolution that will have to be experienced as much in the body and in the intimacies of a renewed care and appreciation for our relational and ecological selves as in the collective re-design of our societies, democratic decision-making and collective provisioning. Buddhist scholarship offers a distinctive contribution to this conversation invoked in a book that has sparked a global movement.
{"title":"Zen and the Art of Doughnut Economics: When Limits are Strangely Liberating","authors":"Peter Doran","doi":"10.24972/ijts.2023.42.2.121","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24972/ijts.2023.42.2.121","url":null,"abstract":"Kate Raworth's celebrated book, Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist, calls for a reconciliation of our design principles for society and the economy with the rhythms and tolerances of ecological systems. It will demand something akin to a new axial revolution that will have to be experienced as much in the body and in the intimacies of a renewed care and appreciation for our relational and ecological selves as in the collective re-design of our societies, democratic decision-making and collective provisioning. Buddhist scholarship offers a distinctive contribution to this conversation invoked in a book that has sparked a global movement.","PeriodicalId":38668,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Transpersonal Studies","volume":"160 ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140447242","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-02-20DOI: 10.24972/ijts.2023.42.2.101
Supakyada Sapthiang, E. Shonin, Paul Barrows, W. Van Gordon
There are concerns that participants of some modern mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) are receiving a superficial form of mindfulness training. However, empirical investigation of this issue according to participants’ first-hand experiences has been limited. Thus, this qualitative study aimed to capture the first-hand perspectives relating to authentic mindfulness of participants who had recently attended an MBI in the UK. Ten adults completed a recorded, online semistructured interview. Based on a thematic analysis, the following four master themes were identified: (a) authentic mindfulness as a construct, (b) positive aspects of the training, (c) something missing, and (d) recommendations for authenticity. Although all participants experienced benefits from the MBI, they felt that the mindfulness training they received lacked spiritual depth. Implications for the design and delivery of MBIs are discussed.
{"title":"Authentic Mindfulness Within Mindfulness-Based Interventions: A Qualitative Study of Participants' Experiences","authors":"Supakyada Sapthiang, E. Shonin, Paul Barrows, W. Van Gordon","doi":"10.24972/ijts.2023.42.2.101","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24972/ijts.2023.42.2.101","url":null,"abstract":"There are concerns that participants of some modern mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) are receiving a superficial form of mindfulness training. However, empirical investigation of this issue according to participants’ first-hand experiences has been limited. Thus, this qualitative study aimed to capture the first-hand perspectives relating to authentic mindfulness of participants who had recently attended an MBI in the UK. Ten adults completed a recorded, online semistructured interview. Based on a thematic analysis, the following four master themes were identified: (a) authentic mindfulness as a construct, (b) positive aspects of the training, (c) something missing, and (d) recommendations for authenticity. Although all participants experienced benefits from the MBI, they felt that the mindfulness training they received lacked spiritual depth. Implications for the design and delivery of MBIs are discussed.","PeriodicalId":38668,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Transpersonal Studies","volume":"60 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140445542","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-02-20DOI: 10.24972/ijts.2023.42.2.35
E. Capriles
In the debate between Freud and Romain Rolland the latter asserted the infants’ oceanic feeling to be saner than the adults’ limited sense of self, and that mystics recover the oceanic feeling without losing the learning achieved during socialization. Freud retorted that the oceanic feeling involved a sense of shelterlessness, and whoever went through derealization was psychotic and needed to be cured. However, the feeling of shelterlessness comes from the fledging sense of separation, and although derealization is a dangerous process, when it develops unhindered the result is greater sanity. So, Buddhism and TP agree in valuing transpersonal and holotropic experiences, but TP must learn from Buddhism to distinguish between kinds of holotropic and transpersonal experiences, and attribute different value to them: the formless realms of the highest tier of samsara, the neutral condition of the base-of-all in which the precious human possibility is squandered, Awakening, different types of nirvana...
{"title":"Buddhism and Transpersonal Psychology","authors":"E. Capriles","doi":"10.24972/ijts.2023.42.2.35","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24972/ijts.2023.42.2.35","url":null,"abstract":"In the debate between Freud and Romain Rolland the latter asserted the infants’ oceanic feeling to be saner than the adults’ limited sense of self, and that mystics recover the oceanic feeling without losing the learning achieved during socialization. Freud retorted that the oceanic feeling involved a sense of shelterlessness, and whoever went through derealization was psychotic and needed to be cured. However, the feeling of shelterlessness comes from the fledging sense of separation, and although derealization is a dangerous process, when it develops unhindered the result is greater sanity. So, Buddhism and TP agree in valuing transpersonal and holotropic experiences, but TP must learn from Buddhism to distinguish between kinds of holotropic and transpersonal experiences, and attribute different value to them: the formless realms of the highest tier of samsara, the neutral condition of the base-of-all in which the precious human possibility is squandered, Awakening, different types of nirvana...","PeriodicalId":38668,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Transpersonal Studies","volume":"519 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140446524","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-02-20DOI: 10.24972/ijts.2023.42.2.153
C. Lombard
{"title":"Book Review: The Way of Psychosynthesis, by Petra Guggisberg Nocelli","authors":"C. Lombard","doi":"10.24972/ijts.2023.42.2.153","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24972/ijts.2023.42.2.153","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":38668,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Transpersonal Studies","volume":"548 ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140448158","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-02-20DOI: 10.24972/ijts.2023.42.2.63
Michael R. Sheehy
A classic set of eight similes of illusion (sgyu ma’i dpe brgyad) are employed recurrently throughout Indian and Tibetan Buddhist literature to illustrate the operations of cognition, its correlative perceptions, and experiences that emerge. To illustrate a Buddhist psychology of metaphor, the fourteenth century Tibetan scholar and synthesizer of the Dzogchen (rdzogs chen) or Great Perfection system, Longchen Rabjam Drimé Ödzer (1308-1363), composed his poetic text, Being at Ease with Illusion. This work on illusion is the third volume in Longchenpa’s Trilogy of Being at Ease (Ngal gso skor gsum) in which he presents a series of Dzogchen instructions on how to settle totally at ease. To complement each volume in his trilogy, Longchenpa composed auxiliary contemplative guidance instructions on their meaning (don khrid). This article contextualizes Longchenpa’s meditation manual on Being at Ease with Illusion, a translation of which is included in the appendix. Special attention is given to Dzogchen practices of lucid dreaming and working with cognitive illusions to spotlight underlying contemplative dynamics and correlative psychological effects. To analogically map these Tibetan language instructions in translation, this article interprets Buddhist psychological understandings of cognitive and perceptual processes in dialogue with current theories in the cognitive sciences.
在印度和西藏的佛教文献中，经常出现一组经典的八个幻觉譬喻（sgyu ma'i dpe brgyad），用来说明认知的运作、与之相关的感知以及由此产生的体验。为了说明佛教的隐喻心理学，十四世纪的藏族学者和大圆满法（Dzogchen (rdzogs chen) or Great Perfection system）的集大成者龙钦（Longchen Rabjam Drimé Ödzer，1308-1363 年）创作了他的诗集《幻觉自在》（Being at Ease with Illusion）。这本关于幻觉的著作是龙钦巴 "自在三部曲"（Ngal gso skor gsum）的第三卷。为了补充三部曲中的每一卷，龙钦巴还就其意义编写了辅助性的沉思指导说明（don khrid）。本文介绍了龙钦巴的禅修手册《幻化自在》的来龙去脉，附录中附有该手册的译文。文章特别关注了地藏菩萨的清醒梦境和认知幻觉的修持方法，以揭示潜在的沉思动力和相关的心理效应。为了类比这些藏语翻译说明，本文通过与当前认知科学理论的对话，诠释了佛教心理学对认知和感知过程的理解。
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Pub Date : 2024-02-20DOI: 10.24972/ijts.2023.42.2.93
Douglas C. Duckworth
This paper presents two dimensions of a bodhisattva, the ideal of Maha- ya- na Buddhism. One dimension involves contemplative practices that disclose a pure nature that is always already present; this reality is unveiled after the obscurations that cloud it are removed. I refer to this as a “top-down” approach because it is based on qualities of awakening that are already there, yet lie beyond an ordinary being’s comprehension. The second dimension, which I refer to as a “bottom-up” approach, involves directed training and discipline. Unlike the top-down approach, this is not about “going with the flow” or simply letting the innate qualities of mind express themselves. In contrast, the bottom-up approach is better described as “breaking the cycle” of suffering. That is to say, this orientation toward a bodhisattva’s practice involves restraint and discipline to train the mind by turning it away from habitual, destructive patterns to shape it into spontaneous and skillful responses and expressions. This paper will discuss both of these orientations and will show how they are complementary aspects of a bodhisattva’s practice.
{"title":"Two Dimensions of a Bodhisattva","authors":"Douglas C. Duckworth","doi":"10.24972/ijts.2023.42.2.93","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24972/ijts.2023.42.2.93","url":null,"abstract":"This paper presents two dimensions of a bodhisattva, the ideal of Maha- ya- na Buddhism. One dimension involves contemplative practices that disclose a pure nature that is always already present; this reality is unveiled after the obscurations that cloud it are removed. I refer to this as a “top-down” approach because it is based on qualities of awakening that are already there, yet lie beyond an ordinary being’s comprehension. The second dimension, which I refer to as a “bottom-up” approach, involves directed training and discipline. Unlike the top-down approach, this is not about “going with the flow” or simply letting the innate qualities of mind express themselves. In contrast, the bottom-up approach is better described as “breaking the cycle” of suffering. That is to say, this orientation toward a bodhisattva’s practice involves restraint and discipline to train the mind by turning it away from habitual, destructive patterns to shape it into spontaneous and skillful responses and expressions. This paper will discuss both of these orientations and will show how they are complementary aspects of a bodhisattva’s practice.","PeriodicalId":38668,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Transpersonal Studies","volume":"264 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140447123","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-02-20DOI: 10.24972/ijts.2023.42.2.81
Richard Dixey, Ronald E. Purser
Mindfulness meditation can provide salutary therapeutic benefits, as well as lead advanced practitioners to states of calm and equanimity. In this paper, we argue that such forms of meditation may subtly entrap practitioners in circular, self-reflexive feedback loops. Because these meditation traps fail to clearly discern the operations of mind, they offer a temporary oasis of peace within an unaltered dualistic realm of mind that leaves the root delusion of self-identity intact. Drawing upon Tarthang Tulku’s seminal book Revelations of Mind, we present what he refers to as the “regime of mind,” the processes of cognition, identification and re-cognition in which body, mind and language work in unison to maintain a persuasive experience of a self that knows an external world. Because these very same mechanisms are operative in meditation, the states of silence, no-thought, peace, calm, and mental blankness that can occur deceive practitioners into interpreting such experiences as signs of progress and spiritual attainment. By developing an understanding of how the regime of mind operates, such clarity can function as a corrective to the common traps of meditative practice fueled and obscured by subtle dualistic structures of self-identification and self-grasping. This clear ground of understanding can reveal how reflexively dualistic structures of knowing are constructed, opening up wider focal-settings that go beyond dualistic mind, offering more liberating options for exercising human freedom and intelligence.
{"title":"Mindfulness Traps and the Entanglement of Self: An Inquiry into the Regime of Mind","authors":"Richard Dixey, Ronald E. Purser","doi":"10.24972/ijts.2023.42.2.81","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24972/ijts.2023.42.2.81","url":null,"abstract":"Mindfulness meditation can provide salutary therapeutic benefits, as well as lead advanced practitioners to states of calm and equanimity. In this paper, we argue that such forms of meditation may subtly entrap practitioners in circular, self-reflexive feedback loops. Because these meditation traps fail to clearly discern the operations of mind, they offer a temporary oasis of peace within an unaltered dualistic realm of mind that leaves the root delusion of self-identity intact. Drawing upon Tarthang Tulku’s seminal book Revelations of Mind, we present what he refers to as the “regime of mind,” the processes of cognition, identification and re-cognition in which body, mind and language work in unison to maintain a persuasive experience of a self that knows an external world. Because these very same mechanisms are operative in meditation, the states of silence, no-thought, peace, calm, and mental blankness that can occur deceive practitioners into interpreting such experiences as signs of progress and spiritual attainment. By developing an understanding of how the regime of mind operates, such clarity can function as a corrective to the common traps of meditative practice fueled and obscured by subtle dualistic structures of self-identification and self-grasping. This clear ground of understanding can reveal how reflexively dualistic structures of knowing are constructed, opening up wider focal-settings that go beyond dualistic mind, offering more liberating options for exercising human freedom and intelligence.","PeriodicalId":38668,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Transpersonal Studies","volume":"88 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140449187","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-02-20DOI: 10.24972/ijts.2023.42.2.133
Sara Granovetter
The Ten Oxherding Pictures are an ancient allegory for the process of enlightenment. This article analyzes the series of ten paintings through the lenses of Jungian psychology and alterity studies to suggest an unorthodox interpretation of the images. This interpretation highlights the relationship between the oxherd and the ox, suggesting that the ox is a wild other that seeks intersubjective understanding. In questioning the meaning of domestication in these images, this investigation deconstructs the traditional allegory of enlightenment as a process of domestication, suggesting that these images instead point towards the importance of releasing the appropriative attitude. Ultimately, the oxherd in the series must surrender his perceptual lens to make space for what seems untamed and unencompassable to speak to and through him.
{"title":"Wild Otherness Within: A Jungian and Zen Approach to the Untamed Self in the Ten Oxherding Pictures","authors":"Sara Granovetter","doi":"10.24972/ijts.2023.42.2.133","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24972/ijts.2023.42.2.133","url":null,"abstract":"The Ten Oxherding Pictures are an ancient allegory for the process of enlightenment. This article analyzes the series of ten paintings through the lenses of Jungian psychology and alterity studies to suggest an unorthodox interpretation of the images. This interpretation highlights the relationship between the oxherd and the ox, suggesting that the ox is a wild other that seeks intersubjective understanding. In questioning the meaning of domestication in these images, this investigation deconstructs the traditional allegory of enlightenment as a process of domestication, suggesting that these images instead point towards the importance of releasing the appropriative attitude. Ultimately, the oxherd in the series must surrender his perceptual lens to make space for what seems untamed and unencompassable to speak to and through him.","PeriodicalId":38668,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Transpersonal Studies","volume":"391 ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140448061","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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