All Is Burning

Buddhist Mindfulness as Radical Reflection

Dados Bibliográficos

ID3223774
AutoresSebastjan Vörö, Sebastjan Vörös (University of Ljubljana, autor correspondente)
Ano2021
Volume12
Fascículo12
Páginas1092
Data de publicação2021-12-10
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoReligions (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 2077-1444 • E-ISSN: 2077-1444
EditoraMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/rel12121092
OpenAlexW4200116335
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas3
Referências citadas18

This paper consists of two parts. In the first part (Section 1, part of Section 2), I put forward a critique of what I refer to as the 'received' or 'standard' view of mindfulness in the Western cultural milieu. According to the received view, mindfulness is the acontextual 'core' of Buddhism whose determining characteristic is bare (present-oriented, non-judgmental) attention to the flow and content of experience. As noted by many researchers, this conception is in stark contrast to the traditional Buddhist understanding, where mindfulness is not only embedded in a broader context that provides it with a specific philosophico-existential orientation (normative aspect) but is also construed as a reflective activity (noetic aspect). In the second part (part of Sections 2-4), I argue that one of the main issues with the standard view is that it frames experience in terms of what Maurice Merleau-Ponty calls 'objective thought' (using objectivity, or 'thinghood', as an onto-epistemological standard of reality), which makes the two aspects of the traditional conception (normative and noetic) unintelligible. I then provide an alternative view based on the phenomenological work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty that attempts to integrate the two aspects into a broader conception of experience. By drawing on Merleau-Ponty's notions of 'phenomenal field' and 'radical reflection', I argue that mindfulness needs to be understood as a reflective attitude that allows one to discern not only the content but also, and primarily, the context of each experience, and that this also includes seeing itself-the act of reflection-as an act that stems from, and returns back into, the pre-reflective current of existence

Buddhism · Epistemology · Existentialism · Gautama Buddha · Mindfulness · Normative · Psychotherapist · Art Therapy and Mental Health · Mindfulness and Compassion Interventions · Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy · Philosophy · Psychology