Selfless Minds
Selfless Minds

Author: Monima Chadha

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2023-01-28

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 0192657941

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Selfless Minds offers a new interpretation of no-self metaphysics in Vasubandhu's Abhidharmakosa-Bhasya. Monima Chadha reads Vasubandhu as defending not only eliminativism about self but also about persons, and illusionism about the sense of self and all kinds of self-representation. This radical no-self thesis presents several challenges for Abhidharma Buddhist philosophy of mind. Even if we then grant that there is no self, we are left with deeper questions about the sense of self or self-representations implicated in our ordinary everyday experience and thought about the world and ourselves. And if we grant that there are no persons, questions remain about the status of our person-related concerns and interpersonal practices. Selfless Minds answers these questions on behalf of the Abhidharma Buddhist. The first part of the book defends the hypothesis that we can salvage much of our experience and thought without implicating self-representations. The second part of the book examines the revisionary implications of the no-person metaphysics. Some of these seem unpalatable, if not downright absurd. This, she argues, give us reason to re-evaluate both the Abhidharma metaphysics and our ordinary person-related practices and concerns in light of each other by using some sort of wide reflective equilibrium. Selfless Minds is a contribution to cross-cultural philosophy that studies the nature of selfless minds from a place at the crossroads of different traditions and disciplines: philosophy in the traditional Buddhist and contemporary Western traditions, and contemporary cognitive sciences.

The Selfless Mind
The Selfless Mind

Author: Peter Harvey

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-09-13

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 1136783369

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This careful analysis of early Buddhist thought opens out a perspective in which no permanent Self is accepted, but a rich analysis of changing and potent mental processes is developed. It explores issues relating to the not-Self teaching: self-development, moral responsibility, the between-lives period, and the 'undetermined questions' on the world, on the 'life principle' and on the liberated one after death. It examines the 'person' as a flowing continuity centred on consciousness or discernment (vinnana) configured in changing minds-sets (cittas). The resting state of this is seen as 'brightly shining' - like the 'Buddha nature' of Mahayana thought - so as to represent the potential for Nirvana. Nirvana is then shown to be a state in which consciousness transcends all objects, and thus participates in a timeless, unconditioned realm.

Selfless Insight
Selfless Insight

Author: James H. Austin

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2011-09-30

Total Pages: 371

ISBN-13: 0262516659

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Attention, self-consciousness, insight, wisdom, emotional maturity: how Zen teachings can illuminate the way our brains function and vice-versa. When neurology researcher James Austin began Zen training, he found that his medical education was inadequate. During the past three decades, he has been at the cutting edge of both Zen and neuroscience, constantly discovering new examples of how these two large fields each illuminate the other. Now, in Selfless Insight, Austin arrives at a fresh synthesis, one that invokes the latest brain research to explain the basis for meditative states and clarifies what Zen awakening implies for our understanding of consciousness. Austin, author of the widely read Zen and the Brain, reminds us why Zen meditation is not only mindfully attentive but evolves to become increasingly selfless and intuitive. Meditators are gradually learning how to replace over-emotionality with calm, clear objective comprehension. In this new book, Austin discusses how meditation trains our attention, reprogramming it toward subtle forms of awareness that are more openly mindful. He explains how our maladaptive notions of self are rooted in interactive brain functions. And he describes how, after the extraordinary, deep states of kensho-satori strike off the roots of the self, a flash of transforming insight-wisdom leads toward ways of living more harmoniously and selflessly. Selfless Insight is the capstone to Austin's journey both as a creative neuroscientist and as a Zen practitioner. His quest has spanned an era of unprecedented progress in brain research and has helped define the exciting new field of contemplative neuroscience.

Selfless Persons
Selfless Persons

Author: Steven Collins

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1982

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 9780521397261

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This book seeks to explain carefully and sympathetically the Buddhist doctrine of anatta ('not-self'), which denies the existence of any self, soul or enduring essence in human beings. The author relates this doctrine to its cultural and historical context, particularly to its Brahmanical background, and shows how the Theravada Buddhist tradition has constructed a philosophical and psychological account of personal identity and continuity on the apparently impossible basis of the denial of self.

The Selfless Mind
The Selfless Mind

Author: Brian Peter Harvey

Publisher: Psychology Press

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 9780700703388

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This careful analysis of early Buddhist thought opens out a perspective in which no permanent Self is accepted, but a rich analysis of changing and potent mental processes is developed. It explores issues relating to the not-Self teaching: self-development, moral responsibility, the between-lives period, and the 'undetermined questions' on the world, on the 'life principle' and on the liberated one after death. It examines the 'person' as a flowing continuity centred on consciousness or discernment (vinnana) configured in changing minds-sets (cittas). The resting state of this is seen as 'brightly shining' - like the 'Buddha nature' of Mahayana thought - so as to represent the potential for Nirvana. Nirvana is then shown to be a state in which consciousness transcends all objects, and thus participates in a timeless, unconditioned realm.

The Embodied Mind, revised edition
The Embodied Mind, revised edition

Author: Francisco J. Varela

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2017-01-06

Total Pages: 390

ISBN-13: 0262335506

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A new edition of a classic work that originated the “embodied cognition” movement and was one of the first to link science and Buddhist practices. This classic book, first published in 1991, was one of the first to propose the “embodied cognition” approach in cognitive science. It pioneered the connections between phenomenology and science and between Buddhist practices and science—claims that have since become highly influential. Through this cross-fertilization of disparate fields of study, The Embodied Mind introduced a new form of cognitive science called “enaction,” in which both the environment and first person experience are aspects of embodiment. However, enactive embodiment is not the grasping of an independent, outside world by a brain, a mind, or a self; rather it is the bringing forth of an interdependent world in and through embodied action. Although enacted cognition lacks an absolute foundation, the book shows how that does not lead to either experiential or philosophical nihilism. Above all, the book's arguments were powered by the conviction that the sciences of mind must encompass lived human experience and the possibilities for transformation inherent in human experience. This revised edition includes substantive introductions by Evan Thompson and Eleanor Rosch that clarify central arguments of the work and discuss and evaluate subsequent research that has expanded on the themes of the book, including the renewed theoretical and practical interest in Buddhism and mindfulness. A preface by Jon Kabat-Zinn, the originator of the mindfulness-based stress reduction program, contextualizes the book and describes its influence on his life and work.

The Embodied Mind
The Embodied Mind

Author: Francisco J. Varela

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 1992-11-13

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 9780262261234

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The Embodied Mind provides a unique, sophisticated treatment of the spontaneous and reflective dimension of human experience. The authors argue that only by having a sense of common ground between mind in Science and mind in experience can our understanding of cognition be more complete. Toward that end, they develop a dialogue between cognitive science and Buddhist meditative psychology and situate it in relation to other traditions such as phenomenology and psychoanalysis.

Zen and the Brain: The James H. Austin Omnibus Edition (Meditating Selflessly, Zen-Brain Horizons, and Living Zen Remindfully)
Zen and the Brain: The James H. Austin Omnibus Edition (Meditating Selflessly, Zen-Brain Horizons, and Living Zen Remindfully)

Author: James H. Austin

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2018-08-02

Total Pages: 905

ISBN-13: 0262352486

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Three books on Zen and the brain by the celebrated Zen practitioner-neurologist James Austin. This compilation in digital form of three books by the celebrated Zen practitioner-neurologist James Austin offers concrete advice about various methods of meditation, provides timeless wisdom of Zen masters, integrates classical Buddhist literature with modern brain research, and explores mindfulness (and remindfulness) training. In these books, Austin clarifies the benefits of meditative training, guiding readers toward that open awareness awaiting them on the cushion and in the natural world. He discusses different types of meditation, meditation and problem-solving, and the meaning of enlightenment; addresses egocentrism (self-centeredness) and allocentrism (other-centeredness) and the blending of focal and global attention; and considers the illuminating confluence of Zen, clinical neurology, and neuroscience. He describes an everyday life of “living Zen” while drawing on the poetry of Basho, the seventeenth-century haiku master, and illuminates the world of authentic Zen training—the commitment to a process of regular, ongoing daily life practice that trains and enables us to unlearn unfruitful habits, develop more wholesome ones, and lead a more genuinely creative life.

Zen and the Brain
Zen and the Brain

Author: James H. Austin

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 1999-06-04

Total Pages: 876

ISBN-13: 9780262260350

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A neuroscientist and Zen practitioner interweaves the latest research on the brain with his personal narrative of Zen. Aldous Huxley called humankind's basic trend toward spiritual growth the "perennial philosophy." In the view of James Austin, the trend implies a "perennial psychophysiology"—because awakening, or enlightenment, occurs only when the human brain undergoes substantial changes. What are the peak experiences of enlightenment? How could these states profoundly enhance, and yet simplify, the workings of the brain? Zen and the Brain presents the latest evidence. In this book Zen Buddhism becomes the opening wedge for an extraordinarily wide-ranging exploration of consciousness. In order to understand which brain mechanisms produce Zen states, one needs some understanding of the anatomy, physiology, and chemistry of the brain. Austin, both a neurologist and a Zen practitioner, interweaves the most recent brain research with the personal narrative of his Zen experiences. The science is both inclusive and rigorous; the Zen sections are clear and evocative. Along the way, Austin examines such topics as similar states in other disciplines and religions, sleep and dreams, mental illness, consciousness-altering drugs, and the social consequences of the advanced stage of ongoing enlightenment.

The Self and its Defenses
The Self and its Defenses

Author: Massimo Marraffa

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-12-08

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1137573856

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This book presents a theory of the self whose core principle is that the consciousness of the self is a process of self-representing that runs throughout our life. This process aims primarily at defending the self-conscious subject against the threat of its metaphysical inconsistence. In other words, the self is essentially a repertoire of psychological manoeuvres whose outcome is self-representation aimed at coping with the fundamental fragility of the human subject. This picture of the self differs from both the idealist and the eliminative approaches widely represented in contemporary discussion. Against the idealist approach, this book contends that rather than the self being primitive and logically prior, it is the result of a process of construction that originates in subpersonal unconscious processes. On the other hand, it also rejects the anti-realistic, eliminative argument that, from the non-primary, derivative nature of the self, infers its status as an illusory by-product of real neurobiological events, devoid of any explanatory role.