Nikāya Buddhism and Early Chan - A Different Meditative Paradigm - Grzegorz Polak
Calming the Mind through Awareness
Nikāya Buddhism and Early Chan - A Different Meditative Paradigm - Grzegorz Polak
Grzegorz Polak [+]
Maria Curie Skłodowska University
Grzegorz Polak is an associate professor in the Institute of Philosophy at the Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin. His research interests include philosophical and meditative ideas of Nikaya Buddhism, early Chan, and comparative study of Buddhism and Western philosophy. He is the author of Reexamining Jhana: Towards a Critical Reconstruction of Early Buddhist Soteriology and several articles.
Description
Chapter 7 discusses the role played by awareness as a means of pacifying the mind. The first part of the chapter presents various forms of meditative awareness of mental processes described in Nikāya and early Chan texts. It considers whether meditative awareness can be conceptualized as an active form of meditation which involves the implementation of some method. The final part of the chapter offers a hypothesis regarding the mechanism by which awareness of mental activities may lead to their pacification.