Mindfulness Meditation from the Eastern Inner Science Tradition
Abstract
This chapter explains the tradition of mindfulness meditations from the point of view of Eastern Inner Science tradition in accordance with Nalanda university as described in Unity in Duality® by Tarab Tulku, a Buddhist scholar who sought to explain them in secular terms.
Author: S.T.R. Lene Handberg
Prof. Carin Muhr
Mindfulness, as used herein, refers to the traditional Buddhist spiritual discipline of ’the four mindfulness meditations’ (of body, feeling, mind and existence). The Unity in Duality view examines the interrelated nature of reality using a polar framework of ‘subject-object,’ ‘body-mind’ and ‘energy-matter’.
The work explains a systematic approach to mindfulness that allows the practitioner to analyse the mind and discover more subtle aspects of how it works and the role it plays in the formation and experience of reality.
The last part includes a comparison of some of the essential ideas found in contemporary approaches to mindfulness. Some similarities and differences between the ideas presented by Dr Ellen Langer, which are representative of the Social psychological concept and those generally representative of an Eastern derived approach are highlighted, and to a limited degree Transcendental Meditation, with specific references to the approach of Unity in Duality including comments referring to recent neuroscience research with reference to health aspects.
Reference
“Mindfulness Meditation from the Eastern Inner Science Tradition” by Carin Muhr and Lene Handberg in The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of Mindfulness, Volume I, Edited by Amanda Ie, Christelle T Ngnoumen and Ellen J. Langer. Publisher: Wiley Blackwell, 2014. ISBN 978-1-118-29487-1
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