Keynote Speaker: Prof. Rupert Gethin (Bristol)

Description —

Meditation practices are a core component of Ancient Indian Buddhism and an essential factor in the development of Buddhist philosophy as a whole. Ancient Buddhist meditation is naturally intertwined with key philosophical topics such as the nature of consciousness and qualia, the phenomenology of subjective experience, the nature of emotions, the self, causality, free will and the meaning of life. Today, scholars in cognitive psychology and neurosciences are actively engaged in exploring meditation practices as a promising field for raising new questions and develop new approaches about the nature of the mind-body relationship. At the same time, historians of Western philosophy and philosophers of religion begin to reappraise the importance of meditative traditions in the West and their impact on the shaping of philosophical debates of the past. This symposium focuses on Ancient Indian Buddhist meditation practices as an interdisciplinary topic to bring together historical, philosophical and scientific research on the historical and conceptual implications of Buddhist meditation and its potential for comparative and global philosophy.

Programme

9:30-10:15 – Marieke van Vugt (Groningen):

Bridging philosophy and meditation: analytical meditation in Tibetan monasteries

10:15-11:00 – Tatjana Kochetkova (O.P. Jindal Global University, India):

Vipassana and Neurofeedback EEG alertness training: a comparative phenomenological approach

Coffee break

11:15-12:00 – Gunter Bombaerts (Eindhoven):

Towards a Satipaṭṭhāna economy?

12:00-12:45 – Cristina Pecchia (Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna):

Indian Buddhist Epistemologists on the Consequences of Meditation Practices

Lunch break

14:15 -15:00 – Robin Brons (Oxford):

Ethics without Essence. Why Meditation can better Pragmatism

15:00-15:45 – Markus Schlosser (University College Dublin):

Pure Consciousness and Meditation in Buddhism

Tea Break

 16.00-18.00 Keynote Speaker:

Rupert Gethin (Bristol):

How Buddhists stop thinking and get away with it: on the significance of  ‘the attainment of cessation’ (nirodha-samāpatti) in early Buddhist literature
Discussants: Stephen Harris (Leiden) and Andrea Sangiacomo (Groningen)

Please register here.

For information please contact: a.sangiacomo@rug.nl