The grinch who stole wisdom

Dr. Seuss is wise. How the Grinch Stole Christmas (Seuss, 1957) could serve as a parable for our time. It can also be seen as a roadmap for the development of contemplative wisdom. The abiding popularity of How the Grinch Stole Christmas additionally suggests that contemplative wisdom is more readily available to ordinary people, even children, than is normally thought. This matters because from the point of view of contemplatives in any of the world's philosophies or religions, people are confused about wisdom. The content of the nascent field of wisdom studies, they might say, is largely not wisdom at all but rather what it's like to live in a particular kind of prison cell, a well appointed cell perhaps, but not a place that makes possible either personal satisfaction or deep problem solving. I believe that what the contemplative traditions have to say is important; they offer a different orientation to what personal wisdom is, how to develop it, and how to use it in the world than is presently contained in either our popular culture or our sciences. In order to illustrate this I will examine, in some detail, one contemplative path within Buddhism. Buddhism is particularly useful in this respect because its practices are nontheistic and thus avoid many of the cultural landmines associated with the contemplative aspects of Western religions

Tibetan Buddhist Perspectives on Death and Dying

Tibetan Buddhist understandings of the death process bridge scientific, materialist observations and religio-spiritual interpretations. Tibetan Buddhism and medicine overlap in the context of death, and doctors of Tibetan medicine are trained in tantric Buddhist theories as well as anatomy and pharmacology. Based on written as well as contemporary oral sources, this essay explores Buddhist concepts of the process of dying and the experiences of consciousness as it transitions from one life to the next. It describes end-of-life rituals and funerary customs, notions of timely versus untimely death, and the possibility of returning from death to one’s previous life. A Tibetan Buddhist perspective challenges reductionist western medical theories that refuse to allow for the continuation of consciousness at death. In modern medical contexts, Buddhist theories of karma and rebirth influence treatment decisions such that, as opposed to prolonging life for as long as possible, people are encouraged to accept the certainty of death and learn to face death with less anxiety. From a Tibetan Buddhist perspective, a good death is more valuable than a prolonged life

The emperor’s clothes: A look behind the western mindfulness mystique

Mindfulness is presently a popular word, taken originally from Buddhist practices, that has stimulated enthusiastic research in psychology, neuroscience, medicine, and clinical psychology. But what is the mindfulness that these disciplines study? Although there are diverse Western definitions of the term, the most frequent de facto operational definition is that subjects have taken some form of the 8-week Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program. Accordingly this chapter provides: (a) A review of the meaning and place of mindfulness in the three main historical forms of Buddhism. (b) An analysis of the contents of the MBSR program and, in particular, of how participants use those contents. (c) A critique of the mindfulness measurement scales. Participants were found primarily responding not to mindfulness in either Buddhist or Western definitions, but to a variety of Western therapeutic components embedded in the program. I show how these findings could lead to new and more grounded research questions, better individually targeted therapies, and, when combined with some of the Eastern material, perhaps to shifts in our understanding of body and mind