Asian Traditions of Meditation, Honolulu

ASIAN TRADITIONS OF MEDITATION —-1 —0 —+1 542-65318_ch00_3P.indd i 7/8/16 4:17 AM Asian Traditions -1— 0— +1— 542-65318_ch00_3P.indd ii 7/8/16 4:17 AM ns of Meditation EDITED BY HALVOR EIFRING University of Hawai‘i Press 2 Honolulu —-1 —0 —+1 542-65318_ch00_3P.indd iii 7/8/16 4:17 AM © 2016 University of Hawai‘i Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of Amer i ca 21 20 19 18 17 16 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Eifring, Halvor, editor. Title: Asian traditions of meditation / edited by Halvor Eifring. Description: Honolulu : University of Hawai‘i Press, [2016] | Includes index. Identifi ers: LCCN 2016015383 | ISBN 9780824855680 (cloth ; alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Meditation— Asia— Cross- cultural studies. Classifi cation: LCC BL627 .A85 2016 | DDC 204/.35095— dc23 Lc rec ord available at https:// lccn . loc . gov / 2016015383 University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on acid- free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Council on Library Resources. -1— 0— +1— 542-65318_ch00_3P.indd iv 7/8/16 4:17 AM CONTENTS Acknowl edgments vii Introduction ix 1 What Is Meditation? 1 HALVOR EIFRING 2 Types of Meditation 27 HALVOR EIFRING 3 Samādhi in the Yoga Sūtras 48 EDWIN F. BRYANT 4 Yantra and Cakra in Tantric Meditation 71 MADHU KHANNA 5 T e History of Jaina Meditation 93 JOHANNES BRONKHORST 6 Nām Simran in the Sikh Religion 103 KRISTINA MYRVOLD 7 Meditation Objects in Pāli Buddhist Texts 122 SARAH SHAW 8 Tibetan Longevity Meditation 145 GEOFFREY SAMUEL 9 Kànhuà Meditation in Chinese Zen 165 MORTEN SCHLÜTTER 10 Meditation in the Classical Daoist Tradition 185 HAROLD D. ROTH 11 “Quiet Sitting” in Neo- Confucianism 207 MASAYA MABUCHI 12 T e Science of Meditation 227 ARE HOLEN List of Contributors 245 Index 247 —-1 —0 —+1 542-65318_ch00_3P.indd v 7/8/16 4:17 AM -1— 0— +1— 542-65318_ch00_3P.indd vi 7/8/16 4:17 AM ACKNOWL EDGMENTS T e starting point for this book was a conference made pos sible by generous support from the Chiang Ching- kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange, Taipei; the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages, University of Oslo; PluRel, University of Oslo; Kultrans, University of Oslo; and the Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture, Oslo. T e initial planning of the conference and the book took place during the fi ve months the editor spent as a guest researcher at the Research Center for Monsoon Asia, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan, in 2009. T e conference took place at the Acem International Retreat Centre Halvorsbøle, Oslo, Norway, in May 2010. In addition to the editor, the organizing committee included Svend Davanger and Terje Stordalen, both from the University of Oslo. T e following persons helped in the organ ization of the conference or as- sisted in the work with the book: Wubshet Dagne, Yue Bao, Regina Cinduring- tias Pasiasti, Torbjørn Hobbel, Stig Inge Skogseth, Alexander Lundberg, and— last, but not least— the editor’s patient and loving wife, Joy Chun- hsi Lu, who along the way has provided much food both for thought and for the belly. T e long and winding pro cess from initial proposal to fi nished book was much helped by the patient guidance of Patricia Crosby and, later, by Stephanie Chun at the University of Hawai‘i Press. T e editor would hereby like to express his deep-felt gratitude for the many kinds of support given by these persons and institutions, as well as by others who have off ered help along the way. T is includes the anonymous reviewers who have given their feedback on earlier ver- sions of the book. Halvor Eifring Oslo, October 2015 —-1 —0 —+1 542-65318_ch00_3P.indd vii 7/8/16 4:17 AM -1— 0— +1— 542-65318_ch00_3P.indd viii 7/8/16 4:17 AM INTRODUCTION Meditative practices have fl ourished since the founding of the great civiliza- tions in Eurasia. For the fi rst time, this volume brings together studies of the major traditions of Asian meditation, including Yoga, Tantra, Jainism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism, as well as modern secular and scientifi c approaches to meditation. Few if any scholarly attempts have been made at cross- cultural comparison of meditative practices. T is is in contrast to the cross- cultural study of mystical experience that has been thoroughly addressed in the debates pit- ting the constructivist approach of Steven T. Katz against the perennial approach of Robert K. C. Forman.1 It is also in contrast to the comparative is- sues raised in scientifi c rather than cultural studies of meditation, as in Maria Ospina et al.’s impressive report “Meditation Practices for Health: State of the Research.” Finally, while scholarly studies of meditation have tended to shy away from cross- cultural comparison, more popu lar works seldom have the same qualms, including Claudio Naranjo and Robert E. Ornstein’s On the Psy chol ogy of Meditation and Daniel Goleman’s T e Meditative Mind, both of which were fi rst published in the 1970s, as well as Livia Kohn’s more recent Meditation Works. Scholars studying meditation have typically stayed within one specifi c tradition and stuck to culture- specifi c modes of explanation with limited general relevance. T is includes excellent monographs, such as Sarah Shaw’s Buddhist Meditation, Isabelle Robinet’s Taoist Meditation, and Rodney L. Taylor’s T e Confucian Way of Contemplation. To the extent that scholars have ventured beyond the bounds of a single tradition, they have mostly limited themselves to traditions that are historically related, as in Geoff rey Samuel’s T e Origins of Yoga and Tantra. Scholars have usually avoided the comparison of traditions that have no obvious historical relation but may have generic features in com- mon or may, for that matter, diff er from each other in in ter est ing ways. T is collection of essays brings together diff er ent Asian traditions and com- pares them not only with each other but also with the traditions studied in another recent volume I edited, Meditation in Judaism, Chris tian ity and Islam.2 In addition to delving deeply into the individual traditions, this book places each tradition in a global perspective, looking at both historical and generic connections between meditative practices from diff er ent historical periods and diff er ent parts of the Eurasian continent. T e aim of this book is twofold. On the one hand, it seeks to identify the cultural and historical peculiarities of various Asian schools of meditation, both for their own sake and as a basis for further comparison. On the other hand, it —-1 seeks to identify basic features of meditative practices across cultures, and —0 —+1 542-65318_ch00_3P.indd ix 7/8/16 4:17 AM x | Introduction thereby to take a fi rst step toward a framework for the comparative study of meditation. 2 Asian forms of meditation have two main historical sources: Indian and Chinese. In the course of their development, both forms have ventured far beyond their places of origin to eventually cover most of Asia. T ey have also mixed with one another, and with meditative, devotional, ritual, and sha- manistic practices in the vari ous localities to which they have traveled. More recently, they have become global phenomena on a larger scale, and have exerted substantial infl uence on the cultures of Amer i ca, Eu rope, Australia, and other parts of the world, often in combination with Western medicine, physi- cal exercise, psychotherapy, and various forms of modern spirituality. T e re- sulting practices have in turn exerted an equally substantial infl uence on Asian meditation. T e notion of Asian traditions of meditation is in contrast to the Judaic, Christian, Islamic, and ancient Greco- Roman traditions stemming from Eu rope, the Middle East, and North Africa. T ere is no absolute line of division between the two. For instance, it has been persuasively argued that Indian impulses have strongly infl uenced the Kabbalah of Judaism, the Orthodox Christian Jesus Prayer, and the recitative and sometimes musical practices of dhikr and samā‘ of Islamic Sufi sm. It can also easily be argued that the exclusively devotional practices of the Sikh nām simran (discussed by Kristina Myrvold in this volume) are generically more similar to the corresponding Euro pean, Middle East- ern, and North African practices than to most Asian forms of meditation. T e recitative practices of the Jesus Prayer and the Islamic dhikr display many parallels not only to nām simran but also to the Indian repetition of mantras and to the East Asian recitation of Buddha names (Ch. niàn fó; Jap. nen butsu). Sim- ilar cross-cultural parallels can be found in the realm of visualization practices. T us, distinguishing the Asian traditions from Euro pean, Middle Eastern, and North African practices is done mainly for practical and heuristic reasons, not because they are typologically distinct. Nevertheless, there are some general tendencies that distinguish the two groups. While meditation practices originating in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa typically center on devotional, thematic, and scripture- based forms of recitation and visualization, Asian forms of meditation cover a much greater range of methods, including body and breath techniques, awareness training, and other methods involving a high degree of technical sophistica- tion. In Asian traditions, even some of the recitative and visual practices have a technical rather than a content- oriented emphasis, as in some uses of mantras and yantras.

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