Philosophizing Contemplation: Towards a (Re)new(ed) Contemplative Philosophy

On this transient reflection, maybe visionary assertion, I need to take some mental dangers (already lengthy underway), in hopes of advancing what may be framed as “contemplative philosophy,” that’s, philosophy knowledgeable by contemplative follow, and contemplative follow knowledgeable by philosophy. Or maybe what I’m aspiring in the direction of is philosophy as contemplative follow. This pertains to my bigger views about (and imaginative and prescient for) Contemplative Research as an rising interdisciplinary discipline and of contemplative follow as such, with specific concern for the Humanities and Liberal Arts, and maybe past.

As articulated in my e-book Introducing Contemplative Studies (2018), Contemplative Research (CS/COST) is an rising interdisciplinary discipline devoted to analysis and training on contemplative follow and contemplative expertise. This contains three major defining traits: (1) Apply dedication, particularly formal meditation; (2) Vital subjectivity; and (3) Character growth, with the latter being maybe most controversial, but additionally particularly related within the current context (I hope). “Contemplative follow” is a bigger umbrella class; it encompasses approaches and practices extra generally known as “meditation,” “prayer,” and cognate disciplines. Contemplative follow refers to numerous approaches, disciplines, and strategies for creating attentiveness, consciousness, compassion, focus, presence, knowledge, and the like. Potential connective strands and household resemblances embrace attentiveness, consciousness, interiority, presence, silence, transformation, and a deepened sense of which means and objective. I’m notably excited about what I confer with as religiously-committed, tradition-based, and theologically-infused contemplative follow.

Drawing upon my bigger “philosophy of praxis,” which could additionally level in the direction of the opportunity of a “praxis of philosophy,” praxis as a essential class consists of 4 interrelated dimensions, specifically, views, strategies, experiences, and targets. Though I’ve primarily utilized this interpretive framework to debate spiritual practices, it has a broad utility, together with to any method or enterprise corresponding to philosophy itself or the current context of contemplative research. So allow us to have interaction in a momentary meta-reflection alongside these traces, taking ourselves as our “data-set.” Presumably, we now have a person and collective perception in scholarship and evidence-based argumentation rooted in cause (ableness). This results in making maybe in any other case nonsensical and even absurd shows (strive doing this as road efficiency) to a room, generally modestly attended (exit stage-right), of well-behaved and respectful, generally even respectable and revered, “colleagues.” We sit or stand, clap (or not) when anticipated (or not). We might inform ourselves (and others, together with directors and college students) accompanying tales about information manufacturing, discipline growth, the significance of so-called “increased” training, and even private pursuits. Some then later collect to debate “points,” “insights,” “contributions,” and the like, maybe over alcohol-infused banquets.

Right here I ought to point out that my views and method, which now contain a “new imaginative and prescient,” stand in distinction to mainstream or company COST (CCOST) (contemplate the unstated true prices), now underneath the guise of so-called “contemplative analysis” (let’s all be good scientists collectively) and the like. Mainstream COST is definitely an evangelical Buddhist venture, usually with covert proselytization and cognitive imperialism (to not point out Orientalism), with numerous careerist and corporatized subtexts. (Who desires to breed the established order?)

Let me be clear: I don’t consider that deep and dedicated contemplative follow (or genuine training for that matter) is appropriate with capitalism and with company sponsorship and agendas. (I do know, I’ve simply misplaced my remaining non-existent funding.) (Alternatively, contemplate the Merton-Hanh-MLK, Jr. triad). Whereas I may supply a scientific essential evaluation of company meditation and its educational representatives and colluders, together with reflections based mostly on ethnographic, participant-observation fieldwork, this isn’t the place-time (exit stage-left). Nonetheless, one would possibly merely contemplate the identities of the students and establishments concerned; the extreme emphasis on the “wisdom-compassion dyad”; medicalization and scientization (i.e., Buddho-neuroscience) as a legitimation (and missionary) technique; and an assumed/presumed Mahāyāna Buddhist aspiration to “alleviate struggling” and to “save all sentient (human) beings” (particularly Buddhist sympathizers who go along with this system), usually with an unacknowledged and maybe uncritical upaya (“skillful means”) subtext during which decontextualization and reconceptualization are rationalized in numerous methods (“the-ends-justify-the-means”). This contains banalized types of so-called “mindfulness,” with numerous hues of cultural appropriation and commodification, in such a nebulous method as to be mainly meaningless. My apologies—I’m simply making an attempt to be conscious of these mindlessly practising (and promoting) mindfulness. And I’m sorry to inform you, the world is on hearth, each actually and figuratively. So maybe contemplative renunciation, infused with a way of mappō 末法, is the extra viable response (survival technique). Individually, I’m extra excited about a discipline centered on fairness, variety, and inclusion (or whichever order you favor), together with “hidden variety” with respect to affiliated communities, disciplines, and traditions. What would occur if we made Dance the baseline? Or Theatre? Or Structure? I’m extra within the radical transformative, even perhaps revolutionary potential of a contemplative method. As a Daoist scholar-practitioner (and now court-exile and outsider-scholar) with ecological and social justice considerations, I’m dedicated to creating scholar-practitioner approaches (SPA) and significant adherent discourse (CAD), together with the opportunity of inter-contemplative dialogue (ICD) and even inter-species relationality (ISR), past the human-primate collective.

Making use of and increasing these factors, I wish to invite you to affix me in reframing philosophy (in no matter type), maybe you already are, via the revisionist frameworks of Pierre Hadot (1922-2010) and the later Michel Foucault (1926-1984), particularly their respective emphases on “religious workouts” and “strategies of self.” This has the potential to result in a (re)new(ed) philosophy, even a “contemplative philosophy.” For these of us who care concerning the Humanities and Liberal Arts (and maybe one thing else and one thing extra), such a philosophical method ends in a reframing of the philosophical venture as one centering on “philosophy as a lifestyle” geared toward holistic and built-in character growth. In such an method, we would, à la Hadot, examine some misplaced, or not less than hidden wellsprings. We would consider this as each a hermeneutics of retrieval and a hermeneutics of (im)risk.

Once more talking out of flip (a probably harmful re-turning, un-winding, and over-stepping), I discover myself intrigued by what I (mis)perceive concerning the Greek and particularly Aristotelian Peripatetic (Strolling) College, related to the Lykeion (Lyceum; gymnasium). As somebody who walks-and-thinks, who thinks in/as/via strolling, as somebody excited about embodied cognition and motion consciousness, I think about a brand new Peripatetic scholarly custom. As a thought-experiment, truly a “body-experiment,” this might be educating and studying in/as/via motion. Strolling-lectures. Outdoors and past the classroom as conventionally conceived and structured. A somatics of (un/re)studying. As Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) tells us, “It is just concepts gained from strolling that have any worth.” And from mountaineering and pilgrimage and… Wanderlust. (An essential counterpoint may be contexts of mobility limitation, corresponding to Nelson Mandela in Robben Island Jail or Stephen Hawking in ALS). In any case, I see nice potential for reengagements, revisions, and new functions. That is philosophy as embodied and enacted. A philosophy of praxis, and praxis of philosophy. And maybe an as-yet-unimagined and unrealized alterior contemplative philosophy.

Louis Komjathy welcomes questions on contemplative philosophy and invitations you to share your individual ideas on reframing philosophy within the feedback or by email.