8. Perez de Albeniz and Holmes, “Meditation.”
9. Walsh and Shapiro, “Meeting of Meditative Disciplines,” 229.
10. Most probably, a similar distinction applies to psychotherapy, with cognitive therapies leaning toward a directive content orientation, and psychodynamic therapies leaning toward a nondirective process orientation.
11. The following are descriptions of “concentration” or “focused attention”: “focus attention on a singular external object” (Shapiro, “Overview”); “sustaining the attention directly to a single object, point or focus” (Goleman, “Meditation and Consciousness”); “focusing attention on a single-target percept” (Davidson and Goleman, “Role of Attention”); “attention … focused on an intended object in a sustained fashion” (Manna et al., “Neural Correlates”); “the concentration of attention on a particular external, corporal or mental object while ignoring all irrelevant stimuli” (Sperduti et al., “Neurocognitive Model”); “sustaining selective attention moment by moment on a chosen object” (Lutz et al., “Attention Regulation”); “focuses on a particular item, thought, or object” (Colzato et al., “Meditate to Create”); and “focusing on a specific sensory or mental stimulus to the exclusion of anything else” (Dakwar and Levin, “Emerging Role of Meditation”). The following are descriptions of “insight,” “mindfulness,” or “open monitoring”: “cultivate an objective openness to whatever comes into awareness” (Ospina et al., “Meditation Practices for Health”); “maintaining a specific cognitive perception related to the contents that would spontaneously come to mind” (Goleman, “Meditation and Consciousness”); “maintenance of a particular attentional stance toward all objects of awareness” (Davidson and Goleman, “Role of Attention”); “the non-reactive monitoring of the content of experience from moment to moment, primarily as a means to recognize the nature of emotional and cognitive patterns” (Manna et al., “Neural Correlates”); “enlarge the attentional focus to all incoming sensations, emotions and thoughts from moment to moment without focusing on any of them” (Sperduti et al., “Neurocognitive Model”); “attentive moment by moment to anything that occurs in experience without focusing on any explicit object” (Lutz et al., “Attention Regulation”); “open to perceive and observe any sensation or thought without focusing on a concept in the mind or a fixed item” (Colzato et al., “Meditate to Create”); and “allowing thoughts, feelings, and sensations to arise while maintaining a non-judgmental, detached, and accepting attitude to them, as well as a heightened perceptual stance attentive to the entire field of perception” (Dakwar and Levin, “Emerging Role of Meditation”).
12. Davidson and Goleman, “Role of Attention.”
13. Dakwar and Levin, “Emerging Role of Meditation,” 257; cf. Cahn and Polich, “Meditation States and Traits”; Raffone and Srinivasan, “Exploration of Meditation.”
14. Shapiro, “Overview,” 6.
15. Travis and Shear, “Focused Attention.”
16. Lutz et al., “Attention Regulation.” Ospina et al. also note that “some [mindfulness] practices … have phases where concentration is used, and for which certain techniques such as counting or concentrating on a mantra are employed, while at other stages broad spaced mindful attention is encouraged” (“Meditation Practices for Health,” 48).
17. Ospina et al., “Meditation Practices for Health,” 48.
18. Naranjo, “Meditation,” 7ff.; Conze, Buddhist Meditation, 13ff.; Koshikawa and Ichii, “Experiment on Classification Methods,” 213–224; Holen, “Acem Meditation.”
19. Conze (Buddhist Meditation, 19ff.) makes a similar distinction but uses the term “concentration” for both types.
20. Cáo and Kǒng, Hānshān lǎorén mèngyóu jí. Translations are mine.
21. Hodgson, Cloud of Unknowing; translations from Wolters, Cloud of Unknowing.
22. Hodgson, Cloud of Unknowing, 87; Wolters, Cloud of Unknowing, 114.
23. Hodgson, Cloud of Unknowing, 62; Wolters, Cloud of Unknowing, 95.
24. “Attention Regulation and Monitoring in Meditation,” 164.
25. Orig. “Tā qǐ tā de niàn, wǒ niàn wǒ de fó.” From Wùkāi, “Jìngyè zhījīn.”
26. Guǎngguì, “Liánbāng shīxuǎn.”
27. See Casiday, “Images of Salvation.”
28. Palmer et al., Philokalia, 165.
29. Müller, Atthasālinī, 118; translation from Tin, Expositor, 157.
30. Cáo and Kǒng, Hānshān lǎorén mèngyóu jí, 2.
31. Palmer et al., Philokalia, 164.
32. Eifring, “Spontaneous Thoughts in Meditative Traditions,” 210ff.
33. Holen, Inner Strength.
34. Kohn, Meditation Works, 4.
35. Craven, “Meditation and Psychotherapy”; Cardoso et al., “Meditation in Health”; Ospina et al., “Meditation Practices for Health,” 28.
36. Rönnegård, “Melétē in Early Christian Ascetic Texts.”
37. Cf. Elias, “Sufi Dhikr”; Bashir, “Movement and Stillness.”
38. A separate list of 1,531 “excluded and nonobtained studies” does include a considerable number of studies of Christian, Jewish, and Islamic practices, but apart from a few “nonobtained” cases, the quality of these studies was deemed insufficient according to the criteria for inclusion in Ospina et al.’s review.
39. Ospina et al., “Meditation Practices for Health,” 47–48.
40. West, Psychology of Meditation, quoted from Ospina et al., “Meditation Practices for Health,” 196.
41. Sarah Shaw’s contribution to this volume shows how strongly many apparently technical objects of “insight meditation” are tied to Buddhist doctrine.
42. Cf. Madhu Khanna’s and Geoffrey Samuel’s contributions to this volume, as well as Baker, “Cinnabar-Field Meditation in Korea”; Rydell-Johnsén, “Early Jesus Prayer”; Elias, “Sufi Dhikr”; and Bashir, “Movement and Stillness.”
43. Cf. Eifring, “Meditative Pluralism in Hānshān Déqīng.” See also Morten Schlütter’s contribution to this volume.
44. On meditations on death in Buddhism, see Shaw’s contribution to this volume, as well as Dessein, “Contemplation of the Repulsive.” On meditations on death in Christianity, see Rönnegård, “Melétē in Early Christian Ascetic Texts.”
45. Cf. Harold D. Roth’s contribution to this volume, as well as Seppälä, “Meditation in the East Syrian Tradition.”
46. For the two opposite views of mysticism, see Katz, Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis, and Forman, Problem of Pure Consciousness.
47. Naranjo, “Meditation.”
48. Kohn, Meditation Works, 4.
49. Bäumer, “Creative Contemplation.”
50. Lindquist, Methoden des Yoga.
51. Dasgupta, Yoga Philosophy, 352ff.
52. Eliade, Yoga, 78f., 99f.
53. Davanger, “Natural Science of Meditation.”
54. Brown, “Model for Concentrative Meditation,” 243.
55. Lagopoulos, “Increased Theta and Alpha EEG Activity”; Travis and Shear, “Focused Attention.”
56. Lutz et al., “Attention Regulation”; Manna et al., “Neural Correlates”; Davanger et al., “Meditation-Specific Prefrontal Cortical Activation.”
57. Cahn and Polich, “Meditation States and Traits”; Lutz et al., “Attention Regulation”; Davidson and Goleman, “Role of Attention.”
58. Cahn and Polich, “Meditation States and Traits”; Colzato et al., “Meditate to Create.”
59. Xu et al., “Nondirective Meditation.”
Glossary
bào yī 抱一
dāntián 丹田
fǎ-yǔ 法語
Hānshān Déqīng 憨山德清
huǎnhuǎn 緩緩
jíjí 急急
jílì 極力
Lǎozǐ 老子
niàn 念
qì 氣
sànluàn 散亂
shǒu yī 守一
sǐshǒu huàtóu 死守話頭
“Tā qǐ tā de niàn, wǒ niàn wǒ de fó” 他起他的念， 我念我的佛
wàng-niàn 妄念
wàng-xiǎng 妄想
yí niàn 一念
Yùfēng Gǔkūn 玉峯古崑
zá-niàn 雜念
zhí yī 執一
zhuólì 著力
zuò-wàng 坐忘
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