Authors & Contributors

This review discusses a helpful edited volume featuring recent scholarship on yoga and meditation studies that address the question: “What exactly is meditation?” In response, the editors “aim to expand the focus of meditation studies to show the diversity of South Asian meditation, including discussions of teachers writing in Telegu, Tamil, Malayalam, and other languages and texts including not only texts about meditation but also songs, poems, letters, and popular devotions. These discussions show the multiplicity of Hindu and South Asian forms of meditation and yoga, engaged in interreligious encounter with Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Islam, and Christianity.”

Ame Wren is a Doctoral Candidate in Religious Studies at the University of Virginia and Graduate Research Assistant at the Contemplative Sciences Center. She studies 20th century American Religion, the spiritual-but-not-religious community and the intersections of Eastern philosophy and popular culture among spiritual seekers. She is also the founder and director of the Boston Yoga School.

Anne C. Klein is a Professor in the Department of Religion at Rice University, co-founder of the Dawn Mountain Center for Tibetan Buddhism, and author of Being Human and a Buddha Too (2023).

Ariel Evan Mayse is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Stanford University, the senior scholar-in-residence at the Institute of Jewish Spirituality and Society, and an ordained rabbi. He is the author of Laws of the Spirit: Ritual, Mysticism, and the Commandments in Early Hasidism (2024), Speaking Infinities: God and Language in the Teachings of Rabbi Dov Ber of Mezritsh (2020), and Guest Editor for JCS Special Issue #03: Contemplative Ecology.

This study delves into Cheng Yi’s (程頤, 1033–1107) Ruist (Confucian) contemplative practices, addressing a gap in contemplative studies from a Ruist perspective. As a seminal thinker in the Cheng-Zhu lineage, Cheng Yi developed various practices, including quiet-sitting meditation, beholding, calligraphy, restful sleep, and others. These practices incorporate techniques such as sitting postures, breathing, and calming the mind and emerged during political and social crises, amid diverse interpretations of Ruist classics and the influences of Buddhism and Daoism. Cheng Yi’s contemplative approach emphasizes the integration of the virtues of “reverence” and “righteousness,” focusing on the ontological and empirical dimensions of the human heartmind. His metaphysics highlights the nontemporality of the pattern-principle’s regulatory role, enhancing the pan-contemplative nature of the Ruist lifestyle. Cheng Yi’s approach provides valuable comparative insights for contemporary contemplative studies and guidance for practitioners seeking to balance intellectualism, contemplation, and ethical action. The study offers original translations and comprehensive scholarly analysis of Cheng Yi’s Ruist contemplative practices.

Brenna Prevelige is a PhD student of Integrative Biology at Oregon State University. She works at intersections of Mycology and Buddhism, focusing on the medicinal Ganoderma mushroom in the US and Nepal.

Claire Petitmengin is Professor Emerita at the Institut Mines-Télécom and member of the Archives Husserl (Ecole Normale Supérieure) in Paris. Her research focuses on lived experience and micro-phenomenological methods enabling us to become aware of experience and describe it.

Dana K Howe is a Faculty Research Assistant of Integrative Biology at Oregon State University. She is interested in using genetics to study evolution, symbiosis, conservation, and biocontrol.

Psychedelics are now enjoying a resurgence of both popular and scientific interest due to the rigorous documentation of their therapeutic potential. While psychedelics induce short-term alterations of brain chemistry, their long-term benefits foremost arise from the psychedelic subjectivity of patients, most of whom characterize it as among the most profound religious or spiritual experiences of their lives. Regardless of the “epistemic risks”, uncorroborated insights, and unverifiable visions, it is the psychedelic projection of the individual into the depths of the profound that catalyzes personal transformation, which is now not only qualified but quantified in many studies.

David McMahan is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Religious Studies at Franklin and Marshall College and author of Rethinking Meditation: Buddhist Meditative Practices in Ancient and Modern Worlds (2023) and The Making of Buddhist Modernism (2008).

Dee Denver is a Professor of Integrative Biology at Oregon State University. He is the author of The Dharma in DNA: Insights at the Intersection of Biology and Buddhism (2022).

Donata Schoeller is the co-founder and academic director of the European Erasmus training program Embodied Critical Thinking and Understanding (TECTU), and the principal investigator and conceptual director of the international research project “Freedom to make sense: embodied, experiential and mindful research.” She is the author of Close Talking and co-editor of Embodied Thinking in Research and Learning, Saying What We Mean, and Thinking Thinking.

Douglas Christie is a Professor Emeritus of Theological Studies at Loyola Marymount University and author of The Blue Saphire of the Mind: Notes for a Contemplative Ecology and The Insurmountable Darkness of Love: Love, Contemplative Practice, and the Common Life.

Dr. Nadine Levy is the head of health and social wellbeing at Nan Tien Institute (a Buddhist higher education institute in Australia) and teaches and researches in the areas of mindfulness, compassion, and social emotions. Her doctoral research examined the therapeutic effects of spiritual community and considered the intersection of mindfulness and psychotherapeutic discourse. Dr. Levy holds a PhD in sociology and Honours degrees in both law and gender studies. She is a Buddhist insight meditation teacher, having completed training with James Baraz (Spirit Rock Meditation Center) and at the Insight Meditation Institute in Sydney.

Eleanor Johnson is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Director of the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life at Columbia University. She is the author of Waste and the Wasters: Poetry and Ecosystemic Thought in Medieval England (2023).

Erik Braun is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia and author of The Birth of Insight: Meditation, Modern Buddhism, and the Burmese Monk Ledi Sayadaw (2014).

Federico Divino is an Italian anthropologist and philosopher. Since 2022, he has been a researcher at the University of Antwerp and a member of the Visual and Digital Cultures research center (ViDi), where he focuses on consciousness and meditation. He has a background in Buddhist philosophy and has been engaged for years in comparative philosophy, specifically exploring the issue of consciousness within the meditative experience. 

Frances Garrett is an Associate Professor of Buddhist Studies and Tibetan Studies in the Department for the Study of Religion and Director of the Buddhism, Psychology and Mental Health program at the University of Toronto.

The review outlines the contributions of this important edited volume on recent scholarship about the philosophy of meditation. Medina evaluates claims by contributing authors from a perspective of Buddhist meditation. He writes, “throughout this Handbook, we find different ways of understanding both philosophy and meditation, as well as their relationship. Some authors highlight the apparent tensions between the two, while others, the apparent harmony between them…. Anyone interested in the philosophy of meditation will undoubtedly be inspired by a careful reading of the Routledge Handbook on the Philosophy of Meditation, which is a meaningful contribution to establishing this subfield within the academe.”

Iya Funlayo E. Wood is a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, Founding Director of the African and Diasporic Religious Studies Association, and Guest Editor for Special Issue #05: Contemplation in Africana Traditions in the Journal of Contemplative Studies.

Harold D. Roth is Professor of Religious Studies and the Director of the Contemplative Studies Initiative at Brown University. He designed the first university concentration program in Contemplative Studies and is the author of The Contemplative Foundations of Classical Daoism (2021). He is also on the executive committee of the International Society for Contemplative Research.

Jazlee Crowley is a PhD student in Integrative Biology at Oregon State University. Her ethnobiological research revolves around genetics, botany and art. Her current project focuses on the sacred Bodhi tree, Ficus religiosa.

Jordan Quaglia is Associate Professor of Psychology, Director of the Cognitive and Affective Science Laboratory, and Research Director of the Center for the Advancement of Contemplative Education at Naropa University.

Julia Cassaniti is a Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia and author of Living Buddhism: Mind, Self, and Emotion in a Thai Community (2015).

Kevin Hart is the Jo Rae Wright University Professor in the Divinity School at Duke University. He is the author of Lands of Likeness: For a Poetics of Contemplation (2023) and Wild Track: New and Selected Poems (2015).

Loriliai Biernacki is a Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder and is the author of Renowned Goddess of Desire (2007) and The Matter of Wonder: Abhinavagupta’s Panentheism and New Materialism (2023). She is also co-chair of the Contemplative Studies unit at the American Academy of Religion.

Marc-Henri Deroche is Associate Professor at Kyoto University, Japan, where he teaches Buddhist and Tibetan Studies and researches mindfulness in Buddhist philosophy, theories, and manuals of meditation. He is the author of A Tibetan Quest for Wisdom: Prajñāraśmi (1518–1584) and the Sources of the Impartial (ris med) Approach (2023), and issue editor for “Study, Reflection, and Cultivation: Integrative Paths to Wisdom from Buddhist and Comparative Perspectives” (Religions 2022) and “Tibetan Studies in Japan: Approaching the High Plateau from the Archipelago” (Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie 2024).

Martijn van Beek is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Aarhus University in Denmark. He specializes in ethnographic and phenomenological perspectives on meditation.

Michael Chase is Senior Researcher at the Centre Jean Pépin of the National Center of Scientific Research in Paris-Villejuif, France and adjunct professor of Greek and Roman studies at the University of Victoria. He is the author and translator of Ammonius: Interpretation of Porphyry’s Introduction to Aristotle’s Five Terms (2020).

Michael Sheehy is Research Associate Professor and Director of Research at the Contemplative Sciences Center at University of Virginia where he is Principal at CIRCL Contemplative Innovation + Research Co-Lab and Editor in Chief of the Journal of Contemplative Studies.

Muhammad Faruque is the Inayat Malik Assistant Professor and a Taft Center Fellow at the University of Cincinnati and a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University. He is the author of Sculpting the Self: Islam, Selfhood, and Human Flourishing (2021).

Dylan Esler’s translation of The Lamp for the Eye of Contemplation or Samten Migdron (Bsam gtan mig sgron) by Nubchen Sangye Yeshe delivers a new complete English translation of this seminal 10th century Tibetan Buddhist treatise on contemplation. Esler’s style is both authentic to the text and accessible to the reader. The Eye of Contemplation stands out as one of the first indigenous doxographies of contemplative practices in Tibet, rivaling the historical importance of the Dunhuang manuscripts. It takes the perspective of the Great Perfection or Dzogchen tradition, and establishes a four-part hierarchy of contemplative vehicles: Mahayana’s gradual approach, Chan’s simultaneous approach, Mahayoga Tantra, and the Great Perfection’s vehicle of effortless spontaneity. Each of these four vehicles is given sustained discussion of their view, meditation, conduct, and fruition, followed by a critique from the perspective of the approach directly superior to it. This is especially notable for two key reasons: 1) It is one of the first manuscripts to regard the Great Perfection as its own vehicle, and 2) It valorizes the simultaneous approach of Chan Buddhism as equal to or greater than the gradual approach of Mahayana Buddhism – a position that opposes normative Tibetan hierarchies.

Oludamini Ogunnaike is an Associate Professor of African Religious Thought and Democracy at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Deep Knowledge: Ways of Knowing in Sufism and Ifa, Two West African Intellectual Traditions (2020) and Poetry in Praise of Prophetic Perfection: West African Madīḥ Poetry and its Precedents (2020).

Peter D. Hershock is an intercultural philosopher and Director of the Asian Studies Development Program at the East-West Center in Honolulu. He is the author or editor of more than a dozen books, most recently: Buddhism and Intelligent Technology: Toward a More Humane Future and Consciousness Mattering: A Buddhist Synthesis.

Richard Payne is Professor Emeritus at the Institute of Buddhist Studies. He specializes in the study of Japanese tantric Buddhist ritual, specifically the homa, as well as the economics and modern secularization of Buddhism. He is the co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Tantric Studies (2024), The Oxford Encyclopedia of Buddhism (2024), Buddhism Under Capitalism (2022), and Homa Variations (2015), and author of Secularizing Buddhism (2021).

Samuel Grimes is the Shinjo Ito Postdoctoral Fellow in Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of the article, “Portrait of a Poison: Datura in Buddhist Magic,” in the Journal of Contemplative Studies: Special Issue on Psychedelics, Contemplation, and Religion.

Sonam Kachru is Assistant Professor in the Religious Studies Department at Yale University, specializing in the history of premodern South Asian philosophy and literature, with an emphasis on Buddhist philosophy. He is the author of Other Lives: Mind and World in Indian Buddhism (2021).

Stephanie Paulsell is the Susan Shallcross Swartz Professor of the Practice of Christian Studies at Harvard Divinity School. She is the author of Religion Around Virginia Woolf (2019) and co-editor of Goodness and the Literary Imagination (2019).

This review examines this expansive and valuable recently edited volume on the study of meditation. Dawson attends to larger conceptual orientations of the volume and its specific contributions in his review, and finds that “the breadth of different approaches to meditation is, in fact, one of the Handbook’s prime virtues. In addition to generous descriptions of meditation practices embedded in a variety of religious traditions, readers encounter an array of different empirical approaches to the study of meditation. Attention is also paid to the diverse ends, religious and secular, that meditation practice can engage. Discussions of meditation are polyphonic—they comprise many voices. The plurality of voices is, however, balanced by listening; conversations take place on these pages. The Handbook amply displays the diverse multidisciplinary discussions underway in the field of meditation studies.”

Tanya Luhrmann is the Albert Ray Lang Professor of Anthropology at Stanford University, sometimes with a courtesy appointment in Psychology. She is the author of When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God (2012) and How God Becomes Real: Kindling the Presence of Invisible Others (2020).