Call for Papers - MDPI Buddhist Worldviews and Contemplative Practices
To fully appreciate Buddhist contemplative practices, it is important to analyze models of the mind, body, path, and reality used by Buddhist contemplatives, because different ways of approaching these models affect both the nature and descriptions of Buddhist contemplative practices. Over centuries, Buddhists have developed highly diverse models of the mind, path, reality, and to a lesser extent, the body, and they have used them in discussions of realizations of reality, meditative states, visionary experiences, and awakening. These models are not only used for describing such experiences and realizations, but they play a critical role in shaping them. This relationship is one of the reasons for stressing the importance of interpreting Buddhist contemplative practices with the help of specific Buddhist models and paying close attention to the context of these practices.
Articles included in this Special Issue will explore how diverse conceptual models influence contemplative practices of culturally and historically different Buddhist traditions, how they are built into the fabric of those practices, and how they are used by Buddhist practitioners when explaining their respective practices as well as experiences and insights achieved as their result.
The authors will analyze four types of models involved in Buddhist meditation: philosophical models of such systems as Abhidharma, Yogācāra, and Madhyamaka; mind models involving such topics as types of consciousness and mental processes; body models addressing gross and subtle bodies; and path models providing different perspectives on the nature of the Buddhist path and its results. They will show how these models and related elements are incorporated into several representative traditions of Buddhist meditation, including the cultivation of mindfulness, contemplative absorptions, and insight meditation in Theravāda; Zen practices focusing on kōans and “just sitting”; Tibetan stages of the path systems; and tantric practice, including Mahāmudrā and Dzokchen.
We also welcome papers that critically assess attempts to apply certain Buddhist models of mind, reality, etc., to those Buddhist contemplative practices that developed independently of them, or, alternatively, attempts to extract Buddhist practices from the models of reality, etc., that inform and are built into them. The authors can likewise explore how one and the same Buddhist practice can be interpreted by using contradictory models of reality, etc., thereby undermining the claim that for such a practice to succeed, one has to hold a specific view of reality, etc.
Please note that we are interested in papers that mostly engage Buddhist materials in primary languages such as Pali, Sanskrit, Tibetan, Chinese, Thai, etc. For this Special Issue, we will not be accepting articles that are mostly based on secondary sources or articles that fall outside the scope of Buddhist views and practices.
We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 200–300 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the Guest Editor (ykomarovski2@unl.edu) or to Religions editorial office (kallie.chen@mdpi.com). Abstracts will be reviewed by the Guest Editor for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer-review.
To apply, click here.