Meditative Practices in the Context of Constructing and Understanding the Spatial World
Journal
Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences
Journal Volume
11
Journal Issue
4
Pages
515-531
Date Issued
2018-12-01
Author(s)
Abstract
© 2018, Fudan University. Major Buddhist traditions, especially Yogâcāra Buddhism, suggest that both mental activities and meditative practices play determinative roles in constructing and understanding the spatial world. Concerning the spatial world, which is closely related to the temporal world, numerous passages in the Āgama-sūtras indicate that such a set of meditative practices as the “eight levels of liberation” (aṣṭau vimokṣāḥ) can perform a pioneering function, on the one hand, in understating how the realm of desire of the spatial world is both constructed by and therefore confined by sentient beings’ desire-infused mental activities, and on the other hand, in expanding the spatial world from the realm of desire to those of form and formless. The sixth chapter of the Saṃdhi-nirmocana-sūtra discusses in detail how and why a bodhisattva practices the meditation of quietude and vision. Along the line of the quietude meditation, various discursive constructions of time and space can actually be appeased. Along the line of the insight meditation, the unreality of identity in relation to time and space can be clearly recognized. In view of such reasoning, this study will investigate how the Saṃdhi-nirmocana-sūtra explicates the way in which mental activities and meditative practices are intrinsic in the construction and understanding of the spatial world. After detailed exploration of the multiple roles played by meditative practices in shaping the spatial world, this study will conclude with a brief examination of the thematic consistency among these two texts.
Subjects
Liberation | Meditation | Space–time | Yogâcāra Buddhism
Type
journal article