1. RE: Heart-Meditation and Jappa with the Support of Kundalini
That was a generous personal sharing ... a rather orderly
arousal/awakening in a devotional context employing quieting &
simplicity, having perhaps more
normative significance for those formed in the traditions of
the West? than certain other meditative techniques? Is that
the gist?
Any mapping of various theological concepts interreligiously
will always be more problematical, of course, than the mapping
of any praxes and their
ensuing phenomenal experiences and it is, indeed, the latter
which provides the valuable take-away from this sharing, in my
view. It was very engaging
and in a sweet, gentle way.
Further, the author was wise, I believe, to leave
phenomenological categorizing (metaphysical references to
kundalini/shakti/prana/energy) to science, as nothing is
really lost in making vague rather than specific references to
such realities, which hopefully will be explored more and more
in clinical-like studies using rigorous methodologies.
Finally, the author mentioned Zen & Buddhist approaches,
contrasting them to this more Bahkti yogic-like path (author
did not reference bhakti, which I
found curious), and I would only point out that the author may
have had a rather limited exposure to and knowledge of those
approaches because there
are some rather prominent devotional strains in Buddhism, in
general, even Zen, in particular (not to mention there are
devotional elements in various
Hindu advaitan strains, too). It is perhaps an accident of
history that the Zen strain that was popularized (and often
misappropriated) in the West came
mostly out of Japan and that led, unfortunately, to some
rather radicalized notions of nonduality, at least, where the
Kyoto school's philosophical
tradition may have come into play. And this also led, in some
cases, to some unhelpful quietest tendencies in the West's
Christianization of Zen, at
least where the Soto school of Zen exerted some influence.
This is just to say that we would not want to close off our
dialogue with a wide swath of other
Eastern approaches, neither at the level of practice nor
philosophy/metaphysics (nor theologically, but that is far
more problematical) nor would we want to caricaturize them
based on certain schools that are not representative of those
traditions writ large.
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