{"id":82198,"date":"2018-10-22T11:07:54","date_gmt":"2018-10-22T18:07:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=82198"},"modified":"2018-10-22T11:07:54","modified_gmt":"2018-10-22T18:07:54","slug":"nama-rupa-the-buddhist-body-and-mind-concept-is-not-non-duality-it-is-the-embodied-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/10\/22\/nama-rupa-the-buddhist-body-and-mind-concept-is-not-non-duality-it-is-the-embodied-mind\/","title":{"rendered":"Nama-Rupa -the Buddhist Body and Mind concept is not non-duality, It is the embodied Mind"},"content":{"rendered":"

Modern Buddhism<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

The history of the embodied approach in cognitive science (sometimes misleadingly called Embodied Cognitive Science) is woven with Buddhist links and references. There were indications that perception, language, thought and consciousness are fundamentally embedded in living bodies and in their relations with their environments.<\/p>\n

Although the conditions for moving into a second phase in cognitive science matured through debates within the scientific community, early articulations of both criticism and the alternatives were raised in connection with Buddhism. The idea that the mind is a living and embodied entity, not a disembodied reasoning mechanism, has been expressed in the Buddhist inspired\u00a0Shifting Worlds Changing Minds<\/em>\u00a0(Hayward, 1987), and more so in\u00a0The Embodied Mind<\/em>\u00a0(Varela, et al., 1991). Hayward, Varela, Thomson and Rosch all drew on existing discussions in cognitive science and endeavoured to link them to aspects of Buddhist philosophy and practice. The Embodied Mind became a classic in the philosophy of cognitive science and is widely cited.<\/p>\n

The question that concerns us here is the actual Buddhist contribution to the development of the embodied approach that is suggested in The Embodied Mind. The authors call for a revolution in cognitive science and bring forward a radical critique of the. Their criticism is directed at the assumed division between an independently existing \u00abexternal\u00bb world of objects and events, and their \u00abinternal\u00bb representation in the symbolic computational environment of the brain or mind. They suggest that both scientific findings and Buddhist thought challenge this idea and suggest an alternative.<\/p>\n

The alternative consists of an \u00abenactive\u00bb account in which mind is embodied, not detached, and the \u00abworld\u00bb is being created and is not pregiven. This\u00a0insight, they suggest, cannot be fully achieved without exercising \u00abmindfulness\u00bb, a practice directly absorbed from Buddhism, which will cause the practitioner \u00abto experience what one\u2019s mind is doing as it does it\u00bb (Varela, et al., 1991: 23). In other words, mindfulness meditation is the missing phenomenological link in cognitive science; it is a method for exploring and knowing what human experience is. This conception, that Buddhist mindfulness meditation is a valid scientific tool for investigating experience, appears also in\u00a0Shifting Worlds Changing Minds<\/em>\u00a0(Hayward, 1987: 192-194), and is echoed in later discussions (Rosch, 1997), and more recently in the writing of Alan Wallace.(9)<\/p>\n

Is it true that the \u00abrevolution\u00bb suggested in\u00a0The Embodied Mind<\/em>\u00a0entailed a Buddhist input? Looking backwards on this publication, it is clear that the embodied approach in cognitive science was part of a bigger movement that was promoted by thinkers who had no affinity with Buddhist thought.<\/p>\n

What Buddhism Taught Cognitive Science about Self, Mind and Brain<\/strong>
\nPosted on May 30th, 2016<\/p>\n

Asaf Federman, Institute of Advance Study & Department of Psychology, Warwick University<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

What Buddhism Taught Cognitive Science about Self, Mind and Brain<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n