Religions
March 28, 2019
C. Miller
3 citations
This article outlines a proposed upper-division undergraduate theology course that introduces Jainism through the lenses of yoga and ecology. The course covers Jain history and philosophy while also incorporating basic Jain contemplative practices. These practices are framed not as self-care techniques but, following Jain textual sources, as methods for cultivating ethical relationships and empathy with the world. The author positions this pedagogy as a form of high-impact learning and suggests that completing the course will better equip students to respond to shared social and environmental crises. The article serves as both an introduction of the course to the academic community and an invitation to scholars of South Asian religions to adopt this approach.
Religions
September 6, 2016
Jeffrey C. Ruff
3 citations
Scholars of esoteric traditions are increasingly collaborating with cognitive science, neuroscience, and anthropology to study contemplative practices such as meditation, mindfulness, and ritual. This paper responds to recent interdisciplinary work, aiming to develop a new vocabulary for studying Hindu Tantra and related traditions, as urged by Glen Hayes. The author draws on scientific approaches rarely cited in this field and reflects on what the emerging research demands conceptually and logically. Key concepts examined include confusion, mindfulness, humor, and dispassionate vulnerability, which help clarify the direction and meaning of these interdisciplinary projects.
Religions
May 30, 2025
Xiaoshuang Liu
2 citations
Since China joined the UNESCO intangible heritage convention in 2004, private shamanism—centered on the belief in connecting heaven and earth—has been legally incorporated into the national heritage management system as regulated public heritage, provided it avoids religious attributes. Fieldwork and historical analysis show a new symbiotic relationship between public heritage and private belief in Northeast Chinese shamanism. This takes two forms: the emergence of public heritage from private practices, and the expansion of private belief's existence through public heritage support. This bidirectional model challenges the idea that heritagization weakens faith, offering a new framework for understanding ritual systems today.
Religions
May 19, 2025
Eric Steinhart
2 citations
New psychedelic religious organizations in the United States operate in a legal gray area and require philosophically well-developed doctrines to gain legal permission to use psychedelics. Philosophers of religion can assist in developing these doctrines. From a philosophical perspective, six criteria are derived that such doctrines should satisfy. A modernized Platonism is shown as an illustration that meets these criteria. Just as bioethicists aid medical practice, philosophers of religion can support the legal proceedings of psychedelic churches.
Religions
December 25, 2024
Ali Qadir, Tatiana Tiaynen-Qadir
2 citations
The study of mysticism has stalled between two opposing views: a naive realism that assumes a universal core to mystical experiences and a critical stance that questions whether the category of mysticism itself is valid. This review examines 20th-century scholarship to understand why the term was largely abandoned. Analyzing key literature from religious studies, history, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, and psychology through a critical realist lens, the authors identify two axes of debate. One axis concerns whether mysticism has a reified, fixed essence or a relativized, context-dependent substance. The other axis asks whether mystical knowledge is limited to rare elites or accessible to all.
Religions
April 25, 2024
Fazhao Shi
2 citations
The life of Chinese Buddhist monk Master Hongyi (1880–1942) demonstrates how transformative encounters with impermanence can guide contemporary death education. Drawing on historical records, personal writings, and accounts from his contemporaries, the paper traces his journey from grief and existential crisis to enlightened equanimity toward mortality. It examines how Buddhist practices helped him find meaning and liberation amid aging, illness, and dying. The proposed "Hongyi Model" integrates spiritual, psychological, and artistic dimensions of his approach into modern death education, suggesting that Buddhist teachings can foster authentic, meaningful engagement with mortality for educators, counselors, and end-of-life care professionals.
Religions
April 25, 2024
Ronen Pinkas
2 citations
Erich Fromm's position of nontheistic mysticism is central to his humanistic ethics, bridging mysticism and organized religion, religion and religiosity, and connecting religion, philosophy, and social psychoanalysis. This position involves negative theology, the x experience, and idolatry, and it relates to Fromm's understanding of human nature, self-realization, and a sane society. Contrary to some scholarly views, Fromm's humanism is not radical atheistic secularism; instead, it internalizes transcendent divinity into the human subject as anthropological-ethical phenomena while warning that atheism risks idolatrous identification of humans with God. Nontheistic mysticism functions as a consciousness mechanism for fine-tuning moral compasses, affected by societal pathologies of normalcy.
Religions
April 15, 2024
Minna Sa
2 citations
In contemporary Daur shamanism, healing practices blend traditional beliefs with modern medical knowledge. This case study of the Daur shamanic lʊs (river spirit) ritual examines concepts of actual and virtual disease. The ceremony involves symbolic acts, oracles from spiritual guides, and unique healing techniques such as dʊməl, tærmit, xʊræ-xʊræ, arʃan, altəŋ sʊlʊ, kʊtʊr bʊjin, and taboo. These methods aim to achieve preventive and realistic healing for individuals and the community. The lʊs ritual functions as a transformative process that incorporates diverse healing forms.
Religions
July 14, 2023
Gencang Meng
2 citations
The paper examines Khorchin Mongolian bone-setting to show that religious healing and modern medicine are not in binary opposition. It argues that this bone-setting practice is a product of interaction between alternative medicine and syncretistic local knowledge, and explores the transformation of shamanisms within China's nation-state building discourse.
Religions
February 24, 2023
José Eduardo Porcher, Fernando Carlucci
2 citations
The philosophy of religion has neglected practices central to traditions like Afro-Brazilian Candomblé and Umbanda—offering, sacrifice, spirit possession, and mediumship—because philosophers rely on text-based, belief-focused, institutionalized religions. Anthropologists have studied these orally transmitted traditions for nearly a century, yet philosophers lack a methodology for such practices. The authors argue this neglect is not accidental but stems from a restricted diet of examples and inattention to ethnography. They critique Kevin Schilbrack’s proposed embodiment paradigm, conceptual metaphor theory, and extended mind thesis, finding his view of language as linear, his problematic conception of the body, and his misleading account of cognitive levels inadequate. Instead, they conclude that the philosophy of religion should adopt enactivism to treat religious practices as cognitive enterprises.
Religions
May 27, 2022
Louis Komjathy
2 citations
Animals teach each other, and humans open to cross-species dialogue can learn alternative ways of perceiving and being, challenging anthropocentric views of consciousness. The article argues that equity, diversity, and inclusion efforts should extend to non-human animals, which may be key to human freedom, wellness, and justice. It explores religion and animals through contemplation, blending Animal Studies, Contemplative Studies, Daoist Studies, and Religious Studies, with focus on Daoist animal engagement, including companionship and becoming animal. Theologically, the Dao manifests in every being, enabling inter-species communication and identification. The author suggests that 'animal contemplation'—centering the animal question and shared animality—offers opportunities for becoming fully human and may help address ecological collapse.
Religions
April 29, 2021
Anne Austad, Hanneke Muthert
2 citations
William James's classic work examines the personal, experiential core of religious life across diverse traditions, focusing on the feelings, actions, and individual experiences of religious subjects rather than on institutional or theological doctrines. He argues that the value of religious experience should be judged by its practical consequences or 'fruits' in a person's life, such as moral improvement and psychological transformation, rather than by the truth of its intellectual claims. The book draws on a wide range of autobiographical and case-study material to illustrate phenomena like conversion, mysticism, and saintliness, ultimately suggesting that religious experiences represent a genuine aspect of human consciousness with significant adaptive and ethical benefits.
Religions
March 20, 2026
Byoungjai Lee
1 citation
A commentary on an ancient Buddhist text describes five hundred monks who, during intensive meditation, experienced perceptual disturbances, fear, somatic distress, and cognitive impairment—symptoms that map closely onto a modern taxonomy of meditation-related difficulties. The Buddha prescribed five protective practices: loving-kindness meditation, protective chant recitation, contemplation of impurity, mindfulness of death, and arousal of religious urgency. This sequential system progresses from emotional reframing of fear to deconstruction of bodily and existential attachment, culminating in restored soteriological motivation. The ancient prescriptive system offers a meaning-centered complement to contemporary contemplative science, bridging phenomenological classification and intervention.
Religions
November 6, 2025
Simon Dein
1 citation
Postsecularism challenges the Weberian idea that modernity inevitably leads to the disenchantment and decline of magic. Magic persists in the West, but has been transformed through psychologization. The concept of participatory consciousness explains how everyday life blends secular, spiritual, and religious aspects. Drawing on ethnographic studies of Wiccan rituals, the paper shows that practitioners transition from an ordinary to a magical worldview through ritual performance. This involves analogical thinking, imagination, and affect, fostering a holistic, enchanted worldview with meaningful connections between people, events, and objects. Wiccans blend nature-oriented spirituality with modern technology and individualized paths.
Religions
September 18, 2025
Ron Cole-Turner
1 citation
Psychedelic drugs show promise for treating mental health conditions by disrupting prior patterns and increasing neurogenesis and neuroplasticity. The social context during and after psychedelic experiences causally impacts outcomes. Modern cultural contexts may thwart spiritual integration, but local support groups help, especially for those reflecting on spiritual or religious themes. Christian communities can provide both a local social context and a set of theological beliefs that support spiritual growth and psychedelic spiritual integration.
Religions
September 9, 2025
Fides del Castillo, Gregory S. Ching, Clarence Darro del Castillo et al.
1 citation
Near-death experiences (NDEs) often lead to religious change, but most research has focused on Western contexts. In a mixed-methods study of 683 Filipino adults who reported having NDEs, most participants said their spirituality increased or stayed the same afterward. Only age significantly predicted perceived spiritual change. Qualitative analysis of narrative responses identified six themes: altruism and helping others, challenges to spirituality, increased religious practices, no changes or decreased faith, reflection and growth, and validation of divine presence. The findings show how personal experience, identity, and cultural beliefs shape religious meaning-making after NDEs, offering a culturally grounded understanding of spiritual change.
Religions
August 20, 2025
Márk Losoncz
1 citation
Pure consciousness—characterized by unstructuredness, maximal simplicity, selflessness, awareness as such, zero-perspective, and absence of specific phenomenal qualities—can be fully experienced in the psychedelic state, and this experience is phenomenologically indistinguishable from pure consciousness achieved through meditation. This directly refutes Metzinger's claim that meditation is the sole best candidate for attaining pure consciousness. The article advocates soft phenomenological perennialism, which holds that all pure consciousness experiences share an identical core, whether induced by psychedelics or meditation. Such experiences can yield epistemic insights into consciousness, self, and reality, and can inform understanding of religious-spiritual concepts like God, though naturalistic critiques caution against religious-spiritual interpretations. A spiritual naturalistic interpretation of pure consciousness is increasingly important.
Religions
July 22, 2025
Mateo Sánchez Petrement
1 citation
The essay argues that new materialist theories from critical posthumanism and psychedelic drugs can mutually enrich each other. Posthumanism's focus on relationality and embodiment helps articulate the ontological and ethical implications of psychedelic experiences of interconnectedness, while psychedelics can enact a 'posthuman phenomenology' that reveals human entanglement with more-than-human environments. The author contends that psychedelics' potential for social transformation is best understood through a materialist lens, not by opposing science to spirituality. Pushing against the science-spirituality binary, which reproduces modern individualism, the essay calls for increased attention to material transcorporeality. It concludes that realizing psychedelics' political value requires a 'material spirituality' grounded in a non-reductive redefinition of matter and consciousness as embodied.
Religions
June 13, 2025
Sabine Grunwald
1 citation
Bodhisattvas—awakened beings in Buddhist traditions—are examined through multiple lenses: as symbols, ideals, mystical figures, naturalized beings, and integral visions. The paper contrasts Theravāda and Mahāyāna Buddhist motivations with secular Western interpretations, such as neurophysicalism and participatory spirituality. The traditional paradox of liberating oneself and all beings while realizing emptiness (śūnyatā) is explored, along with issues of illusion, moral agency, mysticism, devotion, and naturalization. Ethical foundations of traditional Buddhist and Western bodhisattva concepts are critically compared, and their moral implications are discussed within the context of moral relativism in Post-Truth American culture.
Religions
February 8, 2025
Philip Wilson
1 citation
Philosophy of religion should move away from abstract theorizing and toward the concrete, lived reality of religious belief, as argued by John Cottingham. This paper uses Ludwig Wittgenstein's methods to support that shift, showing how literature—such as Shūshaku Endō's Silence, Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, and the Gospel of John—is not merely illustrative of religion but constitutive of belief itself. Wittgenstein's remarks on mysticism in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus are read as a literary transmutation that creates a non-abstract mysticism, placed in dialogue with Angelus Silesius's poetry and Leo Tolstoy's The Gospel in Brief. Wittgenstein's thought is also relevant to debates on cultural Christianity.
Religions
September 24, 2024
Konstantinos Zorbas
1 citation
In Tuva, South Siberia, people often blame misfortune on magical assault and vampirism. Based on fieldwork with an Association of Shamans, this article examines rituals that redress curse afflictions under Russian political domination. It argues that parasitical worship and occult threats are central to political power in Tuva and beyond. Shamanic healing symbols draw on hunting and animal spirits from Indigenous Siberian cosmologies, with healing efficacy built through engagement with these symbols. Ritual risk underpins symbolic resolution. While shamans give refuge to displaced spirits, Tibetan Buddhism offers an alternative healing path. The analysis reveals indigenous perceptions of a cursed landscape where darkness and political sponsors are confronted by Buddhist rituals, highlighting the unresolved drama of itinerant spirits and shamanic ancestral souls.
Religions
September 15, 2024
Magdalene Thomassen
1 citation
The article examines why Edith Stein, after her early doctoral work on empathy, stopped using the term in her later philosophy. It argues that the concept of 'empathy' became too narrow for what Stein wanted to describe. Following her conversion to Christianity, Stein expanded her understanding of personhood and social relations, integrating them with the experience of a loving God. The author shows how Stein's early ideas on empathy, otherness, and personhood reach their full development in her later writings, where the encounter with otherness and the unfolding of the person are inseparable from divine love.
Religions
August 23, 2024
Patricia Enedudu Idoko
1 citation
Mystical experiences are central to major religious traditions, often centered on an ineffable mystery. This article compares the Islamic mystic Rabia al-Adawiyya and the Christian mystic Catherine of Genoa, avoiding both essentialist approaches that only seek universal similarities and constructivist approaches that focus solely on differences. Instead, the comparison highlights both similarities and differences to illustrate an interreligious spirituality that transcends traditions. The study is structured in four parts: an introduction to mystical experiences, overviews of the two mystics' lives, a comparative analysis of their mystical characteristics, and a discussion of how their experiences model interreligious spirituality and friendship.
Religions
March 6, 2024
Zhengfu Chen
1 citation
The Miao (Hmong) community in Southwest China blends shamanic healing with scientific medicine, rooted in a worldview where soul and body are intertwined and ancestors, spirits, and shamans coexist. Through autoethnography, participant observation, and interviews, this research follows a Miao woman’s healing journey, showing how traditional customs and local knowledge are synthesized with modern treatments. Despite barriers such as limited healthcare access and high costs, many Miao still consult shamans, demonstrating resilience in navigating both systems. The work argues that recognizing this syncretism can improve intercultural communication and foster culturally sensitive healthcare, ultimately enhancing well-being for the community.
Religions
February 23, 2024
Jianyu Shen
1 citation
Early Jewish and Daoist hagiographies share a common pattern for constructing the image of saints as quasi-divine beings during their earthly lives. Comparing Sefer Shivchei Ha-Ar”i and Shenxian Zhuan reveals three key phases: mystical birth, life in seclusion, and divine encounters. In these stages, sages receive esoteric wisdom and godly features that make them extraordinary exemplars of religiosity. Both traditions emphasize human-centered sainthood rather than divine endorsement, where painstaking periods of self-isolation and learning with true masters are more crucial to the transformation of identity than predestined birth. The earthly realm serves as a dynamic incubator that breeds holiness for the most qualified souls.