Contexts and Dialogue: Yogacara Buddhism and Modern Psychology on the Subliminal Mind

Description

Are there Buddhist conceptions of the unconscious? If so, are they more Freudian, Jungian, or something else? If not, can Buddhist conceptions be reconciled with the Freudian, Jungian, or other models? These are some of the questions that have motivated modern scholarship to approach ālayavijñāna, the storehouse consciousness, formulated in Yogācāra Buddhism as a subliminal reservoir of tendencies, habits, and future possibilities. Tao Jiang argues convincingly that such questions are inherently problematic because they frame their interpretations of the Buddhist notion largely in terms of responses to modern psychology. He proposes that, if we are to understand ālayavijñāna properly and compare it with the unconscious responsibly, we need to change the way the questions are posed so that ālayavijñāna and the unconscious can first be understood within their own contexts and then recontextualized within a dialogical setting. In so doing, certain paradigmatic assumptions embedded in the original frameworks of Buddhist and modern psychological theories are exposed. Jiang brings together Xuan Zang’s ālayavijñāna and Freud’s and Jung’s unconscious to focus on what the differences are in the thematic concerns of the three theories, why such differences exist in terms of their objectives, and how their methods of theorization contribute to these differences. Contexts and Dialogue puts forth a fascinating, erudite, and carefully argued presentation of the subliminal mind. It proposes a new paradigm in comparative philosophy that examines the what, why, and how in navigating the similarities and differences of philosophical systems through contextualization and recontextualization.

Get the book

Amazon.com

Search the book

eBay.com

Search the book

Other editions

• 

  Contexts and Dialogue: Yogacara Buddhism and Modern Psychology on the...

  • 2006-11-30
  • 215 pages
  • Ebook
  • University of Hawaii Press

Similar books

• 

  Abduction, Belief, and Context in Dialogue: Studies in Computational Pragmatics

  By Harry C. Bunt, W. J. Black

  It allows for providing a general context for dialogues. New dialogue situations are defined as subconcepts of basic dialogue situations. The derivation of the attitudes in a certain dialogue situation is focussed by taking assertions ...

• 

  Approaching Dialogue: Talk, Interaction and Contexts in Dialogical Perspectives

  By Per Linell

  Stressing aspects of interaction, joint construction and cultural embeddedness, and drawing upon extensive theoretical and empirical research carried out in different traditions, this book aims at an integrating synthesis.

• 

  Women, Wisdom, and Witness: Engaging contexts in Conversation

  By Rosemary P. Carbine, Kathleen Dolphin

  This collection of essays by seminar members addresses significant contexts of contemporary women's experience: suffering and resistance, education, and the crossroads of religion and public life.

• 

  Advising in Language Learning: Dialogue, Tools and Context

  By Jo Mynard, Luke Carson

  In this volume the editors set out the general aims and understandings of the field, illustrating the innovative manner in which advisors around the world are working with learners and researching the practice of ALL.

• 

  Dialogue in Spanish: Studies in Functions and Contexts

  By Lidia Rodríguez-Alfano, Dale April Koike

  This edited collection of twelve original studies contributes to a broad comprehension of dialogue in two general contexts: personal interactions among friends and family; and public speech, such as political debates, medical interviews, ...

• 

  Early Christian Families in Context: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue

  By Carolyn Osiek, David L. Balch

  ... 377 Metzger, L R., 366 Meunier, M., 260n.9, 377 Meyer, M. W., 250n.66, 377 Meyers, C. L., 49n.8, 50n.10, 53n.18, 54n.23, 57n.24, 59na.29,31, 60na.36,60, 65n.44, 130, 377, 378 Meyers, E. M., xi, 44, 44n.2, 49n.8, 50n.10, 53nn.

• 

  Chinese Thought in a Global Context: A Dialogue Between Chinese and Western Philosophical Approaches

  By Karl-Heinz Pohl

  This book contains the papers of a symposium on the Chinese and Western cultural traditions, with topics ranging from questions of cross-cultural hermeneutics to politics, ethical values and aesthetics.

• 

  A Sufi-Jewish Dialogue: Philosophy and Mysticism in Bahya ibn Paquda's "Duties of the Heart"

  By Diana Lobel

  Readers who know the book primarily in its Hebrew version have likely lost sight of the work's original Arabic context and its immersion in Islamic mystical literature.

• 

  The Challenges to Mission and Dialogue in a Pluralist Context

  By Cornelius Mereweather-Thompson

  6.5.3.2 The formulated definition of pluralism revisited The research revealed from the control case studies of Ireland and Mauritania (as singular/non-plural contexts) that pluralism is much too open a society for mission and dialogue ...

• 

  The New Dialectic: Conversational Contexts of Argument

  By Douglas N. Walton

  As Irwin explains , Aristotelian demonstration is ultimately based on first principles ( axioms ) that cannot themselves be proven by demonstration , and then the sequence of demonstrative argument proceeds from these naturally prior ...