#contemplative-traditions

#contemplative-traditions

When you think about the goings-on inside an average church, you might envision a sermon, a reading from the Bible or a song or two. Something that's less expected would be, for instance, a guided group meditation - and yet meditation has been showing up in a growing number of religious contexts where you might not expect it. That, at least, is one of the big takeaways from a recent Associated Press investigation by Luis Andres Henao and Deepa Bharath.

A jewel is a common metaphor used for awareness in many contemplative traditions. Like a jewel, we could say that awareness is both multi-faceted and precious. I've surveyed a large portion of the traditional and contemporary literature of nonduality from a wide array of traditions such as Buddhism (Tibetan Dzogchen and Mahamudra, Zen, Thai Forest Theravada), Taoism, Hinduism (Advaita Vedanta, Kashmiri Shaivism), and Western mysticism and philosophy (Christian, Sufi, Judaism, Neoplatonism, Pyrrhonism).