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This chapter details how as Buddha settled down in the grove near Kusinara the sal trees burst forth in abundant untimely blossoms that fell, covering his body. Heavenly coral tree flowers also fell from the sky, together with sandalwood powder, sprinkling and covering his body in homage. It describes how Buddha rehearsed the levels of meditation, just as he performed them during the watches of the night at Bodh-Gaya. Traversing and then reversing the levels of meditation, he attained final liberation.

This chapter focuses on the basic idea of gauge mediation. There are three sectors in the theory: a dynamical SUSY breaking sector, a messenger sector, and the MSSM. SUSY breaking is communicated to the messenger sector so that the messengers have a SUSY breaking spectrum. They also have SM gauge interactions, which then communicate SUSY breaking to the ordinary superpartners. This mechanism has the great advantage that since the gauge interactions are flavour-blind, it does not introduce FCNCs which are an enormous problem for supergravity mediation models. Exercises are provided at the end of the chapter.

Chapter 5 addresses what many today would consider the central ritual of Zen—zazen—or seated meditation. Although zazen is commonly understood by way of instrumental logic as a means or method for attaining enlightenment, from the Sōtō Zen perspective initiated by Dōgen and featured in this essay, the order of cause and effect is reversed—zazen is “the practice‐realization of totally culminated awakening.” In developing this approach to meditation, Leighton traces its roots to Vajrayana teachings that were influential not simply in Japanese Shingon, but also in Nichiren, Tendai, Jōdo, and Zen. Upon that Buddhist foundation, the essay develops the “unity of practice and realization” by showing how this theme appears in Dōgen's instructions for meditation ritual (Eihei shingi), in his extended essays (Shōbōgenzō), and in direct teachings to his monks (Eihei kōroku). The essay claims that when meditation is taken as “the expression or function of buddhas,” rather than as a technique of spiritual acquisition, an emphasis on meditative awareness in everyday life is made possible.

The meaning, purpose, and social significance of Buddhist meditation has changed in important ways due to its encounter with modernity. While often seen as the central practice of Buddhism, it has in some contexts also become detraditionalized, privatized, and unmoored from institutional authority and tradition. In places like psychologists’ offices and health clubs it has taken on a life independent of Buddhism altogether. This transformation is largely due to its encounter with the discourses and practices of western modernity, especially scientific rationalism, Romanticism, and psychology. Through them, meditation has been drawn into the orbit of the “subjective turn” in Europe and North America. Meditation has claimed a place within this turn by being construed as a spiritual technique aspiring to universal truth, as an empirical “inner science,” as a method for the enhancement of the individual’s freedom from social influence, and as a method for excavating the unconscious.

This chapter studies the Hongzhou school's teachings. The first part surveys the religious and intellectual milieus of Tang Buddhism, which formed the backdrop for the development of the Hongzhou school's doctrines and its approaches to spiritual cultivation. The second part offers an analysis of the Hongzhou school's attitudes in four key areas of medieval religious life: monastic mores and ideals, meditative praxis, canonicity and religious authority, and the use of scriptures. The exploration of their basic doctrinal and ethical frameworks shows that Mazu and his disciples were engaged in the creative reformulation of age-old monastic ideals and outlooks, which helped situate the Hongzhou school within a larger nexus of canonically inspired traditions of contemplative monasticism.

This chapter presents the lack of consensus between meditators and researchers over the effects of meditation. The results of the research are reviewed and a variety of unexplored research areas are identified. It is argued that much of value can be gained from a careful reading of Eastern psychology and from self-concept theory in Western psychology. Illustrations of the power of such theory for hypothesis derivation are presented. Self-awareness theory, reversal theory, and social psychology are also discussed as fruitful generators of predictions about the effects of meditation. Finally, it is argued that research on meditation presents a particular challenge to psychologists.

Chapter 1 sets a new paradigm of research and applied practice based on the ontology of oneness; introduces medical ethnomusicology; lays a foundation for the study of music, health, and healing through the harmony of science and religion; introduces music-prayer-meditation dynamics, neuroplasticity, cognitive flexibility, entrainment, holistic embodiment (or embeingment), and the Human Certainty Principle as culture-transcendent processes and principles that undergird musical healing; challenges moral and cultural relativism, focusing on the importance of applied work to benefit the whole of humanity; introduces maddâh devotional music and the culture of Badakhshan, Tajikistan as the primary cultural example of musical healing. Core theoretical and philosophical frameworks are established that draw on local beliefs and practices, ethnomusicology, health science, neuro- and cognitive science, and quantum physics.

Chapter 2 explicates the five factors of music, medicine, and culture—the physical/biological, psychological, social, emotional, and spiritual dimensions of life that must be factored into human experience to bring about transformation in one or all dimensions; builds upon the quantum theories of Planck, Einstein, and Heisenberg, to explore the culture-specific, culture-transcendent and potentially universal aspects of these factors, focusing on the history and culture of Badakhshan Tajikistan and emphasizing the role of a mystical orientation to life, the spiritual power of baraka, the practices of samâ‘ and zekr, prayer, meditation, the Persian language, and maddâh poetry play in the process of devotional musical healing. The chapter also explores collaborative and integrative research where physiological experiments can form part of ethnographic research, and ethnographic research inform experimental health science research and practice.

Chapter 3 introduces the music-prayer-meditation dynamics model and shows how it can be employed in ethnographic and health science research; presents a case study; explores cognitive flexibility as a culture-transcendent dynamic necessary to bring about healing transformations; frames the quantum field as a middle ground of transformation between the tangible and intangible, between that which is manifest as matter and that which is its source—a source that is non-physical and unmanifest; shows how cognitive flexibility is related to local beliefs, symbols, metaphors, the natural and built environment, as well as musical structures of maddâh devotional music; and shows how cognitive flexibility facilitates entering a state of higher consciousness and quantum potentiality where healing can occur.

Chapter 6 details a power-laden and affective symbol, metaphor, poetic and musical sign in Pamir culture that is central to concepts of health and healing. This is done through poetic and musical analysis that shows the pervasiveness and centrality of this local sign, which is manifest in local belief, the natural and built environment, and the musical and poetic structure of maddâh devotional music. A physiological experiment that was conducted in the context of maddâh ritual performance is presented and statistical data analyzed and interpreted showing a significant downward modulation of systolic blood pressure at p-value of .0003. Further, the culture-transcendent aspects are applied in another research project in the U.S. among a culturally diverse group of people (ages 18-85) where participants learn to create health, healing, or transformation through practices of music, sound, vocalization, and meditation. The GAP — Guided Attention Practice is presented as part of this latter research project.

Chapter 5 is divided into two sections. The first section presents an overview of the Mahayana Buddhist teachings on the perfection of meditation, dhyānapāramitā. The second section inquires into various ways to conceive of contemplative practice in the contemporary, global world. It analyzes meditation at three levels of human consciousness—immediate experience, reflective experience, and reflexivity, or self‐awareness. The chapter reflects on the relations between meditation and philosophy.

Lake Street Church, officially affiliated with the American Baptist Churches USA denomination, is “intentionally ambiguous” about its identity and draws only loose boundaries between Christians and non-Christians. Each year the church invites non-Christian representatives to participate in its Worldwide Community Sunday. The pastor sees this celebration as a way to be as “radically inclusive” as Jesus was in his own table fellowship. The church also offers regular programs on world religions, including Hindu and Buddhist meditation. The chapter features a Bhagavad Gita discussion group and interviews with church members who find Lake Street Church a supportive community for their spiritual journey. “Spiritual seekers, regardless of racial, sexual, or religious orientations are all welcome!” proclaims a church brochure, which notes that more than sixteen religious traditions are represented in the congregation.

Chapter 8 seeks to uncover the historical origins of kinhin, the ritual of walking meditation as it has been practiced in the Sōtō school of Japanese Zen. Practiced today between periods of zazen, the Sōtō style of kinhin entails an exceptionally slow pace of walking in order to coordinate each step with a full cycle of respiration. Although Sōtō monks typically attribute this practice to the founding figure, Dōgen and his teacher in China, Riggs finds the origins of the practice considerably later than this in the eighteenth century Sōtō leader Menzan Zuihō's writings, the Kinhinki, a brief text describing the practice of kinhin, and the Kinhinkimonge, a commentary connecting this practice to traditional Buddhist texts.