Published Article Full-text Now Available At:
https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/ijts-transpersonalstudies/vol42/iss2/8
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2023
Abstract
Mindfulness meditation can provide salutary therapeutic benefits, as well as lead advanced practitioners to states of calm and equanimity. In this paper, we argue that such forms of meditation may subtly entrap practitioners in circular, self-reflexive feedback loops. Because these meditation traps fail to clearly discern the operations of mind, they offer a temporary oasis of peace within an unaltered dualistic realm of mind that leaves the root delusion of self-identity intact. Drawing upon Tarthang Tulku’s seminal book Revelations of Mind, we present what he refers to as the “regime of mind,” the processes of cognition, identification and re-cognition in which body, mind and language work in unison to maintain a persuasive experience of a self that knows an external world. Because these very same mechanisms are operative in meditation, the states of silence, no-thought, peace, calm, and mental blankness that can occur deceive practitioners into interpreting such experiences as signs of progress and spiritual attainment. By developing an understanding of how the regime of mind operates, such clarity can function as a corrective to the common traps of meditative practice fueled and obscured by subtle dualistic structures of self-identification and self-grasping. This clear ground of understanding can reveal how reflexively dualistic structures of knowing are constructed, opening up wider focal-settings that go beyond dualistic mind, offering more liberating options for exercising human freedom and intelligence.
Recommended Citation
Dixey, Richard and Purser, Ronald E., "Mindfulness Traps and the Entanglement of Self: An Inquiry into the Regime of Mind" (2023). International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive. 57.
https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/advance-archive/57
Included in
Alternative and Complementary Medicine Commons, Animal-Assisted Therapy Commons, Art Therapy Commons, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Commons, Dance Movement Therapy Commons, Developmental Psychology Commons, Health Psychology Commons, Human Factors Psychology Commons, Marriage and Family Therapy and Counseling Commons, Multicultural Psychology Commons, Other Mental and Social Health Commons, Other Philosophy Commons, Other Psychiatry and Psychology Commons, Other Psychology Commons, Philosophy of Mind Commons, Philosophy of Science Commons, Psychiatric and Mental Health Commons, Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy Commons, Psychological Phenomena and Processes Commons, Religion Commons, Somatic Psychology Commons, Theory and Philosophy Commons, Transpersonal Psychology Commons