01 Meditation Panel Preface.indd - United Nations Day of Vesak 2013

Ven. Dr. Jinwol Lee’s paper on Seon meditation discusses much of the historical
developments of Seon, and sites the writings of Professor Robert E. Buswell, Jr.; however, a number
of authors examine innovations within meditative practice in different geographical and historical
contexts, exploring ways that new practices, ways of working and doctrines have transformed
pre-existing doctrines and practices. The other welcomed contribution to such understanding comes
from Prof. Buswell, who, in ‘The Transformation of Doubt (ijng)in Kanhwa Sn:
The Testimony of Gaofeng Yuanmiao(1238-1295)explores the emergence and increasing
inuence of new and creative meditative practices, formulation and language, which cannot be
attributed to Indian sources, within Eastern Buddhist praxis and doctrine. As part of its critique
of Sino-Indic traditions, and as a demonstration of its autonomy, Seon experimented with forms
of rhetoric, as well as practice, it considered proleptic and transformative. Paying particular attention
to the notion and experience of ‘doubt’, usually discussed in Indian sources as the fth of the meditative
hindrances, Buswell demonstrates how the public case and the hwadu, newly developed Chan/Seon
catalystic meditative devices, are used in Korea to provoke and exacerbate a different kind of
doubt, that coalesces into a palpable sensation that comes to pervade all of one’s thoughts, feelings,
emotions, and eventually even one’s physical body. This doubt (yiqing) plays a crucial role in
kanhua/kanhwa meditation, and is emblematic especially of the Linji school of the classical
and post-classical Seon periods. Buswell demonstrates that such doubt, as described in particular
with a startlingly eloquent evocation of paradox in the work of Yunmiao, is perceived as a means
of engaging a creative dynamic in the body and mind between a painful knowledge of one’s own
ignorance and an implicit and equally pervasive faith in an inherent enlightenment. Together,
the author notes, those provide an existential quandary whose colliding contradictoriness, experienced
within the body and mind of the practitioner, nd resolution and fruition through practice, the ‘topic
of inquiry’ (hwadu) and the ‘public case’ (gong’an), in the nal release of awakening. A strong lay
element is also identied in this teaching.
Ms. Pyi Phyo Kyaw explores the ‘The Pahna (Conditional Relations) and Buddhist
Meditation: Application of the Teachings in the Pahna in Insight (Vipassan) Meditation Practice’,
in Burma, a country where the seventh book of the Abhidhamma has always held a particularly key
position in doctrine, practice and ritual. In this instance, rather than practice inuencing theory,
theory is deliberately employed as a means of sharpening, directing and shaping practice. Delineating
in brief the twenty-four conditional relations, the author describes how these paccayas, whose
formulation is perceived within Southern Buddhism as the most profound Buddhist teachings on
interconnectedness, are used both as meditative tools and as a means of understanding experience
at both a momentary and sequential level. Directed towards understanding and applying within
meditation and daily life, through the agent of wise attention (yoniso manasikra), the Pahna
guides those practicing within primarily vipassan-based traditions. In this capacity, the teaching
of the paccayas has exercised an appeal to an unusually strong lay as well as monastic following,
for whom the Pahna is regarded as the embodiment of the Buddha’s omniscience, the Buddhasabbaññuta-ña.
Ms. Xialoi Lei in ‘A Study on the Development of Meditation in Theravada Buddhism and
Chinese Buddhism’, notes the prevalence of mental problems within a global society and records
attendant problems such as a stigma attached to mental health issues, the fact that treatment ignores
preventative action and a lack of care in addressing the interface between mind and body. Growing
interest in a number of Buddhist meditative systems has been evident since the 1960s: this paper
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