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

and practice is supported by an appreciative and richly diverse participation in rituals in all
categories; he found all participants accord in nding healing and deep solace at times of stress
through ritual enactment.
A very physically based contribution is provided by ‘The Philosophical Foundations of
the Tibetan Buddhist Practice of Bodily Preservation’ by Dr. Mark Owen. Explaining mardung
or kudung as a post mortuary state whereby the bodies of advanced Buddhist meditators remain
intact after death. It is possible to divide instances of mardung into two broad categories; revered
practitioners that were ‘articially’ preserved after death using complex mortuary techniques,
and ascetics and practitioners that have become ‘spontaneously’ preserved as a direct result of their
advanced spiritual attainments (rtogs).However, as the author explains, whilst a convenient division,
‘articial’ preservation is very rarely seen to preclude the spiritual adeptness or level of attainments
of the individual. Exploring various levels associated with this practice, including the underlying
basis, and issues of altruism, faith and the blessings associated it the author demonstrates the wide
range of philosophical ideas and concepts employed by Buddhists to understand the preservation
process and the agency and authority of the preserved bodies. Whilst ostensibly a subject of relatively
limited relevance, as the burgeoning study of Buddhist relics and relic veneration attests, studies in
this area have the rich potential to offer greater insights into a wide range of Buddhist concepts, and
the complex relationship between Buddhist practice, philosophy and doctrine.
Some papers draw attention to important issues that are involved in transposing Buddhist
meditative practices and doctrine to new contexts, where some aspects of theory and practice are
not yet integrated within the underlying sensibility of the host culture, and so may be marginalized.
So, ‘Dangerous Dharma, Death, and Depression: The Importance of ‘Right View’ for Practicing
Contemplation within a Western Buddhist Tradition’, by Bethany Lowe, warns that contemplation of
features such as death and suffering in a Western context, outside a traditional doctrinal framework
where the perspective of rebirth and salvation are taken as an underlying basis, can produce negative
effects. It argues that some features of the teaching, divorced from a perspective of salvation achieved
over many lifetimes, can be harmful. It raises the crucial issue as to whether it is appropriate to
introduce ideas on impermanence and death without the underlying doctrine of rebirth and karma.
Those suffering from depressive tendencies can dwell upon frightening or negative tendencies in
the teaching, and care needs to be taken that positive and afrmative meditations are offered to those
of this disposition. The author states two antidotes to this problem, based on what the author describes
as a more healthy foundation, that of ‘right view’. The rst is that reections on the negative need
to be embedded within a full salvic path and the context of the doctrine of rebirth and kamma.
All four of the noble truths need to be remembered. The second is that practitioners should be
encouraged to nd states within their practice that bring genuine contentment, a sense of condence
in the potential of the human mind, and a complete rather than partial or ‘doctored’ sense of path
that allows the factor of faith to be fully developed. This can be found, the author suggests, through,
for instance, following all the stages of the breathing mindfulness practice, rather than only selected
ones and, in her own experience, through practices that arouse, for those suited by temperament,
the powerful purity and positive features of the radiant mind and its potential. The author stresses
that inherent features of the tradition, such as the emphasis on the immense positive potential of
the human mind in traditional meditative teaching, as well as meditations on the negative aspects
of experience, are needed for a correct and healthy perspective on the human mind, and in order to
arouse faith where it is often sorely needed in Western contexts.
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