Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T08:28:40.525Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Between Christianity and Buddhism: Towards a Phenomenology of the Body–Mind

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Nathalie Depraz
Nathalie Depraz*
Affiliation:
University of the Sorbonne, Paris IV

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

This paper is situated in the broader context of an examination of the relationship between East and West from the particular perspective of our experience of the body. It is therefore based on two specific traditions, one belonging to the East - a particular strand of Tibetan Buddhism - the other to the West - the Orthodox tradition of the heart prayer - in order to try to show the similarities and differences in their approach to the body and attempt to compare them in the light of their respective ‘phenomenology’. In this sense phenomenology, as a western philosophical discipline, plays a pivotal role in this comparison and hopefully helps to bring new light to bear on this investigation. The early Eastern church evokes the concrete experience of the body as a holy body and sees it as an exemplary route to deification via the mystical practice of the ‘heart prayer’ (hesychasm). As regards Tibetan Buddhism, it advocates the gradual experience of the body as a rainbow body, defined as a path towards illumination, by means of ‘sitting meditation’ which brings liberation in bardo. In order to carry out this analysis, I shall refer to two recent books that are authorities in both these fields, Corps de mort et de gloire, Petite introduction à une théopoétique du corps by O. Clément and Rainbow Painting: A Collection of Miscellaneous Aspects of Development and Completion by Tulku Urguyen Rinpoché.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 50 , Issue 4: From East to West - Civilizations in a Looking-Glass: 50 Years, 1952-2002 , November 2003 , pp. 23 - 32
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2003

References

Notes

1. O. Clément, Corps de mort et de gloire, Petite introduction à une théopoétique du corps, Paris, Desclée de Brouwer, 1995.

2. Tulku Urguyen Rinpoché, Rainbow Painting, A Collection of Miscellaneous Aspects of Development and Completion, Hong Kong-Aarhus, Boudhanah, 1995.

3. N. Depraz, ‘Naître à soi-même’, Alter, journal of phenomenology, no. 1, Naître et mourir, Paris, 1993. See also M. Henry, C'est moi la vérité, Pour une philosophie du christianisme, Paris, Seuil, 1996.

4. See D. Zahavi, Self-awareness and Alterity, Evanston, IL, Northwestern, 1999.

5. Let me just refer here to my essay in N. Depraz, Lucidité du corps. De l'empirisme transcendantal en phénomenologie, Dordrecht, Kluwer, 2001.