PHDC6217: Meditation Practice and Research

This elective course consists of two main parts. The first part is the meditation practices from the major wisdom traditions in the world. Classical texts from the wisdom traditions constitute a big part of the reading materials in this part. The definition of meditation will be discussed. Students will read, reflect and practice selectively according to their interest. The second part of the course is modern and contemporary researches and critiques in the field of meditations. Researches entail a variety of perspectives such as biological, cognitive, neuroscientific, psychological, social-historical, philosophical, and transpersonal perspectives. The course hypothesizes that the practice of meditation can be studied from a scientific approach using empirical models, but scientific studies from a classical paradigm of science featuring replicability and reproducibility may not be able to disclose the subtlety and ineffability at the heart of deep meditation.