Buddhism and Merleau Ponty - a paper by Tran Phuoc Phuong Thao

Interesting paper

Abstract

During the last decade, many psychotherapists have successfully applied 

meditation on treatment and rehabilitation for the patients who get affected by 

depression, drug abuse or antisocial behaviors… to bring them back to normal life. 

However, to those who have the incurable illness, incompetent of living an 

ordinary life is little paid adequate attention.  Whether or not it is possible for them 

to live a good life within illness is, nonetheless, a challenging question for us. With 

a holistic approach, this paper will articulate the importance of mindful breathing 

started on the physical body as an ethical meditation so that the body can transform 

within.  Concept of the lived body in Merleau Ponty‟s phenomenology will be 

modified in the Buddhist context. The purpose is to elicit the interwoven of the 

body and the world in the perpetual perception, and the efficiency of attention will 

be cultivated in the practice of mindful breathing so as to remodel the intentional 

habit of dichotomous conception of the agency and grasping attitude. The shifting 

of inner landscape settings will give patients a fresh and creative look at the 

environing world. It is in the world that body finds itself is a life-giving, neither 

birth nor death and beyond fear even on deathbed. 

Key words: lived body, perception, attention, intention, mindful breathing, 

neither birth nor death

You can read the paper HERE

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