scholarly journals Let’s be Buddhists for the Next Few Weeks!

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Lännström

This paper discusses the risks and rewards of integrating theory and practice in the study of yoga and meditation in college classes. It focuses on a case study of my Yoga, mindfulness, and Indian philosophy course. The course combines hatha yoga and meditation practice with the study of those practices and their origins.  We use yoga and meditation to relieve stress and anxiety.  We study Buddhist and Hindu worldviews.  We examine ethical issues in the ways that yoga and meditation are appropriated and removed from their religious contexts (including the ways we’re using them in the course itself), we reflect on the ways in which our practice differs from traditional practices, we assess different types of contemporary practice, and we weigh the benefits and the costs of our Western embrace of yoga and meditation.

Author(s):  
Somboon Watana, Ph.D.

Thai Buddhist meditation practice tradition has its long history since the Sukhothai Kingdom about 18th B.E., until the present day at 26th B.E. in the Kingdom of Thailand. In history there were many well-known Buddhist meditation master teachers, i.e., SomdejPhraBhudhajaraya (To Bhramarangsi), Phraajarn Mun Puritatto, Luang Phor Sodh Chantasalo, PhramahaChodok Yanasitthi, and Buddhadasabhikkhu, etc. Buddhist meditation practice is generally regarded by Thai Buddhists to be a higher state of doing a good deed than doing a good deed by offering things to Buddhist monks even to the Buddha. Thai Buddhists believe that practicing Buddhist meditation can help them to have mindfulness, peacefulness in their own lives and to finally obtain Nibbana that is the ultimate goal of Buddhism. The present article aims to briefly review history, and movement of Thai Buddhist Meditation Practice Tradition and to take a case study of students’ Buddhist meditation practice research at the university level as an example of the movement of Buddhist meditation practice tradition in Thailand in the present.


2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
John Harner ◽  
Lee Cerveny ◽  
Rebecca Gronewold

Natural resource managers need up-to-date information about how people interact with public lands and the meanings these places hold for use in planning and decision-making. This case study explains the use of public participatory Geographic Information System (GIS) to generate and analyze spatial patterns of the uses and values people hold for the Browns Canyon National Monument in Colorado. Participants drew on maps and answered questions at both live community meetings and online sessions to develop a series of maps showing detailed responses to different types of resource uses and landscape values. Results can be disaggregated by interaction types, different meaningful values, respondent characteristics, seasonality, or frequency of visit. The study was a test for the Bureau of Land Management and US Forest Service, who jointly manage the monument as they prepare their land management plan. If the information generated is as helpful throughout the entire planning process as initial responses seem, this protocol could become a component of the Bureau’s planning tool kit.


Author(s):  
Lisa Forsberg

Anti-libidinal interventions (ALIs) are a type of crime-preventing neurointervention (CPN) already in use in many jurisdictions. This chapter examines different types of legal regimes under which ALIs might be provided to sex offenders. The types of legal regimes examined are dedicated statutes that directly provide for ALI use, consensual ALI provision under general medical law principles, mental health legislation providing for ALI use (exemplified by the mental health regime in England and Wales), and European human rights law as it pertains to ALI provision. The chapter considers what we might learn from ALIs in respect of likely or possible arrangements for the provision of other CPNs, and draws attention to some ethical issues raised by each of these types of regime, worth keeping in mind when considering arrangements for CPN provision.


The effective altruism movement consists of a growing global community of people who organize significant parts of their lives around two key ideas, represented in its name. Altruism: If we use a significant portion of the resources in our possession—whether money, time, or talents—with a view to helping others, we can improve the world considerably. Effectiveness: When we do put such resources to altruistic use, it is crucial to focus on how much good this or that intervention is reasonably expected to do per unit of resource expended (for example, per dollar donated). While global poverty is a widely used case study in introducing and motivating effective altruism, if the ultimate aim is to do the most good one can with the resources expended, it is far from obvious that global poverty alleviation is highest priority cause area. In addition to ranking possible poverty-alleviation interventions against one another, we can also try to rank interventions aimed at very different types of outcome against one another. This includes, for example, interventions focusing on animal welfare or future generations. The scale and organization of the effective altruism movement encourage careful dialogue on questions that have perhaps long been there, throwing them into new and sharper relief, and giving rise to previously unnoticed questions. In the present volume, the first of its kind, a group of internationally recognized philosophers, economists, and political theorists contribute in-depth explorations of issues that arise once one takes seriously the twin ideas of altruistic commitment and effectiveness.


Author(s):  
Elizabeth A. Bennett

Cannabis (marijuana) is the most commonly consumed, universally produced, and frequently trafficked psychoactive substance prohibited under international drug control laws. Yet, several countries have recently moved toward legalization. In these places, the legal status of cannabis is complex, especially because illegal markets persist. This chapter explores the ways in which a sector’s legal status interacts with political consumerism. The analysis draws on a case study of political consumerism in the US and Canadian cannabis markets over the past two decades as both countries moved toward legalization. It finds that the goals, tactics, and leadership of political consumerism activities changed as the sector’s legal status shifted. Thus prohibition, semilegalization, and new legality may present special challenges to political consumerism, such as silencing producers, confusing consumers, deterring social movements, and discouraging discourse about ethical issues. The chapter concludes that political consumerism and legal status may have deep import for one another.


Author(s):  
Andrea B. Temkin ◽  
Mina Yadegar ◽  
Christine Cho ◽  
Brian C. Chu

In recent years, the field of clinical psychology has seen a growing movement toward the research and development of transdiagnostic treatments. Transdiagnostic approaches have the potential to address numerous issues related to the development and treatment of mental disorders. Among these are the high rates of comorbidity across disorders, the increasing need for efficient protocols, and the call for treatments that can be more easily disseminated. This chapter provides a review of the current transdiagnostic treatment approaches for the treatment of youth mental disorders. Three different types of transdiagnostic protocols are examined: mechanism-based protocols, common elements treatments, and general treatment models that originated from single-disorder approaches to have broader reach. A case study illuminates how a mechanism-based approach would inform case conceptualization for a client presenting with internalizing and externalizing symptoms and how a transdiagnostic framework translates into practice.


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