How do specific disciplines of contemplation or meditation in different traditions speak to each other? This is the focus of discussion at January’s Contemplation: Research/Practice session, guided by guest speaker Rowan Williams.

Some discussion of interfaith discourse has tended to assume that there is a common phenomenon of “mystical experience” to which appeal can be made in resolving supposed doctrinal/linguistic conflicts between traditions.  This is a simplistic model; but it does at least open up the question of how the specific disciplines of contemplation or meditation in different traditions speak to each other. The aim is to look at a couple of instances of apparent encounter and interaction between traditions in the past, and to explore both the methodological and the theological issues arising today in this connection.

About the organisers

This event is organised by Contemplation: Research/Practice, a CRASSH Network convened by Dr Hannah Lucas (Newby Trust Research Fellow in English at Newnham College) and Tanya Kundu (a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Divinity). The Contemplation network investigates ideas, history, and applications of contemplative traditions from around the globe, bringing together the theoretical study of contemplation with its applications. Critical theorists have begun to emphasise the importance of the experiential in academic work; a call to acknowledge the subjectivity of scholarship. In contemplative studies, this involves attending to practitioners’ lived experiences in addition to theorising contemplation’s phenomenology, cultural specificity, and scientific basis. This may involve conversations between scholars and practitioners, or indeed an integrated first-person approach to both. Contemplation: theory / practice is a space to reflect, imagine, and meditate on the ways humans connect with our minds and bodies.