9780230119741 (hardback)

0230119743 (hardback)

"Cattoi and McDaniel present a selection of articles on the role of the body and the spiritual senses--our transfigured channels of sensory perceptions--in the context of spiritual practice. The volume investigates this theme across a variety of different religious traditions, starting from early and medieval Christianity, addressing a number of Eastern traditions, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Daoism, and finally touching on some modern forms of spirituality and psychotherapy"--Provided by publisher.

"This volume is a collection of articles reflecting on the role of the body and the senses in the context of different traditions of spiritual practice. Ranging from the world of Medieval women mystics to the writings of Jonathan Edwards, from the Tantric practices of Indian sadhus to the emergence of New-Age Western spirituality, this study challenges the tendency of post-Kantian modernity to identify "spirituality" with an intellectual flight from sensuality and attempts instead to retrieve a more integrated and holistic approach. The editors and the contributors of this volume are members of the Mysticism Study Group at the American Academy of Religion"--Provided by publisher.

Machine generated contents note:

Introduction: Spiritual Body, Spiritual Senses: Past and Present

June McDaniel * Part I: Spiritual senses and deified bodies * A Hindu Monk's Appreciation of Eastern Orthodoxy's Jesus Prayer: The "Inner Senses" of Hearing, Seeing and Feeling in Comparative Perspective

Joseph Molleur * Indo-Tibetan Tantrism as "Spirit Marriage"

Stuart Ray Sarbacker * Experiencing the Single Savior: Divinizing the Body and the Senses in Tantric Buddhist Meditation

David Gray * The Patristic Roots of John Smith's 'True Way or Method of Attaining to Divine Knowledge'

Derek Michaud * Part II: Ascetic practice and embodied transcendence * The Daoist Mystical Body

Louis Komjathy * Daoist Mysticism: Embodiment, 'Eudaimonia', and Flow

Laura Weed * Liminality and Ambiguity: the Role of Bodily Suffering in the Mysticism of Christian the Astonishing, Charlotte Radler, Assistant Professor of Theological Studies, Loyola Marymount University * "The Body Gains its Share": The Asceticism of Mechthild of Magdeburg

Michelle Voss Roberts * Part III: Embodied Spirituality and Modern Mysticism * Map of Consciousness: New Paradigm for Mysticism and Healing

Fran Grace * The Diamond Approach: Towards an Embodied Spirituality for the 21st century

Ann Gleig * Reading Wisdom with Reich: Proverbs 8-9 as Interpreted through the Psychotherapy of Wilhelm Reich

Neil Douglas-Klotz * Conclusion: The Virtues of Form

Thomas Cattoi.

Human body > Religious aspects.

Sensuality > Religious aspects.