A Brief Survey of Research on Contemplation and Observation and the Significance of Those Studies Today

Abstract

In the 1990s, samatha and vipassanā being introduced by Theravada monks into Japan, the interest in Buddhist meditation once again arose. One remarkable aspect of this movement is that this interest was found in ordinary society, rather than in academic circles. Later, the introduction took the form of “mindfulness,” which was less in the sense of religious practice. Much later, after the 2000s, academic fields like psychology, neuroscience, and Buddhist studies came to have an interest on this field. In recent years, they have come to question the difference between the terms chi 知 and nen 念.

I myself made have researched this question through materials of the Japanese Hossō School. I focused on two monks, Jippan 実範 (?–1144) and Ryōhen 良遍 (1194–1252). In a work titled Shinrishō 真理鈔, Jippan writes that “sensitive consciousness” would be called “non-consciousness” or nirvikalpa. In the Shinjin yōketsu 真心要決 of Ryōhen, he writes that “seeing without discriminating” and “hearing without discriminating” is the state of non-consciousness. To express being in such a state, he used the words shōchi 証知 or chi, not nen. Judging from this, chi seems to have been used for expressing the state of “non-consciousness.”