Mind as Mirror and The Mirroring of Mind (Buddhist Reflections on Western Phenomenology)

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“What I like most about this book is its remarkable breadth; the author’ astonishingly thorough mastery of the work of both Buddhist thinkers and Continental phenomenologist’s; the integrative approach which goes beyond mere comparison and works with basic problems in such a way as to bring in ideas where they are relevant, whatever their source; a fairness and balance in the critical discussion of writers with whom the author may not be in agreement; and the author’s success in making even the most abstract problems relevant to everyday life.

Rooted in the insights of Madhyamika dialectic and an articulated Zazen phenomenology, this study uncovers and examines the methodological presuppositions undergirding the work of Husserl, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty and calls into serious question certain of the most fundamental assumptions of the Western phenomenological tradition regarding the nature of mind. Mind as Mirror and the Mirroring of Mind presents, for the first time, a searching and distinctively Buddhist challenge to the Western phenomenology’s—a challenge, that is, to grow beyond the settled alternative assumptions that the mind either is or is not minor-like in its experience of phenomenal reality.

Steven Laycock is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toledo. He is co-editor of Essays for a Phenomenological Theology. An active member of the Buddhist Society for Compassionate Wisdom, he has, for many years, been engaged in Buddhist meditative practice.