Search Results (5)

This qualitative study examined how a 21-day integrated program fosters interoceptive awareness and mind–body integration among urban adults in mainland China (n = 11). The intervention combined daily nasal breathing regulation, spontaneous mandala making, and descriptive journaling, complemented by weekly group sharing. Using a cultural–psychological lens, we investigated how an inward–turning tradition in Chinese culture shapes embodied experience and meaning–making. Applying Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis to diaries, drawings, and focus-group data, we identified three interrelated processes: (1) the refinement of bodily attention; (2) a shift from deliberate control to natural immersion; and (3) the symbolization of feeling through artistic expression and social resonance. Findings indicate that systematic engagement in the “breath–mandala” intervention heightened sensitivity to chest-centered embodied sensations and promoted the integration of bodily experience into personal narratives; a non-goal-directed, relaxed practice style facilitated the transition from control to absorption, activating self-regulatory mechanisms; and non-evaluative awareness deepened flow while supporting cognitive reorganization and reflective capacity. The study delineates a core pathway by which breath-triggered interoceptive work operates within mind–body interventions, offering a theoretical basis and practical direction for tailored regulation programs across diverse populations. Full article

The Secret of the Golden Flower (Taiyi Jinhua Zongzhi 太乙金華宗旨), a Qing dynasty spirit-writing (fuji扶乩) text, is widely known through the Wilhelm–Jung translation lineage, where jinhua 金華 is rendered as “Golden Flower” and read as mandala-like symbolism. Based on a close reading of the Daozang Jiyao 道藏輯要version, this article argues that in the Chinese text jinhua is not primarily a floral image but a technical and experiential term for luminosity in Daoist inner-alchemical cultivation. Hua 華 is resemanticized from botanical “flower/flourishing” into “radiance,” and the work explicitly defines the key term as “jinhua is light”. The text further organizes cultivation into a three-stage trajectory—“sudden emergence”, “circulation”, and “great condensation”, through which qi 氣 is refined into light and luminosity stabilizes as spirit (shen 神). Finally, the analysis situates this luminous grammar within the work’s explicit Three Teachings (sanjiao 三教) framing: Confucian “illuminating virtue” (mingde 明德) and Buddhist idioms of luminous mind-nature (xin-xing guangming 心性光明) and dharma-body language function as a shared vocabulary for describing non-grasping awareness and embodied realization. On this basis, jinhua is best understood not as a decorative metaphor or a purely psychological symbol but as a practice-oriented mechanism of ontological luminosity, clarifying both the inner-alchemical logic of The Secret and the stakes of its modern reception. Full article

This paper is a case study of the Tang-dynasty Gilded Silver “Bodhisattva Holding up the True Body” (peng zhenshen pusa 捧真身菩薩) Statue (dated 871) excavated from the relic crypt of the Famen Temple pagoda in Fufeng 扶風 County, Shanxi 陝西. Commissioned to commemorate Emperor Yizong 懿宗’s 39th birthday, the statue was designed both to support the Buddha’s relic and to express a wish for the emperor’s longevity. Most strikingly, the Bodhisattva is seated on a three-layered pedestal richly adorned with esoteric Buddhist images and Siddhaṃ scripts. Departing from previous Buddhalogical approaches, this paper suggests that the Famen Temple statue did not serve to illustrate a specific maṇḍala, theological doctrine, or scripture. Instead, together with the five miniature garments interred underneath it, the statue draws upon esoteric ritual technology—particularly the Three Siddhi mantras—as well as cosmological, botanical, and embryological imagery to create a soteriological matrix of bodily transformation for the intended beneficiaries. By situating the object within the historical circumstances and religious practices of the late Tang imperial court, this study illuminates the statue’s conceptual design, symbolic significance, and intended function—namely, to address the patrons’ concerns with spiritual salvation and the renewal of life after death. Full article

This essay explores conflicting attitudes toward the body in Buddhist literature, with a focus on the tantric Buddhist traditions of yoga and meditation, which advanced the notion that the body was an innately pure site for realization while nonetheless still encumbered with earlier notions of the body as an impure obstacle to be overcome. Looking closely at a short meditation text attributed to the female Indian saints Mekhalā and Kanakhalā, the author argues that the body plays a central role in the creative re-envisioning of the self that characterizes tantric Buddhist practice. Full article

Buddhist tantric practitioners embrace the liminal status of the human body to manifest divine identity. In piercing to the pith of human embodiment, the tantric practitioner reconfigures the shape and contours of his/her reality. This article investigates the evolution of one particular technique for piercing to the pith of the body on Tibetan soil, a ritual practice known as body mandala [lus dkyil Skt. deha-maṇḍala]. In particular, it uncovers a significant shift of emphasis in the application of the Guhyasamāja body mandala practice initiated by champions of the emerging Gandenpa [Dga’ ldan pa] or Gelukpa [Dge lugs pa] tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, Tsongkhapa (1357–1419) and Mkhas grub rje (1385–1438). This article reveals some of the radical implications of ritual exegesis, ranging from the socioreligious aspects of securing prestige for a tradition to the ultimate soteriological goals of modifying the boundaries between life and death and ordinary and enlightened embodiment. Full article