Contemplative Studies and the Religious Studies Classroom: Collected Resources

Barbezat, Daniel P., and Bush, Mirabai, eds. Contemplative Practices in Higher Education: Powerful Methods to Transform Teaching and Learning, San Francisco, California: Jossey-Bass, 2014.

Brown, Candy Gunther. Debating Yoga and Mindfulness in Public Schools: Reforming Secular Education or Reestablishing Religion?. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2019.

Burlein, Ann. “Learning to Drink Deeply from Books: Using Experiential Assignments to Teach Concepts.” Teaching Theology and Religion 14, no. 2 (April 2011): 137–55.

Byrnes, Kathryn, Jane E. Dalton, and Elizabeth Hope Dorman. Cultivating a Culture of Learning: Contemplative Practices, Pedagogy, and Research in Education. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 2018. 

Dahl, Cortland J., Antoine Lutz, and Richard Davidson. “Reconstructing and Deconstructing the Self: Cognitive Mechanisms in Meditation Practice.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 19, no. 9 (September 2015): 515–523.

“Does Mindfulness Belong in Public Schools?” Two views by Candy Gunther Brown, “NO—with its roots in religious tradition, teaching mindfulness in public schools violates the separation of church and state,” and Saki Santorelli, “YES—mindfulness is a secular practice that benefits students,” Tricycle: The Buddhist Review (Spring 2016): 64–65.

Finkel, Donald L. Teaching With Your Mouth Shut. Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Boynton/Cook Publishers, 2000.

Fisher, Kathleen M. “Look Before You Leap: Reconsidering Contemplative Pedagogy.” Teaching Theology and Religion 20, no. 1 (2017): 4–21.

Fort, Andrew O., and Louis Komjathy, “Response to Kathleen Fisher’s ‘Look Before You Leap’.” Teaching Theology and Religion 20.1 (2017): 22–27.

Frank, Adam, Marcelo Gleiser, and Evan Thompson. “The Blind Spot.” Aeon. In association with The Institute for Cross-Disciplinary Engagement at Dartmouth, January 8, 2019. https://aeon.co/essays/the-blind-spot-of-science-is-the-neglect-of-lived-experience.

Gazzaley, Adam, and Larry D. Rosen. The Distracted Mind: Ancient Brains in a High-Tech World. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2016.

Gendlin, Eugene T. Focusing. New York, New York: Bantam, 1982.

Grace, Frances and Judith Simmer-Brown, eds., Meditation and the Classroom: Contemplative Pedagogy for Religious Studies. Albany, New York: SUNY Press, 2011.

Griffiths, Paul J. Religious Reading: The Place of Reading in the Practice of Religion. New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Gunnlaugson, Olen, Edward W. Sarath, Charles Scott, and Heesoon Bai. Contemplative Learning and Inquiry across Disciplines. Syracuse, New York: SUNY Press, 2014.

Hart, Tobin. From Information to Transformation: Education for the Evolution of Consciousness. New York, New York: Peter Lang, 2009.

Huss, Damon, ed. “Why is Mindfulness an Issue for Public Schools?” Two views by Patricia Jennings, “Mindfulness-Based Programs and the American Public School System: Recommendations for Best Practices to Ensure Secularity,” and Candy Gunther Brown, “Are ‘Secular’ Mindfulness-Based Programs in Public Schools Religion-Neutral?” The California Three Rs Project Bulletin 13 nos. 3–4 (2016): 1–12.

Jacobs, Alan. The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction. New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Klein, Anne C. “Seeing Mind, Being Body: Contemplative Practice and Buddhist Epistemology.” In A Companion to Buddhist Philosophy, edited by Steven B. Emmanuel. London, United Kingdom: Blackwell, 2013.

———. “The Knowing Body: Currents of Connection and Women in Religious Dialogue.” In Women and Interreligious Dialogue, edited by Catherine Cornille and Jillian Maxey. Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2013.

Komjathy, Louis. Contemplative Literature. Albany, New York: SUNY Press, 2015.

———. Introducing Contemplative Studies. Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley Blackwell, 2018.

Lehman, Marjorie, “Reenacting Ancient Pedagogy in the Classroom.” Spotlight on Theological Education, Religious Studies News 2:1, 2008.

McLeod, Ken. Wake Up to Your Life: Discovering the Buddhist Path of Attention. New York, New York: HarperCollins, 2001.

McMahan, David L., and Erik Braun, eds. Meditation, Buddhism, and Science. New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Palmer, Parker J., and Arthur Zajonc. The Heart of Higher Education: A Call to Renewal. San Francisco, California: Jossey-Bass, 2010.

Petitmengin, Claire. "Towards the Source of Thoughts: The Gestural and Transmodal Dimension of Lived Experience." Journal of Consciousness Studies 14, no. 3 (2007): 54–82.

Petitmengin-Peugeot, Claire. "The Intuitive Experience." Journal of Consciousness Studies 6, no. 2–3 (1999): 43–77.

Roth, Harold D. “A Pedagogy for the New Field of Contemplative Studies.” In Contemplative Approaches to Learning and Inquiry across Disciplines, edited by Olen Gunnlaugson et al. (Albany, New York: SUNY Press, 2014), 97–118.

———. “Against Cognitive Imperialism: A Call for a Non-Ethnocentric Approach to Cognitive Science and Religious Studies.” Religion East and West 8 (October 2008): 1–26.

———. “Contemplative Studies: Prospects for a New Field”. Columbia Teacher’s College Record Special Issue on Contemplative Education 108, no.9 (September 2006): 1787–1816.

———. “Contemplative Studies: Can It Flourish in the Religious Studies Classroom?” In Meditation and the Classroom: Contemplative Pedagogy for Religious Studies, edited by Frances Grace and Judith Simmer-Brown (Albany, New York: SUNY Press, 2011), 23–38.

———. “Four Approaches to the Study of the Laozi.” In Teaching the Daodejing, edited. Gary DeAngelis and Warren Frisina (New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 14–45.

Sable, David, “Reason in Service of the Heart: The Impacts of Contemplative Practices on Critical Thinking.” The Journal of Contemplative Inquiry 1, no. 1 (2014): 1–22.

Varela, Francisco. Ethical Know-How: Action, Wisdom, and Cognition. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1999.

Varela, Francisco, and Jonathan Shear. 2002. The View from Within: First-Person Approaches to the Study of Consciousness. Bowling Green, Ohio: Imprint Academic, 1999.

Wallace, Alan B. The Taboo of Subjectivity: Towards A New Science of Consciousness. New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Walvoord, Barbara. Teaching and Learning in College Introductory Religion Courses. Malden: Blackwell Publishers, 2008.

Zajonc, Arthur. Meditation as Contemplative Inquiry: When Knowing Becomes Love. Barrington, Massachusetts: Lindesfarne Press, 2009.