Teaching Meditation to Classes in Philosophy :: Education Teacher Educating Philosophical Essays

Teaching Meditation to Classes in philosophyABSTRACT In alignment with the over altogether theme of the congress, Philosophy Teaching Humanity, this paper proposes that teachers of philosophy consider instructing their students in simple techniques of meditation. By meditation I mean the practice of mindfulness which typic onlyy begins by paying clear, steady, non-reactive attention to the sensations of ones own breathing, and then extending this attention to embrace all bodily sensations, feelings, moods, thoughts, and intentions. I discuss how to integrate meditation practically in the philosophy classroom and then respond to three objections that have been embossed to that practice. I then discuss the potential benefits of the practice, arguing first of all that meditation has academic benefits, especially in courses in Asian philosophy. yet of much wider application is the wisdom of non-attachment which the mediation naturally evokes primarily through the experience of imperm anence. The potential benefits of the paradigm are then briefly indicated as related to our experience of body, mind, society and nature. I conclude by commending the design as a small but important practical gradation philosophy teachers can take to help our fellow human races sweep the challenging transformation of our time. I. A Proposal Situating the Need and Proposing a retortThe grand theme of our Congress is Philosophy Educating Humanity. It is heartening to collect philosophers from all over the world pondering how we can be of good to our species refocusing on the root meaning of philosophy as cognize of wisdom, we seek to be of real help in a world in the throes of many transformations. Those of us who teach philosophy in formal academic environments are already in a limit to make a direct difference in the lives of our students like it or not, we are at some level opinion leaders in our communities--what we teach and how we teach matters. And so we ask ourselves how can we best utilisation the power that we have?Clearly we can help our students and fellow human beings by teaching them skills of discursive rationality when we can define our meanings precisely, purpose our terms consistently, argue coherently, and adhere to high standards of evidence, then we are smash able to avoid dogmatism and bring an effective intelligence to cut on the problems of living that face us. These skills will always be a precious resource philosophy can offer humanity.And yet there is much more to philosophy than this.