AbstractThis paper defends the distinction between law and equity with regard to legal reasoning. It argues that equity not only can provide – as the late Bernard Rudden said – an alibi but equally can add an extra dimension to the reasoning process. It helps the legal reasoner to escape from a two-dimensional "flat" world into one that functions in three-dimensions in which the complexities of social reality can be given more adequate expression.
Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT), and other "mindfulness"-based techniques have rapidly gained a significant presence within contemporary society. Clearly these techniques, which derive or are claimed to derive from Buddhist meditational practices, meet genuine human needs. However, questions are increasingly raised regarding what these techniques meant in their original context(s), how they have been transformed in relation to their new Western and global field of activity, what might have been lost (or gained) on the way, and how the entire contemporary mindfulness phenomenon might be understood. The article points out that first-generation mindfulness practices, such as MBSR and MBCT, derive from modernist versions of Buddhism, and omit or minimize key aspects of the Buddhist tradition, including the central Buddhist philosophical emphasis on the deconstruction of the self. Nonself (or no self) fits poorly into the contemporary therapeutic context, but is at the core of the Buddhist enterprise from which contemporary "mindfulness" has been abstracted. Instead of focussing narrowly on the practical efficacy of the first generation of mindfulness techniques, we might see them as an invitation to explore the much wider range of practices available in the traditions from which they originate. Rather, too, than simplifying and reducing these practices to fit current Western conceptions of knowledge, we might seek to incorporate more of their philosophical basis into our Western adaptations. This might lead to a genuine and productive expansion of both scientific knowledge and therapeutic possibilities.
The Dharma's Gatekeepers. Sakya Pandita on Buddhist Scholarship in Tibet, by Jonathan C. Gold. New York: State University of New York Press, 2007. xii + 267pp. ISBN: 978-0-791471-65-4 (hbk); ISBN: 978-0-791471-66-1 (pbk). $65/$29.95.
Reading Against the Orientalist Grain: Performance and Politics Entwined with a Buddhist Stain, by Syed Jamil Ahmed. Kolkata, India: Anderson Printing House Pvt. Ltd. (www.andersonindia.com ), 2008. xv + 357pp. ISBN: 978-8-190671-90-3. Rs. 1500.
AbstractAnyone familiar with French legal education will know that what a common lawyer would call the contents page to be found at the beginning (often in summary form) or at the end (often in detail) of a French textbook or monograph on law is more than a mere guide for browsers and readers. It forms le plan, that is to say the epistemological framework the intellectual importance of which is equal to the substance of the work. It is what endows the book with its scientific credibility and any thesis or textbook lacking a coherent cartesian plan will by definition lack intellectual credibility. But what of the other guide provided in many academic books, namely the index? Is this guide nothing but a guide, never to be allowed to aspire to an epistemological status like that accorded to le plan? Or is an index, with its strictly alphabetical ordering, capable of having an epistemological role?
