IV. Response: Contemplative Pedagogy as Engaged Learning

Abstract

I am grateful to be given the opportunity to read and to respond to these rich reflections on the practice of contemplative pedagogy. Like Maureen Walsh, and possibly Brian Robinette before his sabbatical transformation, I have usually identified myself as a member of the “loyal opposition” of this particular teaching tool. I have tried to remain grudgingly attentive to its strongest advocates in the comparative theology circles in which I travel, while at the same time shaking my head and sighing a bit to myself at what I perceive as a wild-eyed enthusiasm bordering on evangelism. It probably does not help that I am not personally prone to contemplative experience, nor that the Hindu paraṃparā with which I have associated for several decades has, at least in part, constructed its distinctive teaching tradition as a critique of meditative experience (anubhava) as means or end of liberation.