This essay explores the mechanics associated with rebirth, noting differences between Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain narratives. It examines the concept of subtle body and the liṅgam in Sāṃkhya. According to the Hindu tradition, the remains of the departed person, when cremated, merge with clouds in the upper atmosphere. As the monsoon rain clouds gather, the leftovers mingle with the clouds, returning to earth and eventually finding new life in complex biological cycles. According to Tibetan and Chinese Buddhism, the remains of a person take a ghostly form for 49 days until taking a new birth. According to Jainism, the departed soul immediately travels to the new birth realm at the moment of death. According to Jain karma theory, in the last third of one’s life, a living being makes a fateful choice that determines his or her next embodiment. The 20th century Hindu Yoga teacher Paramahamsa Yogananda, in his commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, provides an alternate description of a twofold astral and causal body. One hallmark of the Buddha and of the 24 Jain Tīrthaṅkaras was that they remembered all the lives they had lived and the lessons learned in those lives. The Buddha recalled 550 past lives and used these memories to fuel many of his lectures. Mahāvīra remembered his past lives and also the past lives of others. Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra states that through the perfection of giving up all things, including psychological attachments, one spontaneously will remember past lives. In the Yogavāsiṣṭha, a Hindu text, Puṇya remembers the past lives of his grieving brother as well as his own prior experiences.

Yoga practice provides access to religious experience, which has been defined by William James as “immediate luminousness, philosophical reasonableness, and moral helpfulness.” In this paper the processes of Yoga will be summarized as found in the Bhagavad Gῑtā and the Yoga Sūtra. This article concludes with instructions on how to perform a practice that integrates Yoga breathing and movement with reflections on the Sāṃkhya descriptions of physical and emotional realities (tattvas and bhāvas).

This paper explores the Markaṇḍeya Purāṇa, one of the earliest expositions of what become Tantric themes in Hinduism, and the Jñānārṇava, which provides an early template for the practice of Jaina Tantra. The former text follows the traditional mapping of the five elements and correlative senses, linking earth to smell, water to taste, fire to form, air to touch, and space to hearing, in a sequence of ascent. In contrast, the Jaina practice relates earthy, lotus-like material to the earth, to be incinerated by fire, stirring up strong winds that involve vigorous breathing that bring pounding rains, washing away all karmic impurity and its residues, exposing one’s true nature as a distinct liberated soul.

In this article the alternating voices of colleagues and collaborators Jane Brucker and Christopher Chapple describe their way of using contemplative pedagogies to bring Engaged Learning to their students at Loyola Marymount University. A requirement of the curriculum for all undergraduate students, these courses integrate study and reflection beyond the classroom. As a professor of studio arts, Brucker has developed techniques of awareness that utilize a contemplative approach with students engaged in drawing and creative activity in a studio or off-campus setting. As a professor of comparative theology, Chapple has designed course requirements for meditation experience and field visits that embed his students within the contemplative aspects of Buddhism as well as in communities deeply grounded in environmental action. Grounded in the Jesuit-Marymount concern for educating the ‘whole person’, Brucker and Chapple understand this as engaging students in experiences that include the relationship between the inner experience of meditation and the outward experiences of spirituality, creativity, and nature.