Modern Buddhist and Christian Mysticism: Construal and Transformation

Investigations of mysticism often focus on the past, while largely ignoring current developments.

This book contributes to a reversal of that trend with a rigorous examination of a wide selection of contemporary Buddhist and Christian authors. The focus is on the intriguing intersections and subtle divergences now emerging in areas such as ineffability, nonconceptuality, paradox, inverted agency, unity, and self-dissolution. The analysis combines the theoretical framework of cognitive linguistics with a range of methodological approaches, from discourse and thematic analysis to corpus linguistics.

Wide-ranging, systematic, and informative, the book is invaluable to all of those interested in the phenomenon of mysticism within the modern world.

Charles M. Mueller is Professor of English Language and Culture at Fuji Women’s University in Japan. His research has primarily been grounded in the Cognitive Linguistics framework, and has often focused on religious language and discourse. He has also translated numerous Buddhist works from Korean and classical Chinese into English.

Peter Richardson is Professor of Linguistics at Bunkyo University in Japan. His research primarily focuses on the application of Cognitive Linguistics to the study of religious language. He co-authored the book Cognitive Linguistics and Religious Language: An Introduction with Charles Mueller and Stephen Pihlaja.