Buddhist Healing: Methods and Mechanisms—A Madhyamaka-Oriented Investigation

Abstract

In Buddhist discourse, the path of healing often begins with awareness. Its crucial element, however, lies not in awareness alone, but in the direction toward which awareness is oriented and in the transformative process that follows from it. Ultimately, this process concerns how reality is understood. Madhyamaka thought takes cognition as its point of departure and emphasizes cognitive transformation as a means of reshaping the relationship between individuals and phenomena. Such transformation is not merely an exercise of psychological imagination; rather, it may bring about substantive changes in the structure of lived experience. Contemporary scientific research on psychological change, by contrast, largely relies on quantitative data and instrumental measurement, with its primary emphasis placed on neuroscience and psychology, whereas religious studies more commonly approaches such questions through textual interpretation and philosophical analysis. Each approach offers a distinct level of understanding. Nevertheless, the question of how religious thought may be translated into concrete and practically applicable methods remains in need of further exploration. Against this background, the present study takes healing as its central concern and examines, from within Buddhist theoretical frameworks, whether Buddhism may be understood as a mechanism of cognitive and existential transformation. Focusing on Chapter One of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, it argues that Nāgārjuna’s critique of arising is not merely an analysis of causality, but also a deconstruction of the linguistic and conceptual assumptions through which causality and existence are reified. By exposing both the limitations of language and the tendency to mistake conceptual constructions for reality itself, Nāgārjuna opens a therapeutic pathway through which rigid patterns of attachment, conflict, and suffering may be transformed. Furthermore, as individuals gradually loosen their reified assumptions about the self, others, and conflict through insight into emptiness, rigid boundaries between self and other, as well as between friend and enemy, may likewise be reconsidered. Such cognitive transformation may, in turn, provide a possible foundation for equanimity, compassion, and more inclusive forms of ethical engagement.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Religions, 2026 · DOI ↗