HEARTOPENINGS · Heart openings: The experience and cultivation of love in Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam

Scholarship has not responded satisfactorily to the current crisis of interreligious misunderstanding, sectarian strife, and rising fundamentalism. Ethical attempts to respect difference have resulted in reifications and the encouragement of difference. Could the kinds of experiences that scholars and practitioners call religious, divine, spiritual, or mystical share a ""common core""? Notwithstanding that this old hypothesis has been rejected by scholars as a universalization of Western and Christian concepts of experience and religion, this project sets out to investigate the possibility of undisclosed commonalities with a new set of methods. The project specifically focuses on the experience and cultivation of love in religious, spiritual, and contemplative practice