Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book offers a vision of the interrelationships among art, spirituality, research, and teaching that challenges the sense of risk often engendered by such connections in the academy and other settings. Contemplative and arts-based practices merge, emerge, and resonate in work as artists, researchers, and teachers. The authors in Arts-Based and Contemplative Practices in Research and Teaching: Honoring Presence all engage in ways of being with their lived environments and hearts: in places and spaces where rhythm, passion, grief, love, hope, and creativity intersect. Buddhist teachers remind about non-duality as the way things are: Thich Nhat Hanh speaks of interbeing, and Trungpa Rinpoche teaches about primordial ground, that which is unconditioned. Sean Park and Shahar Rabi attend to rhythm, to an in-the-moment-awareness of the beat.