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An important debate in late Indian Buddhist Yogacara concerns the metaphysical status of appearances (akara) and the nature of their relation to consciousness. On the one hand there is the [...]

This article explores the structure of cultivated religious experience. For the Buddhist philosopher Jñānaśrīmitra (c. 980–1040), the religious experience of the Buddhist yogin (yogipratyakṣa) is not spontaneous or sporadic but must be intentionally and rationally cultivated. I argue that Jñānaśrīmitra's picture parallels certain contemporary constructivist accounts of religious experience, according to which the prejudices, expectations, and interpretative structures of the practitioner shape the character of the experience in question. Despite this, however, Jñānaśrīmitra maintains that religious experience is direct, non-conceptual, and ineffable. Even though cultivation begins by focusing on rationally understood, effable conceptual content (the Buddha's teaching of the Four Nobles' Truths, for instance), the yogin's relation to that content is transformed through cultivation (bhāvanā). Cultivation makes awareness-events with conceptual content vivid (spaṣṭa) in such a way that they lose their conceptual character, coming to affect the practitioner's mind as if they were external to it. In this way, precisely in virtue of beginning the process of cultivation with certain expectations about the Buddha's teaching, Buddhist yogins come to have a direct and non-conceptual experience of the breakdown of their own mental streams and the dissolution of the sense of self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Buddhism and Scepticism: Historical, Philosophical, and Comparative Perspectives. Hamburg Buddhist Studies Volume 13. Edited by Oren Hanner. Bochum/Freiburg: projekt verlag, 2020. Pp. 183. Hardcover 25,80 [euro], ISBN 978-389733-518-9. The present [...]

The rate of heat extraction during the pressure die casting process is central to both the quality and the cost of finished castings. Recent efforts to reduce the thermal resistance of dies by optimizing the effectiveness of the cooling channels have shown the potential for improvement. Reducing the thermal resistance of the coolant boundary layer means that a significant proportion of the total thermal resistance becomes attributable to the die steel. Further significant reductions in die thermal resistance can be obtained by replacing the steel with copper. This paper investigates the feasibility of using copper dies, reinforced with steel inserts and coated with a thin layer of wear resistant material, which is deposited using the thermal arc spray process. Experimental work relating to the thermal spray process has been undertaken to establish bond strengths and thermal conductivities for various process parameters. Moreover, experimental investigations have been carried out using two copper coated dies, the first of which was a pseudodie block heated by an infrared heater. The second die was tested on a die casting machine and produced zinc alloy castings at a greatly increased production rate when compared to its steel counterpart. The experimental results from the two dies are compared with those predicted by an in-house thermal-cum-stress model based on the boundary element method. Reasonable agreement between the predicted and experimental results is shown and the feasibility of copper-alloyed dies for pressure die casting is established. [DOI: 10.1115/1.2280586]

One of the failings of the pressure die casting process is that variable surface quality is a common result. This paper provides evidence that die vibrant can be used to polish castings as they form during solidification. Evidence is obtained from experiments performed on a purpose built rig that is designed to be representative of the pressure die casting process. The rig's design is such that part of the casting face can be subjected to tangential vibration at prespecified frequencies and amplitudes. The castings made are viewed under a microscope and micrographs produced. These combined with Talysurf readings show that die vibration can be used to generate casting surfaces with a quality significantly superior to that of the die. Supporting evidence is also provided by thermocouple readings and the solution of the inverse parabolic heat equation. The expected increase in the interfacial heat transfer coefficient is obtained with improved casting surface quality. Established in the paper is the effect of vibration frequency and amplitude on the Ra value of the casting surface. It is shown that threshold values for frequency and amplitude exist, below which surface improvement is diminished. [DOI: 10.115/1459085]