J. L. Cassaniti
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781501707995
- eISBN:
- 9781501714177
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501707995.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Asian Cultural Anthropology
Remembering the Present examines the contemporary meanings, practices, and purposes of mindfulness in the countries of Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar (Burma), which together make up a large part of ...
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Remembering the Present examines the contemporary meanings, practices, and purposes of mindfulness in the countries of Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar (Burma), which together make up a large part of what is known as the “Pali imaginaire” that spawned today’s global mindfulness movement. Drawing from the experiences of over 600 monks, psychiatrists, students, and villagers in the Buddhist monasteries, hospitals, markets, and homes in the region, Remembering the Present shows how an attention to memory informs how people live today, and how mindfulness, as understood through its Buddhist Pāli-language term of sati, is intimately tied to local constructions of time, affect, power, emotion, and selfhood. With a focus on lived experience and the practical matters of people for whom mindfulness is a central part of everyday life, the book offers an engaged ethnographic investigation of what it means to ‘remember the present’ in the meditative practices, interpersonal worlds, and psychiatric hospitals for people in a region strongly influenced by Buddhist thought. The book will speak to an increasingly global network of psychological scientists, anthropologists, Buddhist studies scholars, and religious practitioners interested in contemporary Buddhist thought and the cultural phenomenology of religious experience.Less
Remembering the Present examines the contemporary meanings, practices, and purposes of mindfulness in the countries of Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar (Burma), which together make up a large part of what is known as the “Pali imaginaire” that spawned today’s global mindfulness movement. Drawing from the experiences of over 600 monks, psychiatrists, students, and villagers in the Buddhist monasteries, hospitals, markets, and homes in the region, Remembering the Present shows how an attention to memory informs how people live today, and how mindfulness, as understood through its Buddhist Pāli-language term of sati, is intimately tied to local constructions of time, affect, power, emotion, and selfhood. With a focus on lived experience and the practical matters of people for whom mindfulness is a central part of everyday life, the book offers an engaged ethnographic investigation of what it means to ‘remember the present’ in the meditative practices, interpersonal worlds, and psychiatric hospitals for people in a region strongly influenced by Buddhist thought. The book will speak to an increasingly global network of psychological scientists, anthropologists, Buddhist studies scholars, and religious practitioners interested in contemporary Buddhist thought and the cultural phenomenology of religious experience.
Wakoh Shannon Hickey
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- March 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190864248
- eISBN:
- 9780190864279
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190864248.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society, Buddhism
Mindfulness is widely claimed to improve health and performance, and historians typically say that efforts to promote meditation and yoga therapeutically began in the 1970s. In fact, they began much ...
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Mindfulness is widely claimed to improve health and performance, and historians typically say that efforts to promote meditation and yoga therapeutically began in the 1970s. In fact, they began much earlier, and that early history offers important lessons for the present and future. This book traces the history of mind-body medicine from eighteenth-century Mesmerism to the current Mindfulness boom and reveals how religion, race, and gender have shaped events. Many of the first Americans to advocate meditation for healing were women leaders of the Mind Cure movement, which emerged in the late nineteenth century. They believed that by transforming their consciousness, they could also transform oppressive circumstances in which they lived, and some were activists for social reform. Trained by Buddhist and Hindu missionaries, these women promoted meditation through personal networks, religious communities, and publications. Some influenced important African American religious movements, as well. For women and black men, Mind Cure meant not just happiness but liberation in concrete political, economic, and legal terms. The Mind Cure movement exerted enormous pressure on mainstream American religion and medicine, and in response, white, male doctors and clergy with elite academic credentials appropriated some of its methods and channeled them into scientific psychology and medicine. As mental therapeutics became medicalized, individualized, and then commodified, the religious roots of meditation, like the social justice agendas of early Mind Curers, fell away. After tracing how we got from Mind Cure to Mindfulness, this book reveals what got lost in the process.Less
Mindfulness is widely claimed to improve health and performance, and historians typically say that efforts to promote meditation and yoga therapeutically began in the 1970s. In fact, they began much earlier, and that early history offers important lessons for the present and future. This book traces the history of mind-body medicine from eighteenth-century Mesmerism to the current Mindfulness boom and reveals how religion, race, and gender have shaped events. Many of the first Americans to advocate meditation for healing were women leaders of the Mind Cure movement, which emerged in the late nineteenth century. They believed that by transforming their consciousness, they could also transform oppressive circumstances in which they lived, and some were activists for social reform. Trained by Buddhist and Hindu missionaries, these women promoted meditation through personal networks, religious communities, and publications. Some influenced important African American religious movements, as well. For women and black men, Mind Cure meant not just happiness but liberation in concrete political, economic, and legal terms. The Mind Cure movement exerted enormous pressure on mainstream American religion and medicine, and in response, white, male doctors and clergy with elite academic credentials appropriated some of its methods and channeled them into scientific psychology and medicine. As mental therapeutics became medicalized, individualized, and then commodified, the religious roots of meditation, like the social justice agendas of early Mind Curers, fell away. After tracing how we got from Mind Cure to Mindfulness, this book reveals what got lost in the process.
Ariel Glucklich
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780300212099
- eISBN:
- 9780300231373
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300212099.003.0007
- Subject:
- Sociology, Sociology of Religion
The conversation and the dialogue are key to the practice of Self-inquiry. This chapter records and analyzes this discipline. A special emphasis is placed on the spiritual skills associated with ...
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The conversation and the dialogue are key to the practice of Self-inquiry. This chapter records and analyzes this discipline. A special emphasis is placed on the spiritual skills associated with listening as a contemplative skill.Less
The conversation and the dialogue are key to the practice of Self-inquiry. This chapter records and analyzes this discipline. A special emphasis is placed on the spiritual skills associated with listening as a contemplative skill.
Moira Fitzgibbons
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780823243242
- eISBN:
- 9780823243280
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823243242.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
For Fitzgibbons, the modern term “mindfulness” becomes a lens through which to consider medieval poetry and social practice. She argues that the fourteenth-century Conscience-poet emphasizes “mynde,” ...
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For Fitzgibbons, the modern term “mindfulness” becomes a lens through which to consider medieval poetry and social practice. She argues that the fourteenth-century Conscience-poet emphasizes “mynde,” “resoun,” “skil,” and “wit” in order to foreground the role of self-aware cognition in the human encounter with death and judgment. Within this context, Fitzgibbons also explores the inevitable problem of disabling madness, as the Conscience-poet describes it, showing us through this text “the complications involved in yoking the soul's salvation to the mind's activity.” Fitzgibbons’ essay deeply engages the poetics of this work by tracking subtle shifts in the meanings and resonances of specific words – such as “mynde” – repeated throughout the text. The Prick of Conscience, Fitzgibbons demonstrates, depends upon its formal features and diction to make its point: that pedagogical intervention into any community requires a mindfulness “both rigorous and humane.”Less
For Fitzgibbons, the modern term “mindfulness” becomes a lens through which to consider medieval poetry and social practice. She argues that the fourteenth-century Conscience-poet emphasizes “mynde,” “resoun,” “skil,” and “wit” in order to foreground the role of self-aware cognition in the human encounter with death and judgment. Within this context, Fitzgibbons also explores the inevitable problem of disabling madness, as the Conscience-poet describes it, showing us through this text “the complications involved in yoking the soul's salvation to the mind's activity.” Fitzgibbons’ essay deeply engages the poetics of this work by tracking subtle shifts in the meanings and resonances of specific words – such as “mynde” – repeated throughout the text. The Prick of Conscience, Fitzgibbons demonstrates, depends upon its formal features and diction to make its point: that pedagogical intervention into any community requires a mindfulness “both rigorous and humane.”
Are Holen
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780824855680
- eISBN:
- 9780824873028
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824855680.003.0012
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
The first big wave of scientific research on meditation came in the 1970s and mainly focused on the physiology of relaxation. The second wave, which is still ongoing, has a stronger focus on modes of ...
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The first big wave of scientific research on meditation came in the 1970s and mainly focused on the physiology of relaxation. The second wave, which is still ongoing, has a stronger focus on modes of attention and their neural correlates. In both waves of meditation research, Anglo-American scientists have dominated the arena, but the kinds of meditation investigated have almost exclusively been of Asian origin. This essay argues that the shifting focus of scientific studies is not only determined by the available scientific methodology, but also by the form of meditation under investigation, as well as the influence from society and popular culture.Less
The first big wave of scientific research on meditation came in the 1970s and mainly focused on the physiology of relaxation. The second wave, which is still ongoing, has a stronger focus on modes of attention and their neural correlates. In both waves of meditation research, Anglo-American scientists have dominated the arena, but the kinds of meditation investigated have almost exclusively been of Asian origin. This essay argues that the shifting focus of scientific studies is not only determined by the available scientific methodology, but also by the form of meditation under investigation, as well as the influence from society and popular culture.
Erik Braun
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190495794
- eISBN:
- 9780190495831
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190495794.003.0009
- Subject:
- Religion, Buddhism
This chapter explores Jon Kabat-Zinn’s mindfulness meditation, above all in his writings about his Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program. It argues that Kabat-Zinn’s vision conveys a ...
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This chapter explores Jon Kabat-Zinn’s mindfulness meditation, above all in his writings about his Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program. It argues that Kabat-Zinn’s vision conveys a profound sense of enchantment, a deep sense of life’s value. The chapter argues that this vision reworks fundamental conceptual categories, especially those of the secular, the spiritual, and the scientific. Life’s meaning is formulated as flowing naturally from mindful observation of everyday life, especially of painful experiences. This naturalizing approach, drawing on bodily experience, the authority of science, metaphysical religious roots in American culture, and Buddhist teachings, makes mindfulness occupy many registers at once: Buddhist yet ecumenically inclusive, secular yet spiritual, scientific but revealing a larger sense of purpose. This multimodal character of mindfulness, always available through simple awareness, explains its popularity, which is helping to reshape American culture.Less
This chapter explores Jon Kabat-Zinn’s mindfulness meditation, above all in his writings about his Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program. It argues that Kabat-Zinn’s vision conveys a profound sense of enchantment, a deep sense of life’s value. The chapter argues that this vision reworks fundamental conceptual categories, especially those of the secular, the spiritual, and the scientific. Life’s meaning is formulated as flowing naturally from mindful observation of everyday life, especially of painful experiences. This naturalizing approach, drawing on bodily experience, the authority of science, metaphysical religious roots in American culture, and Buddhist teachings, makes mindfulness occupy many registers at once: Buddhist yet ecumenically inclusive, secular yet spiritual, scientific but revealing a larger sense of purpose. This multimodal character of mindfulness, always available through simple awareness, explains its popularity, which is helping to reshape American culture.
Carol Holly
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- June 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199341047
- eISBN:
- 9780199374724
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199341047.003.0013
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter examines the ways in which the practice of Buddhist meditation enables a professor to embrace her vocational aspirations. Drawing on personal examples, the chapter describes how ...
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This chapter examines the ways in which the practice of Buddhist meditation enables a professor to embrace her vocational aspirations. Drawing on personal examples, the chapter describes how meditation practice frees the mind from the tyranny of ego, allows greater intentionality and mindfulness as a teacher, encourages honoring more fully what the Buddhist call the “inner nobility” of students, and makes possible the capacity to live fully in the present as a teacher. An autobiographical account that defines the practice of insight meditation, the chapter explores the intimate relationship between the inner life and the professor’s practice of her vocation as a teacher of American literature.Less
This chapter examines the ways in which the practice of Buddhist meditation enables a professor to embrace her vocational aspirations. Drawing on personal examples, the chapter describes how meditation practice frees the mind from the tyranny of ego, allows greater intentionality and mindfulness as a teacher, encourages honoring more fully what the Buddhist call the “inner nobility” of students, and makes possible the capacity to live fully in the present as a teacher. An autobiographical account that defines the practice of insight meditation, the chapter explores the intimate relationship between the inner life and the professor’s practice of her vocation as a teacher of American literature.
Jeff Wilson
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- June 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199827817
- eISBN:
- 9780199376926
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199827817.003.0004
- Subject:
- Religion, Buddhism
Mindfulness in Asia was part of a set of beliefs and practices related to supernatural forces and posthumous existences. But mindfulness has been greatly aided in its penetration of American culture ...
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Mindfulness in Asia was part of a set of beliefs and practices related to supernatural forces and posthumous existences. But mindfulness has been greatly aided in its penetration of American culture by a process of medicalization that reframed mindfulness as a psychological technique that provides scientifically verifiable physical and mental benefits. The most important driving force behind his process has been Jon Kabat-Zinn and his creation of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). This chapter examines how mindfulness was repackaged as a psychological process or technique, in part as a strategy to deliver the alleged benefits of meditation to the widest possible client audience. This has led to a shift in those who claim expertise on mindfulness, as it is increasingly the property of scientists, doctors, therapists, and motivational speakers, rather than religious leaders. A whole host of new mindfulness-based therapies has resulted.Less
Mindfulness in Asia was part of a set of beliefs and practices related to supernatural forces and posthumous existences. But mindfulness has been greatly aided in its penetration of American culture by a process of medicalization that reframed mindfulness as a psychological technique that provides scientifically verifiable physical and mental benefits. The most important driving force behind his process has been Jon Kabat-Zinn and his creation of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). This chapter examines how mindfulness was repackaged as a psychological process or technique, in part as a strategy to deliver the alleged benefits of meditation to the widest possible client audience. This has led to a shift in those who claim expertise on mindfulness, as it is increasingly the property of scientists, doctors, therapists, and motivational speakers, rather than religious leaders. A whole host of new mindfulness-based therapies has resulted.
Wakoh Shannon Hickey
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- March 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190864248
- eISBN:
- 9780190864279
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190864248.003.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society, Buddhism
The introduction traces the astonishing growth of the Mindfulness movement over the past four decades and sketches the usual narrative about how it began in the 1970s, when Jon Kabat-Zinn developed ...
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The introduction traces the astonishing growth of the Mindfulness movement over the past four decades and sketches the usual narrative about how it began in the 1970s, when Jon Kabat-Zinn developed the eight-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) protocol. This book seeks to change that narrative. It traces the origins of efforts to promote meditation and yoga therapeutically back to nineteenth-century teachers of Mind Cure, a religious movement led largely by American women who had learned these methods from Buddhist and Hindu missionaries; and further back, to eighteenth-century research on magnetism, the unconscious, and psychic phenomena. The introduction offers an overview of the book: four chapters of history, two chapters offering critical analysis of the modern Mindfulness movement, an epilogue, and an appendix describing the theoretical and historical challenges of piecing this complex story together. This account draws upon multiple academic disciplines, including the histories of science, medicine, psychology, Buddhism, Hinduism, Western esotericism, and American religions.Less
The introduction traces the astonishing growth of the Mindfulness movement over the past four decades and sketches the usual narrative about how it began in the 1970s, when Jon Kabat-Zinn developed the eight-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) protocol. This book seeks to change that narrative. It traces the origins of efforts to promote meditation and yoga therapeutically back to nineteenth-century teachers of Mind Cure, a religious movement led largely by American women who had learned these methods from Buddhist and Hindu missionaries; and further back, to eighteenth-century research on magnetism, the unconscious, and psychic phenomena. The introduction offers an overview of the book: four chapters of history, two chapters offering critical analysis of the modern Mindfulness movement, an epilogue, and an appendix describing the theoretical and historical challenges of piecing this complex story together. This account draws upon multiple academic disciplines, including the histories of science, medicine, psychology, Buddhism, Hinduism, Western esotericism, and American religions.
Wakoh Shannon Hickey
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- March 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190864248
- eISBN:
- 9780190864279
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190864248.003.0006
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society, Buddhism
This chapter considers whether Mindfulness can reasonably be considered a kind of religion, despite proponents’ claims to the contrary. If so, what kind? Is it Buddhist? If so, what kind of Buddhism? ...
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This chapter considers whether Mindfulness can reasonably be considered a kind of religion, despite proponents’ claims to the contrary. If so, what kind? Is it Buddhist? If so, what kind of Buddhism? The rhetoric of Jon Kabat-Zinn, founder of the modern Mindfulness movement, is tested against several different theories of religion, as well as critiques by specialists in both Theravāda and Māhāyana forms of Buddhism. While Mindfulness is positioned as a strictly secular therapeutic method, it has all the characteristics of American metaphysical religion, as well as of modernist Buddhism and neo-Vedanta. Kabat-Zinn claims his teachings are “universal,” yet they actually reflect his own eclectic blend of elements from various religious traditions with roots in Asia, the United States, and Europe. As Mindfulness is increasingly promoted in public schools, government agencies, and the military, this raises legitimate questions about the separation of church and state.Less
This chapter considers whether Mindfulness can reasonably be considered a kind of religion, despite proponents’ claims to the contrary. If so, what kind? Is it Buddhist? If so, what kind of Buddhism? The rhetoric of Jon Kabat-Zinn, founder of the modern Mindfulness movement, is tested against several different theories of religion, as well as critiques by specialists in both Theravāda and Māhāyana forms of Buddhism. While Mindfulness is positioned as a strictly secular therapeutic method, it has all the characteristics of American metaphysical religion, as well as of modernist Buddhism and neo-Vedanta. Kabat-Zinn claims his teachings are “universal,” yet they actually reflect his own eclectic blend of elements from various religious traditions with roots in Asia, the United States, and Europe. As Mindfulness is increasingly promoted in public schools, government agencies, and the military, this raises legitimate questions about the separation of church and state.
Wakoh Shannon Hickey
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- March 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190864248
- eISBN:
- 9780190864279
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190864248.003.0007
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society, Buddhism
This chapter asks whether mindfulness is as broadly effective and powerful as proponents claim and considers methodological and other critiques of clinical research on mindfulness. Neuroscientists ...
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This chapter asks whether mindfulness is as broadly effective and powerful as proponents claim and considers methodological and other critiques of clinical research on mindfulness. Neuroscientists have produced vivid images of meditators’ brains, using functional MRI and PET scans, which seem to show clear, positive changes attributed to meditation. Such images are effective rhetorically but are produced in a “black box” of assumptions, technological constraints, and human factors that make them less definitive than they may appear. Other types of studies rely on meditators’ self-reports, which are not always reliable. A major issue in clinical research is that mindfulness is inconsistently defined and may be measured by scientists unfamiliar with the ways that meditation is described in canonical texts and understood by experienced Buddhist teachers and yogis. While research data do suggest that mindfulness can be beneficial, it is not the panacea that some advocates seem to suggest it is.Less
This chapter asks whether mindfulness is as broadly effective and powerful as proponents claim and considers methodological and other critiques of clinical research on mindfulness. Neuroscientists have produced vivid images of meditators’ brains, using functional MRI and PET scans, which seem to show clear, positive changes attributed to meditation. Such images are effective rhetorically but are produced in a “black box” of assumptions, technological constraints, and human factors that make them less definitive than they may appear. Other types of studies rely on meditators’ self-reports, which are not always reliable. A major issue in clinical research is that mindfulness is inconsistently defined and may be measured by scientists unfamiliar with the ways that meditation is described in canonical texts and understood by experienced Buddhist teachers and yogis. While research data do suggest that mindfulness can be beneficial, it is not the panacea that some advocates seem to suggest it is.
Wakoh Shannon Hickey
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- March 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190864248
- eISBN:
- 9780190864279
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190864248.003.0008
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society, Buddhism
This chapter considers the early, community-oriented wing of New Thought movement and the Mindfulness movement side by side and identifies several characteristics they have in common, as well as ...
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This chapter considers the early, community-oriented wing of New Thought movement and the Mindfulness movement side by side and identifies several characteristics they have in common, as well as significant differences between them. The Mindfulness movement is similar in various ways to Individualist New Thought. This analysis reveals some of the problems and limitations inherent in the Mindfulness movement’s approach to meditation, from both Buddhist and scientific perspectives. By extracting meditation from its religious contexts and meanings and turning it into an individual technique for reducing stress, several important resources get “lost in translation.” These include the social and spiritual benefits of religious community; fundamental aspects of Buddhist and neo-Vedanta spiritual paths, particularly the ethical foundations of meditation and yoga; and systemic analyses of the causes of suffering and stress-related illness, including racism, sexism, and poverty.Less
This chapter considers the early, community-oriented wing of New Thought movement and the Mindfulness movement side by side and identifies several characteristics they have in common, as well as significant differences between them. The Mindfulness movement is similar in various ways to Individualist New Thought. This analysis reveals some of the problems and limitations inherent in the Mindfulness movement’s approach to meditation, from both Buddhist and scientific perspectives. By extracting meditation from its religious contexts and meanings and turning it into an individual technique for reducing stress, several important resources get “lost in translation.” These include the social and spiritual benefits of religious community; fundamental aspects of Buddhist and neo-Vedanta spiritual paths, particularly the ethical foundations of meditation and yoga; and systemic analyses of the causes of suffering and stress-related illness, including racism, sexism, and poverty.
