Halvor Eifring
- 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/9780824855680.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This essay defines meditation as an “attention-based technique for inner transformation”. This generic definition establishes a common point of reference for the cross-cultural study of meditation, ...
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This essay defines meditation as an “attention-based technique for inner transformation”. This generic definition establishes a common point of reference for the cross-cultural study of meditation, and it serves as a basis for discussing cross-cultural issues relating to the foci and modes of meditative attention, the attitudes toward the technical nature of meditation, and the relation between short-term changes of “state” and long-term changes of “trait” in the inner transformation that meditation brings about. Meditation is distinguished from related phenomena that sometimes go by the same name, but are non-technical, state- rather than trait-oriented, or mechanical in a way that fails to modify the mode of attention of the meditator, as in the automated and ritualistic repetition of mantras. The essay also discusses the fuzzy borderlines between meditation and a number of other practices, including prayer, mysticism, ritual, shamanism, medicine, martial arts and modern-day relaxation techniques and psychotherapy.Less
This essay defines meditation as an “attention-based technique for inner transformation”. This generic definition establishes a common point of reference for the cross-cultural study of meditation, and it serves as a basis for discussing cross-cultural issues relating to the foci and modes of meditative attention, the attitudes toward the technical nature of meditation, and the relation between short-term changes of “state” and long-term changes of “trait” in the inner transformation that meditation brings about. Meditation is distinguished from related phenomena that sometimes go by the same name, but are non-technical, state- rather than trait-oriented, or mechanical in a way that fails to modify the mode of attention of the meditator, as in the automated and ritualistic repetition of mantras. The essay also discusses the fuzzy borderlines between meditation and a number of other practices, including prayer, mysticism, ritual, shamanism, medicine, martial arts and modern-day relaxation techniques and psychotherapy.
Bernadette Wegenstein
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780262232678
- eISBN:
- 9780262301114
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262232678.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
If the gaze can be understood to mark the disjuncture between how we see ourselves and how we want to be seen by others, the cosmetic gaze—in this book’s formulation—is one through which the act of ...
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If the gaze can be understood to mark the disjuncture between how we see ourselves and how we want to be seen by others, the cosmetic gaze—in this book’s formulation—is one through which the act of looking at our bodies and the bodies of others is already informed by the techniques, expectations, and strategies (often surgical) of bodily modification. It is, the author says, also a moralizing gaze, a way of looking at bodies as awaiting both physical and spiritual improvement. The book charts this synthesis of outer and inner transformation. It shows how the cosmetic gaze underlies the “rebirth” celebrated in today’s makeover culture and how it builds upon a body concept which has collapsed into its mediality. In today’s beauty discourse—on reality TV and websites that collect “bad plastic surgery”—we yearn to experience a bettered self which has been reborn from its own flesh and is now itself, like a digitally remastered character in a classic Hollywood movie, immortal. The author traces the cosmetic gaze from eighteenth-century ideas about physiognomy through television makeover shows and facial-recognition software to cinema—which, like our other screens, never ceases to show us our bodies as they could be, drawing life from the very cosmetic gaze it transmits.Less
If the gaze can be understood to mark the disjuncture between how we see ourselves and how we want to be seen by others, the cosmetic gaze—in this book’s formulation—is one through which the act of looking at our bodies and the bodies of others is already informed by the techniques, expectations, and strategies (often surgical) of bodily modification. It is, the author says, also a moralizing gaze, a way of looking at bodies as awaiting both physical and spiritual improvement. The book charts this synthesis of outer and inner transformation. It shows how the cosmetic gaze underlies the “rebirth” celebrated in today’s makeover culture and how it builds upon a body concept which has collapsed into its mediality. In today’s beauty discourse—on reality TV and websites that collect “bad plastic surgery”—we yearn to experience a bettered self which has been reborn from its own flesh and is now itself, like a digitally remastered character in a classic Hollywood movie, immortal. The author traces the cosmetic gaze from eighteenth-century ideas about physiognomy through television makeover shows and facial-recognition software to cinema—which, like our other screens, never ceases to show us our bodies as they could be, drawing life from the very cosmetic gaze it transmits.
