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This chapter examines the Hongzhou school's conception of a Chan path of practice and realization. Based primarily on Baizhang's record, it focuses on that text's explication of a path of spiritual practice defined in terms of three distinct stages that represent increasingly subtle forms of detachment and deeper insight into the nature of reality. The investigation of the three stages is followed by an analysis of comparable conceptual schemata formulated by the scholastic traditions of medieval Chinese Buddhism. The chapter ends with a note on Baizhang's intimations of the realm of awakening, which he conceptualized as a consummate perfection of detachment and transcendence, and a fulfillment of the Bodhisattva's selfless activity of helping others.

Eschewing the notion that people’s spirituality and their bodily materiality are in binary opposition, this chapter examines how people engage their material bodies in their religious and spiritual practices. Rather than looking at the practices of religious institutions, it asks: What might we see differently if we focused on the ordinary, everyday embodied practices by which people, individually and collectively, literally live their religions? Bodies (e.g., senses, postures, gestures, and voices) are at the very core of individual religious experience, as well as at the center of shared religious expression and community. Examples of specific embodied practices in gardening and dancing suggest how many contemporary patterns of lived religion involve embodied practices.

Having explored the dispatches from the field in the chapters of this book, it is apparent that there is no one summary measure of secularization or of religious strength. Existing traditions are by no means the only elements in people’s religious repertoire, but they are still a powerful presence, with an impact beyond what can be counted by asking individuals about their beliefs. An adequate social theory of religion will require that we look for the everyday intersections among the social domains of modern life — including religious domains — and for the ways plural cultural patterns affect each other. Paying attention to how modern people identify the religious and spiritual dimensions of their lives will continue to stretch our definitions, but it will also continue to suggest new ways to think about where religion is found and why, how spiritual practices affect lives, and how the particular histories of the world’s diverse societies shape the story of religion’s presence and role. There are indeed many modernities — not just the Western Enlightenment story of religious decline. And there are many kinds of choices — not just the rational maximizing of rewards. Everyday religion takes place in the fascinating flow of choosing and creating that constitutes modern social life.

This chapter considers the possibility of an alternative to dwelling-oriented and seeking-oriented spiritualities. It studies the two ways scholars have recently written about U.S. religion, and notes the sudden revival of interest in spiritual practices. It discusses the distinguishing characteristics of a practice-oriented spirituality, which emphasize that the practice of spirituality assumes that developing a spiritual life requires deliberate effort, just like other practices. This chapter also considers the connection between spiritual practice and spiritual service and the value of spiritual practice.

This chapter examines the order's beliefs and practices. Earl Blighton, known to Holy Order of MANS (HOOM) members as Father Paul, wedded new thought and an esoteric belief system that included elements from Indian yoga systems to traditional practices from Catholicism. Order of Christ Sophia situates itself firmly in the tradition of the Holy Order of MANS. This is evident in the Holy Order of Christ Sophia's (OCS) theological terminology, clerical attire, and day-to-day rituals. There have also been certain additions to the original HOOM synthesis. Perhaps the most important new element is the addition of a psychotherapeutic dimension that engages members in a kind of ongoing group therapy as an integral part of their spiritual practice.

The author conducted a qualitative survey of contemporary Americans about their relationships to St. Francis, asking about memories, knowledge, practices, feelings, and spiritual sensibilities. This chapter reports on the results. The first section is an overview of the collected responses. The second section looks more closely at selected personal stories. The chapter then draws several conclusions from the responses. First, although most people use materials available in the wider culture, they appropriate these materials in creative ways. Second, the use of images shows especially wide variation. Third, for many people, Francis signifies an alternative to the surrounding culture. Notably, an emerging critique of contemporary culture associates Francis with quietude, stillness, and focus. Finally, personal ways of engaging with Francis often replicate traditional spiritual practices.

Extrovertive mystical experiences occur under a variety of circumstances. Beautiful nature scenery and psychological distress are common, whilst other circumstances, such as childbirth and sleep, are reported less often. More controversially, sex and drugs seem to be able to trigger genuine extrovertive experiences, and near-death experience can have extrovertive contents. The after-effects of extrovertive experience are often beneficial, but there can also be difficulties. Re-adjustment to ordinary life can be problematic. Communication issues are liable to arise: there can be a taboo on discussion of the experiences, and the ineffability of mystical experience, if only partial in the case of extrovertive experience, can make description difficult.

A wide range of things people do to pursue a spiritual connection is described here. These “practices” are neither the formative life pursuits theologians describe nor the unconscious status-structured habits social theorists describe. The most common, prayer, ranges from the momentary “help me, God” to more elaborate routines. Some practices, such as Bible reading or special clothing and religious diets, are fostered by particular traditions and not by others. Other practices, from meditation to growing dreadlocks, have been adopted from the wide array of sources in popular culture where spiritual practices are discussed and promoted.

This chapter describes the essential role of practice in spiritual life. Detailed accounts are given of yoga, meditation, and prayer. The author's personal experiences of each of these forms of practice is combined with descriptions of different forms of practice: yoga asanas and breathing techniques, vipassana, Taoist fusion, and Tibetan forms of meditation, and a variety of forms of prayer. The spiritual effects of training the body, mind, and emotions to the spiritual virtues are illustrated, as are the dangers of attachment, pride, and habit in their application. The chapter concludes by examining the possible role of Tarot and other ‘occult’ practices and teachings.

Based on findings from a two-year study of a non-profit organization called Cosmetologists for Christ (CFC), this chapter shows how African American Christian cosmetologists use religious discourse in their everyday lives to craft moral selves, spiritual practices, and sacred and professional workplaces. Their testimonials, prayers, and fellowship provide explicit examples of hair salons as gendered sites of moral and professional socialization, and spirituality as one of many lenses through which black hair-care is framed. In monthly Bible studies held in an affluent Beverly Hills salon, African American women members of the CFC advocated the laying on of hands and the use of spoken prayer in their workplaces to minimize conflict between themselves, their clients, and their colleagues. Some hair stylists also blended spiritual and scientific genres to socialize clients and stylists alike into a greater appreciation of the “truth” about salon hair care and cosmetology.

This introductory chapter explains the objective of this book, which is to determine the influence of American teenagers' fascination with the paranormal and the supernatural on their religious and spiritual practices. This book analyzes data generated from in-depth interviews and observations with teenagers, their friends, and their family members. It suggests that there are at least five different ways by which teenagers approach and incorporate what they learn from the media into their beliefs related to spirituality and religion.

This chapter discusses the changing character of spirituality. It shows the many ways spiritual practices have changed over the years. It then studies the spirituality of dwelling, which emphasizes habitation, and the spirituality of seeking, which emphasizes negotiation. This chapter also reveals that it is the complex cultural and social environment where Americans live that serve as the source of these changes in spirituality.

This chapter presents a detailed reading of the allegorical centerpiece of the Madhumālatī, the head-to-foot description of the heroine's body as it unfolds in front of the enraptured gaze of the seeker. The aim is to understand the poetics of embodiment and erotic union in the context of Shattari cosmology, politics, and spiritual practice, which is reconstructed from rare manuscript materials. The chapter links the lush eroticism of the allegorical set piece to the ascetic culture that produced it, the regimen of the author's group of Sufis, the Shattari silsilah.

Chona's birth destiny of being a sacred midwife connects with spiritual practices stemming from centuries of confluences and conflicts in Mayan, Spanish, and United States history. Her family history illustrates the historical processes, combining Mayan and nonMayan ancestors and practices. Chona's mother was also destined to be a sacred midwife, but she did not accept her calling and died young, although Chona's father, a shaman, had told his wife that she risked dying young if she did not accept her calling. In the local conception of destiny, signs apparent at birth set out an individual's possibilities but do not determine them. Some women resist becoming a midwife because of the dangers inherent in this powerful role. However, they may be persuaded by family illness and by visits in their dreams from ancestor midwives who explain the dangers of refusing their destiny and who promise to instruct and help them.

An embodied approach to human understanding can ground the case for a “spiritual sense” and for understanding religious knowledge as a form of perception, especially if proprioception (and not just ordinary sense perception) is used as an analogue. The long-standing tradition of the existence of a spiritual sense is brought up to date by linking it to various contemporary neuroscientific theories. An embodied-relational model offers several avenues for understanding our capacity to transform and transcend our ordinary awareness. Two classical Christian theological texts on religious experience—the Cloud of Unknowing and Scheiermacher’s The Christian Faith—are also discussed.

This chapter examines how US belly dancers view the practice as a spiritual endeavour, particularly in light of the negative perceptions surrounding it. It discusses findings from a decade-long ethnographic study (2003–13) involving several data-collection methods: observations; journal entries; online statements; and qualitative interviews, a mixed methods design needed due to the lack of research on this topic and the complexity involved in understanding it. Research suggests that belly dance holds much potential as an embodied spiritual practice, particularly when premised on holistic health (integration of body, mind and spirit). As such, the chapter contributes to the critical examination of women's spirituality within contemporary contexts.

This chapter introduces us to the "China Dream Trip," a tour of Daoist sacred sites organized by Healing Tao USA, one of American's main providers of courses and workshops on Daoist practices of meditation, healing, and the body. It also introduces us to the "dream trippers," an eclectic cast of characters from varied backgrounds, brought together by their shared interest in Daoist practice. The authors explain how Daoist self-cultivation practives have been adopted and transformed by Western culture, often in ways that are unrecognizable from their ancient Chinese origins. The authors give an account of the "transnational diffusion" of Daoism, paying especial attention to the ways these techniques and ideas become embedded into a uniquely American context, with its own notions of self-improvement and spiritual practice. Ultimately, the book seeks to sketch the co-evolution of seemingly incommensurable approaches to spirituality through the intersecting trajectories, experiences, and encounters of practitioners. All of this, they argue, has contributed to the emergence of a global Daoist field within which claims of authenticity and authority are communicated, contested, and negotiated.

This chapter explores the spirituality of Nones by way of four, often overlapping categories of spiritual practice: enjoying time with family; enjoying time with friends; enjoying time with pets and other animals; and preparing and sharing food. In a survey for Choosing Our Religion, 32% of Nones marked “enjoying time with family” as among the most meaningful spiritual practices, followed by “enjoying time with friends” (24%), “preparing and sharing food” (23%), and “enjoying time with pets or other animals” (23%). Nones routinely described the spiritual as moving fluidly in various zones of life—household, workplace, marketplace—through networks of relationships that animated that spirit. Their spiritual experience is interpreted not through institutional religious teachings, but through a spirituality that values receptiveness in relationships. Centered on the “4Fs of Contemporary Spirituality,” the relational orientation in unaffiliated spirituality has important implications for other elements of everyday life, including ethics and morals.

This chapter examines changes in the field of spiritual healing and seeing in Kokjangak. It first provides an overview of the proliferation of spiritual practices in the post-Soviet period before discussing the uncertainty of the position of spiritual practitioners in Kokjangak. It shows that the foundation of spiritual healing and seeing in Kokjangak was unstable, in part because the actions of jinns (ghosts or spirits) and the effects of mediation were themselves unpredictable. It also discusses the discourses and actions of spiritual healers, their clientele, and other actors to demonstrate how the believability of spiritual healers and clairvoyants is socially mediated and experientially constituted.

Yeshe Tsogyel, probably Tibet's most influential and famous female religious teacher and one of the world's most significant female religious exemplars, lived in the eighth century CE. Tsogyel's biography is told on two levels, on a “mythic” level, narrating the life of a great human religious teacher, and on the level of “sacred history,” narrating how enlightenment manifested in the form of Tsogyel. These two forms of the story can seem far apart, and the “sacred history” is often based on esoteric concepts. Tsogyel's biography is divided into eight chapters. Their titles summarize her life history well. In terms of biographical episodes, it presents a few examples of Tsogyel's relationships with women. In the narrative, she has many, many women students, of whom a few stand out. Tsogyel's biography, compared with biographies of other similar spiritual heroes in Vajrayana Buddhism, does not point to essential, basic differences based on gender that affect or enhance one's spiritual practice, though some more superficial differences probably occur.