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Chapter 5 is divided into two sections. The first section presents an overview of the Mahayana Buddhist teachings on the perfection of meditation, dhyānapāramitā. The second section inquires into various ways to conceive of contemplative practice in the contemporary, global world. It analyzes meditation at three levels of human consciousness—immediate experience, reflective experience, and reflexivity, or self‐awareness. The chapter reflects on the relations between meditation and philosophy.

This chapter began with the contextualization of the historical circumstances in Burma and the United States that brought about the interactions between these two groups; namely, Burmese Buddhist specialists (monks and lay meditation teachers) and the American vipassana practitioners. It argues for a more comprehensive understanding of what “modern Buddhism” means for various constituents by investigating the ways in which some of the key figures of both Asian Buddhist modernists (e.g., Mahasi Sayadaw, U Ba Khin, Ajahn Cha) and the pioneers of American vipassana movement (e.g., Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzburg) converged with respect to the dissemination of vipassana meditation. It examines modernist approaches of these central figures of both East and West in the adaptation of vipassana meditation.

This chapter discusses the differences among the three major branches of Western Buddhism and then turns to the common ground they share. These include Zen, Vajrayana, and Vipassana Buddhism. Zen was the first style of Asian Buddhism to take root in North America and, not surprisingly, it is has the largest influence there. Vajrayana groups practice many complex and intricate rituals, but in contrast to the formality of most Zen practice their approach seems far more casual. The Vipassana movement's roots are in the Theravada Buddhism of Southern Asia, which is by far the world's most conservative branch of Buddhism—in both its steadfast adherence to the Buddha's original teachings and its strong emphasis on the importance of celibate monasticism. Yet Vipassana is more westernized and less traditional than either Zen or Vajrayana.

A significant lacuna in academic and scientific studies of consciousness is a description of how it actually feels to be here. The study of consciousness has proved to be extremely elusive when using the traditional third-person methodology of science. Any description of qualia — by definition lived, subjective experience — seems to necessitate the admission of first-person data, which has hitherto been the province of the arts. If the problem of consciousness is nothing more than the attempt to capture the mechanism and experience of being a person, then each of us can appeal to only one authority for an answer. This chapter speaks from the personal perspective of a multidisciplinary artist-researcher, drawing on the experience of a praxis that inhabits a space between art, science, and religion. It offers a richly personal account of music and consciousness that is at every stage informed by the practice and principles of vipassana meditation.

This chapter provides a general discussion of the study at hand, disengagement in the context of tacit conversion. It summarises the main arguments of the book and highlight its contribution to the existing body of knowledge. Most notably, the chapter raises questions about the normative participant-recruitment approach in conversion studies, arguing that a simple reliance on the informants’ identification or rejection of categories fails to encompass the tonalities of conversion in the contemporary spiritual landscape. Lastly, the chapter address the major limitations and implications of this research for current scholarship such as study of unbelief and nonreligion and conclude this book with several recommendations for future research.

The Ekoji Buddhist Sangha of Richmond, the “Temple of the Gift of Light” located in Richmond's Museum District in Virginia, houses five distinct groups practicing in separate lineages of Buddhism: Pure Land, Soto Zen, Kagyu (Tibetan), and Vipassana, and the Meditative Inquiry group. This book discusses the exceptional degree of pluralism at Ekoji and the ways in which regionalism may manifest in relation to Buddhism in America. Using the Ekoji Buddhist Sangha of Richmond as the primary case study, the chapter shows how bodily practices serve as paths through the shared space of Ekoji and the streets of Richmond and reveals more about identity formation and expression.

Ekoji Buddhist Sangha of Richmond is the only temple in the country that shelters five diverse groups practicing in distinct lineages—Pure Land, Zen, Tibetan, Vipassana, and the Meditative Inquiry group. This chapter defines each group's lineage and practices, including how and why their practices evolved over the years. Each of Ekoji's five groups is officially aligned with a specific form of Buddhist practice and doctrine. The chapter explores the differentiation among groups by looking at how they use space, objects, and bodies to carve out their own Buddhist identity.

This chapter promotes an understanding of religious self-constitution as a relational and embodied process. The aim is to de-center the emphasis on belief in the commonly used category of the religious self and re-center it on an approach that studies the self as an embodied process contextualized in ongoing social relations. The chapter explores three dimensions of the embodied space in which religious selves develop: the importance of collective practice, the relation to the body, and the engagement with the material environment. Examples are provided from ethnographic research on the practice of Vipassana meditation, a Theravada Buddhist meditation of mindfulness. These examples are further supported by references to ethnographic studies that explore other religious practices such as Muslim fasting or Christian prayer.

This chapter investigates some of the main meditative techniques practiced in Thailand, as well as what it feels like to practice them and improve over time. It begins with an ethnographic encounter with a man who has just spent a month in meditation at Wat Rampoeng in Chiang Mai, and then follows the author’s personal experience at five different meditation retreats to learn about mindfulness in meditation. These meditative retreats include the training in mindfulness of sensations and saṅkhāras at S.N. Goenka’s vipassana-based courses in India and Phitsanulok, the mindfulness of breathing (ānāpānasati) at Buddhadhasa Bhikkhu’s monastery of Wat Suan Mokkh in Southern Thailand, and the mindfulness of walking (yup naw phong naw) at the rural cave monastery of Wat Tham Thong near Chiang Mai. Together these close descriptive examples of the phenomenological experience of meditation show how mindfulness is trained in the body and mind in Thailand.

Certain patterns have developed around meditation and enlightenment, or awakening, as many prefer to call it, in the American Insight network. Network here is defined as a loose affiliation of individuals and communities that prioritize Vipassana meditation as their central practice and trace their immediate Buddhist roots to Burmese and Thai Theravadin lineages. One current network emphasizes a more relational and integrative orientation toward meditation and draws significantly on psychotherapeutic discourse. The other stresses a more systematic and goal-oriented approach to awakening and relies heavily on traditional Buddhist canonical and commentarial literature. This chapter traces these currents, across both first- and second-generation convert teachers, highlighting the orientation toward meditation, the preferred style of practice, the gendering of meditation, the understanding of enlightenment, and the strategies of legitimation advanced within each before reflecting on their significance for the unfolding of Buddhist modernism in the United States.

This essay distinguishes between directive meditation, which seeks to bring about inner transformation by means of outside-in processes, and non-directive meditation, which builds on inside-out processes. The two types differ in terms of their meditation object (thematic vs. technical), mental attitude (concentrative vs. non-concentrative), and the context surrounding the practice (suggestive vs. non-suggestive). Most meditation practices include both directive and non-directive elements, but differ widely in their emphases, as illustrated by references to modern studies as well as traditional works on meditation. The suggested distinction differs from the widespread Buddhist-inspired contrast between “concentrative” meditation (or “focused attention”) and “insight” meditation (or “open monitoring”), which is shown to be problematic, especially when applied to non-Buddhist forms of meditation. The social constructivism that has long dominated cultural history tends to give preference to explanations based on directive working mechanisms and to disregard the equally important processes associated with non-directive meditation.

What makes a meditation object? This essay explores early Pāli accounts of objects still used in modern practice, especially in Southern Buddhism. Their very variety reflects this tradition’s stress on a graduated path, where different stages and individuals require different teaching approaches, at different times. Usually, in practice, objects inducing “calm” and various states known as jhāna, are recommended, before those producing “insight”. Some objects produce both calm and insight; others balance, ensuring health of mind. So, early Pāli literature describes many meditative routes: variety and skillful combinations for individuals are considered key. What is essential, however, is how objects are given and used. Dhammapada narratives in particular, describing a gradual path, a movement between internal and external, “shocks” in chance occurrences in the world, and skilled interventions by friends or teachers, demonstrate a pedagogy striking for its stress on individual need rather than rigid imposition and structure.

This chapter tracks how practitioners use vipassana in ways that make it relevant to their lives outside of the meditation center in two contexts: first, in the relatively compartmentalized daily meditation sittings, and second, while acting and interacting in the world. In both contexts, meditators use vipassana to bridge the shocks and splits of the self as they move between social situations and relations—from work to home to driving to job interviews to romantic dates. Daily meditation sittings turn into spaces where one “cleans” or “processes” emotions or pauses from daily life and social judgments so as to return with “charged batteries.” Brief moments of observing breath and sensations while acting in the world are used by practitioners to withhold their routine response to situations, or in their words, to “check” and “catch” themselves. The chapter illustrates how the technique that originally helped monks to disconnect from the taken-for-granted reality of daily life is now helping individuals to maintain daily life, offering solutions to this-world concerns.

This chapter discusses the teaching of Buddhism in a liberal arts college as a means to encourage students of any or no religious tradition to reflect on the meaning of their lives in a religiously pluralistic society. Although it recognizes that Buddhism has no equivalent of the Christian theological term “vocation,” it recognizes that Buddhism similarly struggles with issues of meaning and value using terms such as “right livelihood.” The chapter considers the value of encountering a moral tradition, in this case one which teaches distinctively Buddhist ways of thinking about meaningful lives: the five precepts of Buddhist morality, the ideal of the Bodhisattva, the development of emotional virtues, and the practice of vipassana and metta meditation. Finally, it suggests that any moral tradition may function as a mirror in which students may clearly see their own lives and values in relationship to a global society.

This chapter presents some basic instructions in shamatha and vipassana meditation along with some suggestions for how a Christian might make use of them in her prayer. Shamatha is frequently practiced by Tibetan Buddhists as a means of stabilizing the mind, and vipassana is a practice of the Theravadan Buddhist tradition. Either can be used at the beginning of any prayer period to develop a state of greater concentration and mindfulness; taking the time to do this will make your subsequent meditation more effective. Both shamatha and vipassana use the breath as a focus of concentration. Breath also is an important image in Christian tradition, and it makes sense that Christians would make use of the breath in their prayer. The deepest purpose of the Christian practice of mindfulness of breathing is to make us aware of the dynamic presence of God within our own being.

This chapter lays the conceptual foundation for this book. It begins with an introduction to Goenka’s Vipassana movement, a description of a standard ten-day Vipassana course and the field site at which ethnographic research for this book was conducted. Next, the chapter introduces the participants involved in this research and provides an overview of some of their shared perspectives including their conception of categories such as religion and spirituality. Finally, the chapter reflects on the recent developments in conversion studies and situates this book within this field. Most notably, it includes a conception of conversion and outlines the linguistic approach I have adopted to achieve the objectives of this book.