Rethinking Meditation Buddhist Meditative Practice in Ancient and Modern Worlds 9780197661765, 9780197661741, 9780197661772, 0197661742

Table of contents :
Contents
List of Abbreviations

Acknowledgments

I.THINKING ABOUT MEDITATION

1.Introduction

Meditative Practices, Ancient and Modern—Filters and Magnets—Themes of the Book: Historical and Genealogical Study; Theoretical Argument; Individuals, Cultures, and the Underlying Conceptual Architecture of late Modernity; Meditation as a Cultural Practice; Meditation and Secularism; Ethical Subjects

2.Neural Maps and Enlightenment Machines

The Enlightenment Machine—Meditation as a Science of Mind—The Theater-of-the-Mind Model of Mindfulness—The Self-as-Brain Model of Mindfulness—Meditation in Context: Initial Reflections

3.What Difference Does Context Make?: Meditation and Social Imaginaries

The Work Meditation Does—Meditation in a Social Imaginary

II.MEDITATION IN CONTEXT

4.Meditation in the Pali Social Imaginary I: The Phenomenology and Ethics of Monastic Mindfulness

The Historical and Cultural Context of Early Buddhist Meditative Practices—Meditation as Self-Cultivation in the Pali Suttas—Phenomenological and Psychological Reflections—Mindfulness and the Habitus of Monastic Comportment

5.Meditation in the Pali Social Imaginary II: Corporeal and Cognitive Mindfulness

The Body: As It Is—Corporeal Crisis—Doctrinal Contemplations—Rethinking the Foundations of Mindfulness

6.Meditation and Cultural Repertoires

Taxonomies, Symptoms, and Cultural Contexts—Two Meditators Again—And Yet . . .

7.Deconstructive Meditation and the Search for the Buddha Within

The Dharma Game: Categories and the Way Things Are—Emptiness and the Way Things Are—Beyond Categories—Meditation and the Buddha Within—Implications of Innateism, Insinuations of Emptiness

III.MEDITATION AND THE ETHICAL SUBJECT

8.Secularism and the Ethic of Appreciation

The Subject of Ethics and the Ethical Subject—Secularism and the Secular Meditator—The Underlying Ideals of Secular Meditation—“Appreciate Your Life”: Strawberries and the Ethic of Appreciation—Preparing the Way: Transcendentalism and Attentive Appreciation—Meditation in the Immanent Frame

9.Meditation and the Ethic of Authenticity

Authenticity in Modern Western Thought—Meditation and the Ethic of Authenticity—Alienation and the Modern Meditator—Evaluating the Ethic of Authenticity—The Real Thing

10.Meditation and the Ethic of Autonomy

Introducing Autonomy—Freedom in Classical Buddhism—Meditation and Modern Conceptions of Freedom—Liberalism and the Autonomous Self—The Inner Citadel of the Mind—The Feminist Interrogation of the Autonomous Self—Alternative Models of Agency in Meditative Traditions—Spontaneity and Submission: Alternative Models of Agency in Meditative Traditions—Meditation and Autonomy

11.Affordances, Disruption, and Activism

Navigating the Internal Affordance Landscape—Ruptures, Breakdown, and Ethics—Meditation, Social Change, and “Interruptive Agency”—Social and Political Affordances—Conclusions on Meditation, Autonomy, and Ethics

12.Individualism and Fragmentation in the Mirrors of Secularism: The Ethic of Interdependence

Hand Mirrors and Infinity Mirrors—Modernity and the Fragmentation of the Self—Fragmented Selves and Nonself—Two Poles of Mindfulness—Secularity and Interdependence—Fractal Order and Fragmented Chaos

Postscript: The Iron Age and the Anthropocene

Notes

Works Cited

Index