Transcendental Meditation: Sustainability Studies and Dickinson’s Breath
The Emily Dickinson Journal January 1, 2013 Jesse Curran
This essay argues that Emily Dickinson's poetry, particularly her attention to conscious breathing or 'breath poetics,' offers a meditative practice relevant to contemporary ecological thinking and sustainability. By analyzing poems such as 'Through what transports of Patience' and 'Pain - has a Element of Blank -,' the author shows how Dickinson's use of temporal dissolution, pauses, and deixis inscribes meditative consciousness. The essay connects Dickinson's work to Buddhist and Yogic texts on meditative stages and to an American meditation tradition including Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman. Breath awareness, the essay contends, fosters a present-minded capacity to endure the epistemological rupture and personal responsibility that come with recognizing radical ecological interconnectivity.