Meditation in the Pali Social Imaginary I
Rethinking Meditation September 14, 2023 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197661741.003.0004 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Intervention | Meditation practices |
| Topics | Meditation |
| Key points | Argues that early Buddhist meditation practices disrupt tacit, habitual experience to consciously cultivate an alternative habitus for monastics. |
Abstract
Abstract This chapter brings early Buddhist meditation literature—especially the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta—into conversation with ideas in phenomenology and cognitive science that address the distinction between conscious, effortful activity and habitual activity rooted in the tacit assumptions, dispositions, and categories of a particular cultural context. Some meditation practices disrupt the tacit level of experience in order to bring it to explicit cognition and intentional direction. Part of their original purpose was to help consciously cultivate particular ways of being in the world for Buddhist monastics and to habituate them to the categories, orientations, and sensibilities recommended for monastic life, fostering explicit awareness of the habitual flow of experience and activity in order to reconfigure this activity and reinterpret its significance. Meditation in this sense entails training desires, aesthetic sensibilities, and categories through which to interpret one’s experience, creating an alternative habitus—a habitual, embodied way of being in the world.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on meditation, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mindfulness: A proposed operational definition. | 2004 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Mechanisms of mindfulness | 2005 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| How Does Mindfulness Meditation Work? Proposing Mechanisms of Action From a Conceptual and Neural Perspective | 2011 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for depression | 2006 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-transcendence (S-ART): a framework for understanding the neurobiological mechanisms of mindfulness | 2012 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
Citations in the library
Cites 15
- Intensive meditation training improves perceptual discrimination and sustained attention. Psychological Science June 1, 2010
- What does mindfulness really mean? A canonical perspective Contemporary Buddhism May 1, 2011
- On some definitions of mindfulness Contemporary Buddhism May 1, 2011
- Buddhist Modernism and the Rhetoric of Meditative Experience Numen 1995
- The Mindful Brain and Emotion Regulation in Mood Disorders The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry February 1, 2012
and 10 more in the library