From Esotericism to Embodied Ritual: Care for Country as Religious Experience
Yin Paradies, Cullan Woods Joyce
Religions February 23, 2024 DOI: 10.3390/rel15020182 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Meditation |
| Keywords | Aboriginal psychology Aboriginal spirituality Contemplative research |
| Citations | 5 |
| Key points | Argues that Aboriginal spirituality is an embodied, practice-based sense of sacredness enacted through care for Country, and that Eurocentric categorizations have misrepresented it as hierarchical, esoteric, or belief-based. |
Abstract
Colonisation, genocide, ecocide, and climate derangement are ongoing, unfurling, global tragedies. In so-called Australia, spiritual practitioners can respond to these crises by deepening their engagement with Aboriginal perspectives/practices. This paper contends that some Eurocentric habitual categorisations subtly misinterpret Aboriginal experiences of the sacred, such as identifying creation myths as beliefs comparable to post-Enlightenment representations of the sacred and identifying the performance of sacred activity with similar characteristics to separateness and priesthood. This leads to erroneous characterisations of Aboriginal ritual practices as being based on a strong hierarchy, distinctive castes, and esotericism. We argue that an embodied and practice-based sense of sacredness guides Aboriginal spirituality. As a living culture, Aboriginal ongoing care for Country provides an enfleshed, real, palpable enactment of human spirituality. We argue that Aboriginal spirituality has been fetishised to the neglect of a call to care for Country in the most ‘mundane’ sense of tending to food, water, air, etc., as embodied religious experiences. Delving into dadirri and death, we elucidate contemporary cases of practical care for Country that illustrate how being on, in, and with Country can be a contemplative experience. We conclude by outlining how caring for Country ‘layers’ the various expressions of Aboriginal religious experience socially, psychologically, interpersonally, and ritually.
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 4
- Mindfulness: A proposed operational definition. Clinical Psychology Science and Practice 2004
- Investigating the phenomenological matrix of mindfulness-related practices from a neurocognitive perspective. American Psychologist October 1, 2015
- Nature Enhanced Meditation: Effects on Mindfulness, Connectedness to Nature, and Pro-Environmental Behavior August 26, 2020
- Building mindfulness bottom-up: Meditation in natural settings supports open monitoring and attention restoration. Consciousness and Cognition February 10, 2018