Transcending Locality

Buddhist meditation, particularly vipassana, is growing in popularity in Israel as a way for practitioners to find a stable sense of self amid doubt and uncertainty. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, the chapter describes how Israelis use meditation to withdraw into the body, temporarily freeing themselves from local social ties while simultaneously fostering universal, humanistic identifications. Four dimensions of this transcendence of local context are identified: rejecting particularism, treating the meditation center as a space without place, distancing social roles during practice, and connecting to humanity through loving-kindness. Practitioners experience this withdrawal as a deeply personal yet universally anchoring practice.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Abstract This chapter explores the rising popularity of Buddhist meditation in Israel and the self-identity that bodily based mindfulness offers its practitioners. Based on extended ethnographic fieldwork among Israeli practitioners of vipassana meditation, this chapter illustrates how in periods characterized by doubt and uncertainty, Israelis find in meditation an embodied anchor for selfhood which substitutes dependency on the social world. Through meditation practice, Israelis recede into the body, temporarily liberating the self from local social embeddedness. Yet, at the same time, this same withdrawal to the body produces universal, humanistic-based identifications. The chapter detects four dimensions in the attempt to transcend local social context: an ideological rejection of particularism, the meditation center as a space without a place, the distancing of social roles and identities in vipassana practice, and a connection to humanity at large through loving-kindness. In meditation experience, considered by practitioners as the most personal, “private” withdrawal into the self, Israeli vipassana practitioners find a universal anchor that transcends social locality.