Meditation as ethical imperative

Abstract

The great principles of insight meditation are the four foundations of mindfulness. Lord Buddha claims that mindfulness is the only path to purification, freedom from suffering, and thus to nibbāna . This means there is no other practice to purify the mind, escape suffering and reach nibbāna besides the practice of the four foundations of mindfulness. (Phra Ajharn Yai, founder of Wat Bonamron) [A]t any particular stage in the historical development of any particular culture the established patterns of emotion, desire, satisfaction, and preference will only be adequately understood if they are understood as giving expression to some distinctive moral and evaluative position. Psychologies thus understood express and presuppose moralities. (MacIntyre 1988: 76–7) In the meditation monastery the primary monastic duties of the community are to practise meditation and facilitate the meditation practice of others. Following the work of Luhrmann (2009), I interpret meditation as a social learning process. In so doing, I shall consider some of the socially taught rules by which the cognitive categories of Buddhism are identified in the experiences of the practising monastic. The practitioner learns to engage with and interpret internal and external sensory phenomena in specific ways. Thus, the development of meditative discipline and monastic identity involves a process of learning to reinterpret subjective experiences and learning to alter subjectivity.