Vulnerability, Response-Ability, and the Promise of Making Refuge
Edwin Ng, Zack Walsh
Religions January 29, 2019 DOI: 10.3390/rel10020080 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Meditation |
| Keywords | Engaged buddhism Making refuge Vulnerability Response-ability White supremacy Social justice Commons Feminist theory Posthumanism |
| Key points | Proposes "making refuge" as a conceptual placeholder, analytical rubric, guiding ethos, and praxis for engaged Buddhism, defined as building conditions of trust and safety for living and dying well together. Argues that connecting dharmic understandings of dukkha with feminist conceptualizations of body and vulnerability charts pathways for engaged Buddhism's liberatory aspirations, and that examining white supremacy in U.S. Buddhism through this framework shows how political healing and restorative justice might be cultivated through a dispositional ethics attentive to oppressed people's vulnerabilities. |
Abstract
This paper proposes “making refuge„ as a conceptual placeholder and an analytical rubric, a guiding ethos and praxis, for the engaged Buddhist aspiration of responding to the social, political, economic, and planetary crises facing the world. Making refuge is conceived as the work of building the conditions of trust and safety necessary for living and dying well together as co-inhabitants of diverse communities and habitats. The paper will explain the rationale for making refuge by connecting the dharmic understanding of dukkha with feminist conceptualizations of the body and vulnerability. This will chart some theoretical and methodological pathways for engaged Buddhism to further its liberatory aspirations in reciprocity with emergent movements in radical critical theory, contemplative studies, and social and ecological activism. The paper will also examine the effects of white supremacy in U.S. Buddhism through the framework of making refuge. This will demonstrate how political healing and restorative justice might be cultivated through a dispositional ethics that pays appropriate attention to the vulnerabilities facing oppressed people.
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 |