Buddhist Meditation as Strategic Embodiment: An Optative Reflection
Sharon A. Suh
Flashpoints for Asian American Studies October 3, 2017 DOI: 10.5422/fordham/9780823278602.003.0016 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Buddhism Meditation |
| Key points | Argues that Asian American studies has largely overlooked religion as a site for analyzing race, gender, and sexuality, and that its discourses uncritically reproduce Orientalized markers of Buddhist authenticity while neglecting lay Buddhist practices. Proposes reframing meditation politics as a way to address bodily alienation and internalized white supremacy. |
Abstract
Chapter 15 seriously scrutinizes the relationship of Buddhism, “one of America’s racialized other religious darlings,” to Asian American studies, which has yet to consistently recognize religion as a legitimate site upon which to map race, gender, and sexuality. Suh argues that “the common Buddhist units of measure and authenticity” —for instance, Orientalized monks and Eastern meditation— “are uncritically reproduced in larger Asian American discourses that continue to overlook the non-devotional and non-meditative practices of Buddhist laity.” Suh’s essay counters those discourses by engendering a new way of seeing meditation politics as a means of ameliorating bodily alienation and internalized white supremacy.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on buddhism, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mental balance and well-being: Building bridges between Buddhism and Western psychology. | 2006 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Buddhist Modernism and the Rhetoric of Meditative Experience | 1995 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Buddhist and Psychological Perspectives on Emotions and Well-Being | 2005 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Too Early to Tell: The Potential Impact and Challenges—Ethical and Otherwise—Inherent in the Mainstreaming of Dharma in an Increasingly Dystopian World | 2017 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| From self to nonself: The Nonself Theory | 2016 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |