KNOWING BODY MOVING MIND

1. Auflage 2011
ISBN: 978-0-19-979382-2
Verlag: OXFORD UNIV PR

Buch, Englisch, 250 Seiten, Format (B × H): 164 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 476 g

Reihe: Oxford Ritual Studies Series

Knowing Body, Moving Mind investigates ritualizing and learning in introductory meditation classes at two Buddhist centers in Toronto, Canada. The centers, Friends of the Heart and Chandrakirti, are led and attended by Western (sometimes called "convert') Buddhists: that is, people from non-Buddhist familial and cultural backgrounds. Inspired by theories that suggest that rituals impart new knowledge or understanding, Patricia Campbell examines how
introductory meditation students learn through formal Buddhist practice. Along the way, she also explores practitioners' reasons for enrolling in meditation classes, their interests in Buddhism, and their responses to formal Buddhist practices and to ritual in general.

Based on ethnographic interviews and participant-observation fieldwork, the text follows interview participants' reflections on what they learned in meditation classes and through personal practice, and what roles meditation and other ritual practices played in that learning. Participants' learning experiences are illuminated by an influential learning theory called Bloom's Taxonomy, while the rites and practices taught and performed at the centers are explored using performance theory, a
method which focuses on the performative elements of ritual's postures and gestures. But the study expands the performance framework as well, by demonstrating that performative ritualizing includes the concentration techniques that take place in a meditator's mind.

Such techniques are received as traditional mental acts or behaviors that are standardized, repetitively performed, and variously regarded as special, elevated, spiritual or religious. Having established a link between mental and physical forms of ritualizing, the study then demonstrates that the repetitive mental techniques of meditation practice train the mind to develop new skills in the same way that physical postures and gestures train the body. The mind is thus experienced as both
embodied and gestural, and the whole of the body as socially and ritually informed.

Zielgruppe

Scholars and students of ritual, religion and the body, and contemporary Western Buddhism Buddhist teachers Practitioners in Western countries

Autoren/Hrsg.

Campbell, Patricia Q.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Buddhismus Buddhismus: Kult, Riten, Zeremonien

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction

Chapter One: Friends of the Heart and Chandrakirti Centre: Meditation in Toronto
Friends of the Heart
Chandrakirti Centre
Outreach

Chapter Two: Discovery Stories
Why Take a Meditation Class?

Chapter Three: Meditation Classes, Rites, and Ritual
Rites of Entry
Opening Prayer
Meditation
Talks or Lectures
Group Discussion and Socializing
Closing Rites
Ritual and Introductory Meditation Classes
Ritualization and Ritualizing
Performance Theory and Restoration of Behavior
Conclusion

Chapter Four: Beyond Knowledge
Bloom's Taxonomy
Cognitive Learning
Affective Learning
Psychomotor Learning
A Fourth Domain?
"Practice" as Changing Behavior
Conclusion

Chapter Five: The Ritualizing Body-Mind
Ritualizing and Decorum
Prostrations
Learning, Experimentation and Invariance
Cognitive Learning and Ritualizing
Ritualizing and Meditation
Meditation and Embodied Knowing
Conclusion

Chapter Six: Learning is Change
Newcomers, Learning and Change
Teacher's Objectives

Conclusion

Appendix: Student Interview Participants by Name

Notes

Bibliography

Über Autor(innen)

Campbell, Patricia Q.
Patricia Q. Campbell is a scholar of contemporary Western Buddhism and ritual studies. She has published articles based on ethnographic studies of Western Buddhists in Canada, and teaches in the areas of ritual studies and eastern religions. She lives with her husband in Toronto, Ontario.

Patricia Q. Campbell is a scholar of contemporary Western Buddhism and ritual studies. She has published articles based on ethnographic studies of Western Buddhists in Canada, and teaches in the areas of ritual studies and eastern religions. She lives with her husband in Toronto, Ontario.