The Microinteractive Order of Spirituality

The discourse of spirituality emphasizes personal, embodied experience. This emphasis can lead to a relatively individualized understanding of spirituality that neglects the fact that spirituality is practiced in groups and is based on the production of intersubjective spaces in which people learn together to look inward and experience transcendence. This chapter tracks the unique social order of vipassana meditation retreats, illustrating that meditation training is not merely psychological—it includes training in a new kind of social interaction mode. The community of practitioners in the meditation center is one of “collective solitude,” as practitioners are in close proximity to one another but avoid direct social engagement, helping one another to transcend the tendency to focus on the self as seen by others. Social spheres such as meditation groups, yoga, pilgrimage, or even mass prayer all resemble the collective solitude described in the context of vipassana meditation.

Transcending Locality

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.

IMPORTANCE OF VIPASSANA (BUDDHIST MEDITATION) IN THE PANDEMIC OF COVID-19: A REVIEW

Today, we are living in the era of developed science and technology in which human being has no utopia and generally human being now days, thinks logically and will not accept anything unless the results are beneficial, tangible, vivid and personal. In ancient times, ritual and magical practices were humanity's crucial forms of health care. Vipassana (Buddhist meditation) is one of the India's prehistoric meditative practices with the help of which Siddharth Gautama became the Buddha 2,500 years ago. Meaning of Vipassana is “Insight”, (Mindfulness meditation) and it is a Pali word. Though, human being is now living in the era of developed science and technology but at the same time world is facing serious problems which threaten all mankind. After the WWII, the Coronavirus Covid-19 outbreak has become the most devastated disaster for human and its socio-economic development in the world. It seems that only Vipassana meditation has the capacity to eradicate total sufferings of human being. Anicca (Impermance), Dukkha (suffering) and Anatta (non-substantiality) are the basic teachings of the Buddha which is the foundation of Vipassana meditation. It is said that change is the only constant thing in this universe and Crises such as the Covid-19 pandemic has proved it. Vipassana can provide an approach to live life with this constant change. Demands for unconventional forms of medicine have increasing day by day and it is being proving that there are numerous health benefits of Vipassana meditation. This paper briefly reviews the Vipassana (Buddhist meditation) and its benefits for human beings during this Covid-19 pandemic.

Teaching Transnational Buddhist Meditation with Vipassanā (Neiguan 內觀) and Mindfulness (Zhengnian 正念) for Healing Depression in Contemporary China

This paper examines how the teaching of embodied practices of transnational Buddhist meditation has been designated for healing depression explicitly in contemporary Chinese Buddhist communities with the influences of Buddhist modernism in Southeast Asia and globalization. Despite the revival of traditional Chan school meditation practices since the Open Policy, various transnational lay meditation practices, such as vipassanā and mindfulness, have been popularized in monastic and lay communities as a trendy way to heal physical and mental suffering in mainland China. Drawing from a recent ethnographic study of a meditation retreat held at a Chinese Buddhist monastery in South China, this paper examines how Buddhist monastics have promoted a hybrid mode of embodied Buddhist meditation practices, mindfulness and psychoanalytic exercises for healing depression in lay people. With analysis of the teaching and approach of the retreat guided by well-educated Chinese meditation monastics, I argue that some young generation Buddhist communities have contributed to giving active responses towards the recent yearning for individualized bodily practices and the social trend of the “subjective turn” and self-reflexivity in contemporary Chinese society. The hybrid inclusion of mindfulness exercises from secular programs and psychoanalytic exercises into a vipassanā meditation retreat may reflect an attempt to re-contextualize meditation in Chinese Buddhism.

Meditation in Prison

In recent years interest in the use of meditation programs in prison has grown considerably, yet empirical research evidence for their effectiveness has been slower to accumulate. This chapter explores the application of meditation programs that take place within prison walls and evaluates their effectiveness in three key areas: (i) mental health and psychological wellbeing; (ii) substance misuse; (iii) and reoffending behavior. Evidence from prison studies, most of them conducted in the USA, is reviewed with a focus on their effectiveness. The philosophical and historical context of meditation is taken into account, and key concepts and definitions are critiqued. The chapter explores the meditation practices that are most often found in prison, such as Transcendental Meditation, mindfulness, and Vipassana meditation. It examines meditation’s role as an adjunct therapy in the treatment of substance misuse disorders and more general applications that aim to enhance well-being. The limitations of current studies together with directions for future research are also discussed.