RT Article
T1 Insight Transformed: Coming to Terms with Mindfulness in South Asian and Global Frames
JF Religions of South Asia
VO 11
IS 2/3
SP 158
OP 181
A1 Stuart, Daniel Malinowski
LA English
YR 2017
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1770467572
AB This article fills in a gap in the historiography of modern insight and mindfulness meditation. By providing an account of the role of S. N. Goenka in the formation and dissemination of modern insight meditation (vipassana), and his reframing of Burmese Buddhist meditation in a postcolonial South Asian context, I show how the roots of modern therapeutic forms of mindfulness emerge from magico-religious contexts that have been glossed over in a process of scientization. By presenting two parallel case studies from South Asia, in which insight meditation was appropriated and repurposed by Jain and Hindu communities under the pressure of distinct social, personal, and religious forces, I suggest that modern therapeutic mindfulness is just one instantiation of other similar processes. By understanding the variety of ways in which insight meditation has been encountered by and made available to prospective practitioners in multiple social and historical contexts, historians can better understand the complex of factors that gave rise to the modern category of 'mindfulness'.
K1 Buddhism
K1 Hinduism
K1 Jainism
K1 S. N. Goenka
K1 U Ba Khin
K1 insight meditation
K1 Mindfulness
K1 postcolonial India
K1 vipassanā
K1 Yoga
DO 10.1558/rosa.37022