Knowing Body, Moving Mind : Ritualizing and Learning at Two Buddhist Centers / Patricia Q. Campbell.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Campbell, Patricia Q.

Series:

Oxford ritual studies

Oxford ritual studies series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Learning, Psychology of.

Ritualization.

Learning strategies--Ontario--Toronto.

Learning strategies.

Meditation--Buddhism.

Meditation.

Ontario--Toronto.

Physical Description:

x, 238 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

New York : Oxford University Press, [2011]

Summary:

Knowing Body, Moving Mind investigates ritualizing and learning in introductory meditation classes at two Buddhist centers in Toranto, 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 participants' reflections on what they learned in classes and through personal practice, and what roles meditation and other ritual practices played in that learning. 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. Book jacket.

Contents:

"Western" Buddhism 5

The R Words 10

Performance and Embodiment 13

Learning Theory 17

Religion and Spirituality 18

Settings and Characters 19

1 Friends of the Heart and Chandrakirti Centre: Meditation in Toronto 22

Friends of the Heart 24

Chandrakirti Centre 30

Outreach 36

2 Discovery Stories 38

Gerald 42

Tanit 46

Carol 50

Alan 52

Diane 54

John 58

Why Take a Meditation Class? 60

3 Meditation Classes, Rites, and Ritual 70

Rites of Entry 73

Opening Prayer 75

Meditation 76

Talks or Lectures 84

Group Discussion and Socializing 88

Closing Rites 89

Ritual and Introductory Meditation Classes 90

Ritualization and Ritualizing 92

Performance Theory and Restoration of Behavior 96

Conclusion 98

4 Beyond Knowledge 99

Bloom's Taxonomy 103

Cognitive Learning 103

Affective Learning 108

Psychomotor Learning 117

A Fourth Domain? 123

"Practice" as Changing Behavior 129

Conclusion 133

5 The Ritualizing Body-Mind 134

Ritualizing and Decorum 136

Prostrations 138

Learning, Experimentation, and Invariance 143

Cognitive Learning and Ritualizing 146

Ritualizing and Meditation 153

Meditation and Embodied Knowing 155

Conclusion 173

6 Learning is Change 175

Newcomers, Learning, and Change 181

Teachers' Objectives 193.

Notes:

Based on the author's thesis (Ph.D.)--Wilfrid Laurier University, 2009.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780199793822

0199793824

9780199793815

0199793816

OCLC:

669269926