Note: This event has been cancelled

How Meditation Works: Self-Cultivation, Context, and Social Imaginaries

What does it mean for meditation to work, and what kind of work does it do?  Meditation is often described in terms of internal mental states that presumably arise in anyone who practices them diligently, whether they are an ancient monastic or a contemporary professional.  Much of the “work” these practices, however, may be quite different in divergent contexts.  Looking at how Pali materials have been used in ancient and modern contexts, this talk theorizes meditation practices as methods of cultivating ways of being in specific social imaginaries constituted by repertoires of concepts, attitudes, social practices, ethical dispositions, institutions, power relations, available identities, structures of authority, and conceptions of the cosmos.