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April 27, 2005

Buddhism and Cultural Studies: Talk on MP3

As I've mentioned on this blog a couple of times, I'm growing more and more interested in Buddhism. I've meditated regularly for over a decade, and in the last couple of years, I've started reading more about Buddhist philosophy. Now, I'm starting to think through how to incorporate Buddhist ideas into my scholarship and teaching.

So, this semester, I tried an experiment: for my graduate course on cultural studies, I included a week on Mindfulness in the Marketplace: Compassionate Responses to Consumerism, a collection of essays by Buddhists about the politics and ethics of consumer culture.

Last week, we had our class on Buddhism. I started by having everybody take off their shoes and sit on the floor. I talked about my own experience with meditation and Buddhism, and then addressed the relationship I see between Buddhist ideas and critical theory. After that, we had a group meditation. Since I wasn't sure of my skills as a meditation leader, I played a video hosted by Jack Kornfield, Meditation for Beginners.

Here's my talk. You can find the syllabus for the course here.

Here are a few of the meditation teachers I recommend in the talk:

Shinzen Young, The Science of Enlightenment - meditation training with a focus on the continuities between science and mysticism. For free samples of Young's meditation instructions, check out his web site. See also Break Through the Pain and Pain Relief for meditation techniques for chronic pain

Steven Batchelor, Buddhism without Beliefs - agnostic Zen Buddhism.

Other recommended meditation teachers: Jack Kornfield (the guy in the video), Pema Chodron, Cheri Huber, Sharon Salzberg (specializes in loving kindness meditation), Robert Thurman (specializes in Tibetan Buddhism).

A good one-stop source for meditation recordings is Sounds True.

Posted by tedf at April 27, 2005 12:41 AM

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