Drifting through Samsara

Tacit Conversion and Disengagement in Goenka's Vipassana Movement

Masoumeh Rahmani (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

264 Seiten

2022
Oxford University Press Inc (Verlag)
978-0-19-757996-1 (ISBN)

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In Drifting Through Samsara, Masoumeh Rahmani provides a fieldwork-based study of Goenka's Vipassana meditation movement in New Zealand. This group is distinguished by its refusal to identify as Buddhist and by a rich rhetorical repertoire for repackaging Theravada Buddhist teachings in pseudo-scientific and secular language. Drawing from qualitative research, the book examines the way the movement's discourse shapes unique processes and narratives of conversion and disengagement. Rahmani argues that conversion to this movement is tacit and paradoxically results in the members' rejection of religious labels and categories including conversion. Tracing the linguistic changes associated with the process of conversion and increased commitment, she outlines three main disengagement pathways: (1) pragmatic leaving, (2) disaffiliation, and (3) deconversion. Pragmatic leavers are individuals who were disengaged prior to developing a commitment. Rahmani argues that the language of these leavers is characterised by pragmatisms, dualistic discourse, and ambivalence, and their post-disengagement involves an active gravitation towards practices with easily accomplished goals. Disaffiliates and deconverts are individuals who disengaged after years of intense commitment to the movement. One of the distinguishing features of disaffiliation narratives is self-doubt resulting from the movement's ambiguous discourse regarding progress. For these people post-disengagement often involves the retrospective adoption of Buddhist identity.

Rahmani finds that as a consequence of its linguistic strategies, deconversion is a rare exit pattern from this movement. In general, however, the themes and characteristics of both disaffiliation and deconversion fit the contours of exit from other traditions, even though conversion was tacit in the first place. The book thus questions the normative participant recruitment approach in conversion studies and argues that a simple reliance on the informants' identification with or rejection of religious labels fails to encompass the tonalities of conversion in the contemporary spiritual landscape.

Masoumeh Rahmani is a lecturer in Religious Studies at the School of Social and Cultural Studies in Victoria University of Wellington. She received her PhD from the University of Otago in 2017 and has previously held a research associate position in the Brain, Belief, and Behaviour lab at Coventry University. Her research interests include religious change, meditation movements, atheism and unbelief, and Asian spiritualities in non-Asian contexts. Her latest longitudinal project explored the diversity of "unbelief" in the mindfulness subcultures of the UK and the US and examined the influence of the practice on the worldviews of non-religious/atheist practitioners.

Abstract
Acknowledgments
List of Figures
A Note on Terminology and Transcription
Conventions of Transcription
Introduction

Chapter I: Conversion Career

Chapter II: Tacit Conversion

Chapter III: Pragmatic Leaving

Chapter IV: Vipassana Disaffiliation Narratives

Chapter V: Disaffiliation Trajectories

Chapter VI: Deconversion: Breathing New Self into Not-Self

Concluding Discussions
Bibliography
Appendix 1: Vipassana Ten-day Course Timetable
Appendix 2: Participants' Information

Erscheinungsdatum	04.10.2021
Reihe/Serie	AAR Academy Series
Verlagsort	New York
Sprache	englisch
Maße	224 x 150 mm
Gewicht	476 g
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Buddhismus
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
ISBN-10	0-19-757996-5 / 0197579965
ISBN-13	978-0-19-757996-1 / 9780197579961
Zustand	Neuware