In contrast to forms of Buddhism popular in the West such as Vipassana meditation and Zen Buddhis... more In contrast to forms of Buddhism popular in the West such as Vipassana meditation and Zen Buddhism which emphasize doctrinal study, meditation practice, and personal transformation above traditional rituals of deity yoga and merit-making, and Buddhist cosmology, Tibetan Buddhism retains its traditional framework of belief and practice. The worldwide Gelugpa Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT) teaches the traditional practice of deity visualization, during which the meditator generates the view of the visualized deity as that of emptiness, the understanding that all objects, including buddhas, bodhisattvas, and deities are ultimately empty of inherent existence. Data obtained from fieldwork conducted at two FPMT centres: Vajrayana Institute in Sydney, Australia, and Kopan Monastery in Nepal, suggests an interpretation of the manner in which practitioners come to an appreciation of deity practice in the broader context of the FPMT's teachings. In outlining how this occurs, I discuss the role of doctrine including the ontological status of the deity, and the role of personal experience and both personal and traditional religious authority in this interpretive process. Here, I aim to add to scholarly understanding of how Western practitioners come to accept the traditional elements of non-Western religions such as forms of Tibetan Buddhism.
Fundamental to the argument of this article, however, is that despite the superficial resemblance... more Fundamental to the argument of this article, however, is that despite the superficial resemblance of meditation retreats to other forms of religious travel, intensive meditation retreats warrant investigation as specifically liminal phenomena, in distinction to other religiously motivated travel phenomena, such as pilgrimage, designated by Turner as liminoid. 7 According to the Oxford Dictionary of World Religions, the term 'retreat' itself is used to denote withdrawal from the world, and a retreat is "a period of days spent apart from the world, in pursuit of religious ends." 8 A meditation retreat is an opportunity to spend time apart from everyday life during which outside distractions are minimised in order to intensify one's meditation practice. 9 Vipassana meditation is derived from the Theravada Buddhism of South and Southeast Asia, where it has a central soteriological role. Vipassana, a Pali term, is translated into English as 'insight.' 10 The aim of the vipassana technique of Mahasi Sayadaw of Burma, the style of vipassana meditation taught at BMIMC, is the attainment of nibbana (Pali for nirvana) through the cultivation of sati, mindfulness, which Mahasi Sayadaw defines as "concentrated attention," and Nyanaponika Thera as "bare attention," "the single minded awareness of what happens at the successive moments of perception as presented either through the five physical senses or through the mind." 11
The practice of vipassana meditation emphasizes the role of meditative experience in coming to un... more The practice of vipassana meditation emphasizes the role of meditative experience in coming to understand the Buddhist worldview and in effecting personal transformation. Data obtained from fieldwork conducted between 2003 and 2005 at the Blue Mountains Insight Meditation Centre (BMIMC) in Medlow Bath, NSW Australia, illustrate the process by which aspects of doctrine come to be accepted through an experiential understanding of their import. Many respondents attributed significance to their experiential understanding of dukkha, suffering, and anicca, impermanence, gained through Vipassana practice. My own significant instance of experiential learning involved that of the five hindrances, outlined in the Satipatthana Sutta as five mental states that hinder the meditator’s development of mindfulness. By reflecting upon the reasons for the difference between my experience and that of my interview respondents, I demonstrate the limitations of the researcher’s own meditation experience u...
The karma-rebirth doctrine is one of the core doctrines of the Buddhist worldview. Some forms of ... more The karma-rebirth doctrine is one of the core doctrines of the Buddhist worldview. Some forms of Western Buddhism emphasize doctrinal study and meditation practice over traditional Buddhist elements that have their foundation in the karma-rebirth doctrine, such as merit-making practices and other forms of ritual. Conversely, the worldwide Gelugpa Tibetan Buddhist Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT) encourages its affiliates to perform traditional ritual such as chanting and pujas to make merit for oneself and others, in addition to attending teachings and developing a regular meditation practice. During their exploration of the FPMT's activities, participants undergo a process of experimental validation of the teachings and practices, in which they come to accept doctrinal notions in one of two ways: the notion's capacity to validate and give meaning to personal experience, or to lend conceptual support to the newly acquired framework of ideas. Utilizing data obtained from fieldwork undertaken between 2003 and 2006 at Vajrayana Institute (VI), an FPMT centre in Sydney, Australia, I illustrate the way in which the karma-rebirth doctrine supports those aspects of the belief-system more capable of experiential validation through their capacity to frame and give meaning to personal experience. The acceptance of notions such as karma, rebirth and merit-making involves an interpretive shift from previously held notions about cause and effect and the nature of this-worldly existence, toward a Buddhist appreciation of these concepts.
One of the many difficulties facing the study of early medieval Indian art is the absence of a cl... more One of the many difficulties facing the study of early medieval Indian art is the absence of a clear and coherent narrative explaining the development of visual imagery in relationship to changing political discourses and patterns of patronage. Verma's new book is an ambitious attempt to write this much-needed history for Southern India and the Deccan during the period spanning the compilation of San • gam poetry to the culmination of the Colas. After briefly introducing the main argument-that images functioned like "texts in visual form" implicitly transmitting meaning and functioning as metaphors for royal power-Verma traces the changing perceptions of divine power (Chapter 1). She establishes the evolution of the iconography of Hindu deities as seen in sculptural imagery across an impressive range of temple sites, with particular attention given to S ´iva, Vis • n • u, and forms of the goddess (Chapter 2). This lengthy synthesis (213 pages) provides the foundation for shorter thematic chapters that examine the relationship between iconographic forms and textual discourses of heroism and valor (Chapter 3), royal power (Chapter 4), and religious cosmology (Chapter 5). While art historians may find Verma's methodological approach to iconology fairly traditional and unsurprising, scholars in a wide range of fields, and particularly religious studies and history, will benefit both from the book's many illustrations and from the author's efforts to parse out how various narrative elements from San • gam poetry, the Pura ¯n • as, and the A ¯gamas was reflected in the formalization, and indeed canonization, of new iconographic forms.
Australian Association For the Study of Religions Annual Conference Proceedings, Jan 2, 2010
Studies of religious conversion in recent decades, which have highlighted the role played by the ... more Studies of religious conversion in recent decades, which have highlighted the role played by the participant's recognition of personal transformation in the process of religious change, generally theorize such self-transformation as identity change. Models based on this equation are found to be inadequate for explaining the transformative action of Buddhist meditation practice which leads to commitment to Buddhism for many practitioners. Alternatively, some explanatory power is provided by James's model of the self as two discriminated aspects, the self-assubject and self-as-object, outlined in his Principles of Psychology. This paper discusses the model's applicability to data obtained from fieldwork conducted between 2003 and 2005, at two Western Buddhist centres in New South Wales, Australia: the Blue Mountains Insight Meditation Centre, and Vajrayana Institute. It outlines the nature of personal change experienced by the practitioners of both groups, through the practice of concentration and analytical meditation techniques, and the application of the corresponding models of the self as interpretive frameworks for experience.
This thesis explores the nature of the socialization and commitment process in the Western Buddhi... more This thesis explores the nature of the socialization and commitment process in the Western Buddhist context, by investigating the experiences of practitioners affiliated with two Buddhist Centres: the Theravadin Blue Mountains Insight Meditation Centre and the Gelugpa Tibetan Vajrayana Institute. Commitment by participants is based on the recognition that, through the application of the beliefs and practices of the new religion, selftransformation has occurred. It follows a process of religious experimentation in which the claims of a religious reality are experientially validated against inner understandings and convictions, which themselves become clearer as a result of experimental participation in religious activity. Functionally, the adopted worldview is seen to frame personal experience in a manner that renders it more meaningful. Meditative experience and its interpretation according to doctrine must be applicable to the improvement of the quality of lived experience. It must be relevant to current living, and ethically sustainable. Substantively, commitment is conditional upon accepting and succesfully employing: the three marks of samsaric existence, duhkha, anitya and anatman (Skt) as an interpretive framework for lived reality. In this the three groups of the Eight-fold Path, sila/ethics, samadhi/concentration, and prajna/wisdom provide a strategy for negotiating lived experience in the light of meditation techniques, specific to each Buddhist orientation, by which to apply doctrinal principles in one's own transformation. My grateful thanks are due to the practitioners, teachers and administrators of the two Buddhist Centres that permitted me to conduct the research for this thesis. Not only did their kindness enable me to pursue an academic analysis of a subject of interest to me, but also did it gain me stimulating discourse and friendly encounters. In particular I must thank both Venerable Tenzin Chönyi in the Vajrayana Institute and Patrick Kearney, formerly a resident teacher at the Blue Mountains Insight Meditation Centre, for their support. No less gratitude is due to the practitioners who willingly gave of their time in interview. I should like to thank Dr Carole Cusack, my supervisor, for her endless encouragement and support. I wish also to thank my associate supervisor Dr Jadran Mimica, and my former supervisor Dr Edward Crangle, for their enthusiasm and support. Warm thanks must go to staff members in the Department of Studies in Religion-Honorary Professor Gary Trompf, Associate Professor Iain Gardner, Dr Chris Hartney and Dr Jay Johnston-for their constructive comments; to members of the Australasian Association of Buddhist Studies (AABS) for their encouragement; and to my fellow doctoral candidates and friends, especially Andrew McGarrity, Dr Katharine Buljan, Sarah Penicka and John Wu. Appreciation must also be expressed to members of the Solidarity Choir for having the presence of mind to ask or not ask-depending on my demeanour-how the thesis was progressing; and to fellow instructors and students at the Australian Academy of Tai Chi, who always gave me their good wishes. And finally, Denis, thank you for being always there for me. And Bella, you too for just being you ...
In contrast to forms of Buddhism popular in the West such as Vipassana meditation and Zen Buddhis... more In contrast to forms of Buddhism popular in the West such as Vipassana meditation and Zen Buddhism which emphasize doctrinal study, meditation practice, and personal transformation above traditional rituals of deity yoga and merit-making, and Buddhist cosmology, Tibetan Buddhism retains its traditional framework of belief and practice. The worldwide Gelugpa Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT) teaches the traditional practice of deity visualization, during which the meditator generates the view of the visualized deity as that of emptiness, the understanding that all objects, including buddhas, bodhisattvas, and deities are ultimately empty of inherent existence. Data obtained from fieldwork conducted at two FPMT centres: Vajrayana Institute in Sydney, Australia, and Kopan Monastery in Nepal, suggests an interpretation of the manner in which practitioners come to an appreciation of deity practice in the broader context of the FPMT's teachings. In outlining how this occurs, I discuss the role of doctrine including the ontological status of the deity, and the role of personal experience and both personal and traditional religious authority in this interpretive process. Here, I aim to add to scholarly understanding of how Western practitioners come to accept the traditional elements of non-Western religions such as forms of Tibetan Buddhism.
Fundamental to the argument of this article, however, is that despite the superficial resemblance... more Fundamental to the argument of this article, however, is that despite the superficial resemblance of meditation retreats to other forms of religious travel, intensive meditation retreats warrant investigation as specifically liminal phenomena, in distinction to other religiously motivated travel phenomena, such as pilgrimage, designated by Turner as liminoid. 7 According to the Oxford Dictionary of World Religions, the term 'retreat' itself is used to denote withdrawal from the world, and a retreat is "a period of days spent apart from the world, in pursuit of religious ends." 8 A meditation retreat is an opportunity to spend time apart from everyday life during which outside distractions are minimised in order to intensify one's meditation practice. 9 Vipassana meditation is derived from the Theravada Buddhism of South and Southeast Asia, where it has a central soteriological role. Vipassana, a Pali term, is translated into English as 'insight.' 10 The aim of the vipassana technique of Mahasi Sayadaw of Burma, the style of vipassana meditation taught at BMIMC, is the attainment of nibbana (Pali for nirvana) through the cultivation of sati, mindfulness, which Mahasi Sayadaw defines as "concentrated attention," and Nyanaponika Thera as "bare attention," "the single minded awareness of what happens at the successive moments of perception as presented either through the five physical senses or through the mind." 11
The practice of vipassana meditation emphasizes the role of meditative experience in coming to un... more The practice of vipassana meditation emphasizes the role of meditative experience in coming to understand the Buddhist worldview and in effecting personal transformation. Data obtained from fieldwork conducted between 2003 and 2005 at the Blue Mountains Insight Meditation Centre (BMIMC) in Medlow Bath, NSW Australia, illustrate the process by which aspects of doctrine come to be accepted through an experiential understanding of their import. Many respondents attributed significance to their experiential understanding of dukkha, suffering, and anicca, impermanence, gained through Vipassana practice. My own significant instance of experiential learning involved that of the five hindrances, outlined in the Satipatthana Sutta as five mental states that hinder the meditator’s development of mindfulness. By reflecting upon the reasons for the difference between my experience and that of my interview respondents, I demonstrate the limitations of the researcher’s own meditation experience u...
The karma-rebirth doctrine is one of the core doctrines of the Buddhist worldview. Some forms of ... more The karma-rebirth doctrine is one of the core doctrines of the Buddhist worldview. Some forms of Western Buddhism emphasize doctrinal study and meditation practice over traditional Buddhist elements that have their foundation in the karma-rebirth doctrine, such as merit-making practices and other forms of ritual. Conversely, the worldwide Gelugpa Tibetan Buddhist Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT) encourages its affiliates to perform traditional ritual such as chanting and pujas to make merit for oneself and others, in addition to attending teachings and developing a regular meditation practice. During their exploration of the FPMT's activities, participants undergo a process of experimental validation of the teachings and practices, in which they come to accept doctrinal notions in one of two ways: the notion's capacity to validate and give meaning to personal experience, or to lend conceptual support to the newly acquired framework of ideas. Utilizing data obtained from fieldwork undertaken between 2003 and 2006 at Vajrayana Institute (VI), an FPMT centre in Sydney, Australia, I illustrate the way in which the karma-rebirth doctrine supports those aspects of the belief-system more capable of experiential validation through their capacity to frame and give meaning to personal experience. The acceptance of notions such as karma, rebirth and merit-making involves an interpretive shift from previously held notions about cause and effect and the nature of this-worldly existence, toward a Buddhist appreciation of these concepts.
One of the many difficulties facing the study of early medieval Indian art is the absence of a cl... more One of the many difficulties facing the study of early medieval Indian art is the absence of a clear and coherent narrative explaining the development of visual imagery in relationship to changing political discourses and patterns of patronage. Verma's new book is an ambitious attempt to write this much-needed history for Southern India and the Deccan during the period spanning the compilation of San • gam poetry to the culmination of the Colas. After briefly introducing the main argument-that images functioned like "texts in visual form" implicitly transmitting meaning and functioning as metaphors for royal power-Verma traces the changing perceptions of divine power (Chapter 1). She establishes the evolution of the iconography of Hindu deities as seen in sculptural imagery across an impressive range of temple sites, with particular attention given to S ´iva, Vis • n • u, and forms of the goddess (Chapter 2). This lengthy synthesis (213 pages) provides the foundation for shorter thematic chapters that examine the relationship between iconographic forms and textual discourses of heroism and valor (Chapter 3), royal power (Chapter 4), and religious cosmology (Chapter 5). While art historians may find Verma's methodological approach to iconology fairly traditional and unsurprising, scholars in a wide range of fields, and particularly religious studies and history, will benefit both from the book's many illustrations and from the author's efforts to parse out how various narrative elements from San • gam poetry, the Pura ¯n • as, and the A ¯gamas was reflected in the formalization, and indeed canonization, of new iconographic forms.
Australian Association For the Study of Religions Annual Conference Proceedings, Jan 2, 2010
Studies of religious conversion in recent decades, which have highlighted the role played by the ... more Studies of religious conversion in recent decades, which have highlighted the role played by the participant's recognition of personal transformation in the process of religious change, generally theorize such self-transformation as identity change. Models based on this equation are found to be inadequate for explaining the transformative action of Buddhist meditation practice which leads to commitment to Buddhism for many practitioners. Alternatively, some explanatory power is provided by James's model of the self as two discriminated aspects, the self-assubject and self-as-object, outlined in his Principles of Psychology. This paper discusses the model's applicability to data obtained from fieldwork conducted between 2003 and 2005, at two Western Buddhist centres in New South Wales, Australia: the Blue Mountains Insight Meditation Centre, and Vajrayana Institute. It outlines the nature of personal change experienced by the practitioners of both groups, through the practice of concentration and analytical meditation techniques, and the application of the corresponding models of the self as interpretive frameworks for experience.
This thesis explores the nature of the socialization and commitment process in the Western Buddhi... more This thesis explores the nature of the socialization and commitment process in the Western Buddhist context, by investigating the experiences of practitioners affiliated with two Buddhist Centres: the Theravadin Blue Mountains Insight Meditation Centre and the Gelugpa Tibetan Vajrayana Institute. Commitment by participants is based on the recognition that, through the application of the beliefs and practices of the new religion, selftransformation has occurred. It follows a process of religious experimentation in which the claims of a religious reality are experientially validated against inner understandings and convictions, which themselves become clearer as a result of experimental participation in religious activity. Functionally, the adopted worldview is seen to frame personal experience in a manner that renders it more meaningful. Meditative experience and its interpretation according to doctrine must be applicable to the improvement of the quality of lived experience. It must be relevant to current living, and ethically sustainable. Substantively, commitment is conditional upon accepting and succesfully employing: the three marks of samsaric existence, duhkha, anitya and anatman (Skt) as an interpretive framework for lived reality. In this the three groups of the Eight-fold Path, sila/ethics, samadhi/concentration, and prajna/wisdom provide a strategy for negotiating lived experience in the light of meditation techniques, specific to each Buddhist orientation, by which to apply doctrinal principles in one's own transformation. My grateful thanks are due to the practitioners, teachers and administrators of the two Buddhist Centres that permitted me to conduct the research for this thesis. Not only did their kindness enable me to pursue an academic analysis of a subject of interest to me, but also did it gain me stimulating discourse and friendly encounters. In particular I must thank both Venerable Tenzin Chönyi in the Vajrayana Institute and Patrick Kearney, formerly a resident teacher at the Blue Mountains Insight Meditation Centre, for their support. No less gratitude is due to the practitioners who willingly gave of their time in interview. I should like to thank Dr Carole Cusack, my supervisor, for her endless encouragement and support. I wish also to thank my associate supervisor Dr Jadran Mimica, and my former supervisor Dr Edward Crangle, for their enthusiasm and support. Warm thanks must go to staff members in the Department of Studies in Religion-Honorary Professor Gary Trompf, Associate Professor Iain Gardner, Dr Chris Hartney and Dr Jay Johnston-for their constructive comments; to members of the Australasian Association of Buddhist Studies (AABS) for their encouragement; and to my fellow doctoral candidates and friends, especially Andrew McGarrity, Dr Katharine Buljan, Sarah Penicka and John Wu. Appreciation must also be expressed to members of the Solidarity Choir for having the presence of mind to ask or not ask-depending on my demeanour-how the thesis was progressing; and to fellow instructors and students at the Australian Academy of Tai Chi, who always gave me their good wishes. And finally, Denis, thank you for being always there for me. And Bella, you too for just being you ...
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