Buddhist insight meditation (Vipassana) and Jon Kabat-Zinn's “Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction”: an example of dedifferentiation of religion and medicine?

For about 25 years, mindfulness meditation has attracted growing attention. Developed in the context of a traditional Asian religious tradition, mindfulness meditation originally served soteriological goals. In therapeutic settings, it has been claimed, it has become a secular ‘consciousness technol...

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Détails bibliographiques
Auteur principal: Schlieter, Jens 1966- (Auteur)
Type de support: Électronique Article
Langue:Anglais
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Publié: Carfax Publ. [2017]
Dans: Journal of contemporary religion
Année: 2017, Volume: 32, Numéro: 3, Pages: 447-463
Sujets / Chaînes de mots-clés standardisés:B Kabat-Zinn, Jon 1944- / Réduction de stress basée sur la pleine conscience / Vipassanâ / Religion / Médecine
Sujets non-standardisés:B Medicine
B Buddhism
B dedifferentiation
B Healing
B Mindfulness
B mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR)
Accès en ligne: Volltext (Verlag)
Description
Résumé:For about 25 years, mindfulness meditation has attracted growing attention. Developed in the context of a traditional Asian religious tradition, mindfulness meditation originally served soteriological goals. In therapeutic settings, it has been claimed, it has become a secular ‘consciousness technology'. So far, studies have mainly been interested in clinical evidence for salutogenetic effects. Questions about if and how practices such as “Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction” (MBSR) are to be conceptualized as ‘religious' still require further analysis. To provide a more fitting criteriology, we propose to distinguish between ‘salvific' (‘liberating') and ‘salvetive' (‘healing') settings of meditation, with the latter denoting a more ‘therapeutic' outlook. It will be argued that MBSR bears elements of salvetive and salvific meditation. In the paradigm of a functional differentiation between ‘religion' and ‘biomedicine', MBSR's presence in biomedical institutions seems to provide a counter-example, which will be discussed in the final section.
ISSN:1469-9419
Contient:Enthalten in: Journal of contemporary religion
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1080/13537903.2017.1362884