Learning to Stop: Mindfulness Meditation as Anti-violence Pedagogy

Description

This book is a philosophical and historical study that explores how meditative practices for cultivating mindfulness can be regarded as a unique form of education against violence—one that emphasizes stopping and contemplation as a necessary precursor to action. It brings together the idiosyncratic but insightful musings on violence by Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek with recent research on mindfulness and violence as a lens. Using this lens, it looks at two exemplary educators and how they taught mindfulness meditation as a way of resisting the types of violence they and their students faced: the Vietnamese Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh amidst the brutality of the Second Indochina War (1955-1975), and the African-American studies professor and cultural critic bell hooks in the face of systemic oppression in the United States of the 1980s. Preface Acknowledgements Contents Chapter 1: ‘Just Sit and Wait’: Žižek’s kōan Sydney Opera House, Australia, 2011 Mindfulness Mindfulness as Education Mindfulness Against Violence References Chapter 2: ‘I Would Prefer Not to’: Violence, Subtraction, and Contemplative Pedagogy Klamath, California, 2009/2010 Violence Subtraction Contemplative Pedagogy Conclusion References Chapter 3: ‘Don’t Just Do Something, Sit There’: Thich Nhat Hanh and the School of Youth for Social Service New Delhi, 2008 Stopping Seeing Engaged Buddhism Conclusion References Chapter 4: ‘There Is No Change Without Contemplation’: bell hooks and the Sisters of the Yam San Francisco, 2011 Recovery Resistance Engaged Pedagogy Conclusion References Chapter 5: ‘I Will Not Run’: Mindfulness in Contexts of Violence Various Locations, 2011- References Index