Enacting Social Change Through Buddhist Meditation

Summary

Meditation can serve either to stabilize existing social structures or to challenge them, depending on how it is adopted. The assimilative approach assumes that individual practice naturally leads to social change and has been integrated into schools, hospitals, and politics. The radical approach prioritizes structural change and collective liberation, using meditation as self-care and protest in activist communities. Both currents stem from the modernization of Buddhism during colonialism, which detached meditation from its traditional religious context and re-embedded it in settings focused on social transformation and justice.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Abstract This chapter illustrates connections between meditation and social change, distinguishing assimilative and radical currents recognizable in the adoption of meditation as a tool of social stability and social transformation, especially within a North American context. The assimilative approach rests on the assumption that individual meditation practice will naturally lead to social transformation. It underlies the incorporation of meditation into established public institutions such as schools, hospitals, and the political arena. The radical current shifts focus from individual practice to structural change and collective liberation and is most visible in progressive social activist communities, which have adopted meditation as a strategy of self-care and a creative tool of protest. Both radical and assimilative currents have roots in the modernization of Buddhism that began during colonialism, which has led to the de-contextualization of meditation from its traditional religious matrix and its re-contextualization in various new matrices including ones primarily geared toward social transformation and justice.