Full 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.
Contents
Chapter 1. 'Just sit and wait': Žižek's kōan.- Chapter 2. 'I would prefer not to': Violence, Subtraction, and Contemplative Pedagogy.- Chapter 3. 'Don't just do something, sit there': Thich Nhat Hanh and the School of Youth for Social Service.- Chapter 4. 'There is no change without contemplation': bell hooks and the Sisters of the Yam.- Chapter 5. 'I will not run': Mindfulness in contexts of violence.
