Teaching Transnational Buddhist Meditation with Vipassanā (Neiguan 內觀) and Mindfulness (Zhengnian 正念) for Healing Depression in Contemporary China

Ngar-Sze Lau

doi:10.3390/rel12030212

Abstract

This paper examines how the teaching of embodied practices of transnational Buddhist meditation has been designated for healing depression explicitly in contemporary Chinese Buddhist communities with the influences of Buddhist modernism in Southeast Asia and globalization. Despite the revival of traditional Chan school meditation practices since the Open Policy, various transnational lay meditation practices, such as vipassanā and mindfulness, have been popularized in monastic and lay communities as a trendy way to heal physical and mental suffering in mainland China. Drawing from a recent ethnographic study of a meditation retreat held at a Chinese Buddhist monastery in South China, this paper examines how Buddhist monastics have promoted a hybrid mode of embodied Buddhist meditation practices, mindfulness and psychoanalytic exercises for healing depression in lay people. With analysis of the teaching and approach of the retreat guided by well-educated Chinese meditation monastics, I argue that some young generation Buddhist communities have contributed to giving active responses towards the recent yearning for individualized bodily practices and the social trend of the “subjective turn” and self-reflexivity in contemporary Chinese society. The hybrid inclusion of mindfulness exercises from secular programs and psychoanalytic exercises into a vipassanā meditation retreat may reflect an attempt to re-contextualize meditation in Chinese Buddhism.

Highlights

On the second evening of the eight-day “Healing Depression Vipassana Meditation Retreat in Winter Solstice 2019”, at the meditation hall (Figure 1) of Gengxiang Monastery 耕香寺, during the question and answer session after the Dharma talk on Anandabhaddekarattasuttam. , Yaqi, a female meditator, shared shyly about her observed body sensation: “Something is suppressing. [I can] feel that something is causing me difficulty to breathe
Drawing from a recent ethnographic study of a meditation retreat held at a Chinese Buddhist monastery in south China, this paper examines how Chinese Buddhist monastics have promoted a hybrid mode of embodied Buddhist meditation practices, including Buddhist precepts, vipassana, mindfulness, and modern psychoanalytic exercises for healing depression of people who are non-Buddhists
The relaxing policy of tourist policy, the influences of Buddhist modernization in the Southeast Asia, and globalization12, experienced Chinese Buddhists, including monks, nuns, laymen, and laywomen started traveling to Southeast Asia to learn meditation practices in Theravada traditions since the century turn (Lau 2020a; 2021)

Summary

Introduction

In Deep China: The Moral Life of the Person: What Anthropology and Psychiatry Tell Us about China Today. Edited by Arthur Kleinman, Yunxiang Yan, Jing Jun, Sing Lee, Everett Zhang, Pan Tianshu, Wu Fei and Guo Jinhua. Modernising Buddhism: Emergence of Theravada Meditation Communities in Contemporary China. International Journal for the Study of Chan Buddhism and Human Civilization 7: 64–79. Journal for the Study of Chan Buddhism and Human Civilization 7: 1–15. Translating inner child emotion pedagogies in contemporary China. Burden of Depression in China, 1990–2017: Findings from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017. [CrossRef] [PubMed] Williams, J., Mark G., and Jon Kabat-Zinn. Edited by Arthur Kleinman, Yunxiang Yan, Jing Jun, Sig Lee, Everett Zhang, Pan Tianshu, Wu Fei and Guo Jinhua.

Mind–Body Training with Precepts and Vipassana Meditation

Mindfulness Practices for Overcoming Illness and Depression

Hybrid Training with Psychoanalytic and Physical Exercises