“Dual awakening?”
Mindful social action in the light of the de-contextualization of Socially Engaged Buddhism
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.35469/poligrafi.2022.353Keywords:
socially engaged Buddhism, mindfulness, Sarvodaya, concept of “dual awakening", loving-kindness meditation, social actionAbstract
The paper presents the concept of “dual awakening”, which is based on the Buddhist mindfulness appropriated by socially engaged Buddhism as a method to recognize and implement a “wholesome” paradigm on both the social and individual level. In the first half of the paper, I analyze the idea of “dual awakening” in the Southeast Asian context, especially in the case of the Sarvodaya Sramadana movement in Sri Lanka, In the second part of the paper, I review some of the research on (mindfulness) meditation in the West to critically evaluate the de-contextualization of transferring Buddhist ideas and methods (such as cultivating empathy and compassion as a basis for social action) into the Western modernist paradigm.
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