Meditation and the Classroom

Description

Meditation and the Classroom inventively articulates how educators can use meditation to educate the whole student. Notably, a number of universities have initiated contemplative studies options and others have opened contemplative spaces. This represents an attempt to address the inner life. It is also a sign of a new era, one in which the United States is more spiritually diverse than ever before. Examples from university classrooms and statements by students indicate benefits include increased self-awareness, creativity, and compassion.

The religious studies scholars who have contributed to this book often teach about meditation, but here they include reflections on how meditation has affected them and their teaching. Until recently, though, even many religious studies professors would find sharing meditation experiences, let alone teaching meditation techniques, a breach of disciplinary and academic protocols. The value of teaching meditation and teaching about meditation is discussed. Ethical issues such as pluralism, respect, qualifications, power and coercion, and avoiding actual or perceived proselytization are also examined. While methods for religious studies are emphasized, the book provides valuable guidance for all those interested in this endeavor.
Acknowledgments

Editors’ Introduction

I. WHY CONTEMPLATIVE PEDAGOGY?
THE RELIGIOUS STUDIES DIALOGUE

1. The Convergence of Liberal Education and Contemplative Education—Inevitable?
Thomas B. Coburn

2. Meditation and Education: India, Tibet, and Modern America
Robert A. F. Thurman

3. Contemplative Studies: Can It Flourish in the Religious Studies Classrom?
Harold D. Roth

4. Contemplative Studies and the Art of Persuasion: The Institutional Challenge
Laurie L. Patton

II. THE CONTEMPLATIVE PROFESSOR

5. From Content, to Context, to Contemplation: One Professor’s Journey
Fran Grace

6. The Collective Dynamics of Contemplative Practice
Christopher M. Bache

7. The Mindful Teacher as the Foundation of Contemplative Pedagogy
Richard C. Brown

8. Compassion Beyond Fatigue: Contemplative Training for Educators and Other Helping Professionals
John Makransky

9. Field Notes from a Daoist Professor
Louis Komjathy

III. CRITICAL ISSUES IN CONTEMPLATIVE TEACHING

10. Training the Heart Responsibly: Ethical Considerations in Contemplative Teaching
Judith Simmer-Brown

11. Invitation and Coercion in Contemplative Pedagogy
Sid Brown

12. Interiority and Higher Education: The Neurophenomenology of Contemplation
Tobin Hart

IV. CONTEMPLATIVE-BASED COURSES

13. Embodied Contemplative Learning: Aikido as a Case Study
Michelle Lelwica

14. Reflections on Theory and Practice: The Case of Modern Yoga
Stuart Ray Sarbacker

15. Sustaining Life: Contemplative Pedagogies in a Religion and Ecology Course
Barbara Patterson

16. Adab: Courteous Behavior in the Classroom
Bridget Blomfield

17. Experiencing Medieval Christian Spirituality
Kristine T. Utterback

V. CONTEMPLATIVE EXERCISES FOR THE CLASSROOM

18. Awareness Practices in an Undergraduate Buddhism Course
Andrew O. Fort

19. Contemplative Inquiry: Beyond the Disembodied Subject
Anne Carolyn Klein and Ann Gleig

20. Love of Wisdom Puts You on the Spot: The Warrior Exam
Dale Asrael

21. A Meeting of the Minds in Cyberspace: Eco-contemplative Methods for Online Teaching
Jane Compson

22. Mindfulness in the History Classroom: Teaching as Interbeing
Shu-chin Wu

23. Two Contemplative Practices That Animate the Study of Religion
John D. Copenhaver

24. Mindfulness and Contemplative Practice in Art and Religion
Deborah J. Haynes

VI. CONCLUSION: DOES IT WORK? EVALUATIONS FROM OUR STUDENTS

25. Emotional Learning: Re-cognizing Emotion and Thought in a Buddhism Course
Judith Simmer-Brown

26. Meditation in the Classroom: What Do the Students Say They Learn?
Fran Grace

Selected Bibliography
List of Contributors
Index

Sujets

• Buddhism

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 août 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438437897
• Langue: English

Extrait

SUNY S ERIES IN R ELIGIOUS S TUDIES
Harold Coward, editor

Meditation and the Classroom
C ONTEMPLATIVE P EDAGOGY FOR R ELIGIOUS S TUDIES
Edited by
Judith Simmer-Brown
and
Fran Grace

Cover photo courtesy of iStockphoto.com/Dean Mitchell Photography
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2011 State University of New York Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permissions. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu
Production by Diane Ganeles Marketing by Michael Campochiaro
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Meditation and the classroom : contemplative pedagogy for religious studies / edited by Judith Simmer-Brown and Fran Grace.
p. cm. — (SUNY series in religious studies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-3787-3 (hc. : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4384-3788-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Meditation—Study and teaching. 2. Religion—Study and teaching. I. Simmer-Brown, Judith. II. Grace, Fran.
BL627.M397 2011
204'.35—dc22
2011004018
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

A CKNOWLEDGMENTS
J UDITH S IMMER -B ROWN : It has long been an irony that books appear to be authored by individuals, when every single one, whether an edited collection such as this or an independent project, is the result of interdependence. David Bohm calls it “the implicate order” that is always dynamic and unfolding. I have had the good fortune to be part of a community of collaborators in practice, education, and life, and continue to grow and change as a result of their authentic presence, kindness, and constantly incisive feedback. Thanks to all of them, especially Richard Brown, my husband, colleague, and best friend; in addition, I have received invaluable assistance in this project from Naropa colleagues Tom Coburn, Susan Burggraf, Gaylon Ferguson, Dale Asrael, Reed Bye, Barbara Dilley, Lee Worley, Mark Miller, Zoe Avstreih, and my graduate assistant, T. J. DeZauche. Sakyong Mipham, Rinpoche, and his father, Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, have never swayed from the conviction that we can build a diverse, contemplative, enlightened society when we have transformed our education to affirm the basic goodness of every person; their inspiration sustains me daily.
F RAN G RACE : In her contemplative masterpiece, St. Teresa of Avila advises: “Do that which best stirs you to love” (Interior Castle 4.1.7, trans. E. Allison Peers). I am blessed to do what I love with people I love. Deep and abiding gratitude goes, first of all, to my present and former students for their courage, inspiration, and affection. May this book honor you and your insights through meditation. Thanks also are due to my University of Redlands colleagues whose support has energized and expanded me in ways too numerous to name but hopefully discernible to you: Bill Huntley, Emily Culpepper, Julius Bailey, Karen Derris, Lillian Larsen, John Walsh, Lorenzo Garbo, Nancy Carrick, and Barbara Morris. For nurturance of an inner sanctum in the midst of day-to-day demands, thanks to Donna L. Robinson. To Dr. David R. and Susan Hawkins, gratitude beyond words.
I NTRODUCTION
JUDITH SIMMER-BROWN AND FRAN GRACE

BEGINNING WITH THE END
W e begin this book by telling you how it ends. The final section gives detailed reflections from our students about their experience with “meditation in the classroom.” Students certify that meditation benefits them keenly, both in their academic work and as a lifelong skill. Their learning assessments through the years have confirmed over and over again that meditation refines the mind and hones the heart. As a teaching method, we know it works.
Yet, we also know that the prospect of meditation in the classroom produces concern for some educators who fear that contemplative methods may be intrusive and coercive to students at worst, or simply a waste of time at best. A book like this must speak to the cautions of our colleagues, even as it must remain true to the delight of our students. Certainly, we are well versed in the concerns raised against the use of meditation in the classroom, because we have had to resolve such questions within our own minds. This collection of essays represents a culmination of pedagogical self-examination and conversations among us that, in the case of some contributors, span nearly three decades.
This book is the first of its kind as a resource on meditation in the college classroom. Although meditation, mindfulness, and contemplative practices boast a pervasive presence in our culture, and although the prevailing literature on liberal education emphasizes the importance of the inner life, there has been little academic leadership to guide such ventures into the interior.
The twenty-five contributors to this book have risen to the challenges of articulation, reflection, and praxis. While in agreement as to the value of meditation in the classroom, our pedagogical practices and personal worldviews offer an enlightening diversity. We come from a variety of institutional contexts, including state universities, private liberal arts institutions, and traditional church-related colleges. Some of the authors have been using contemplative pedagogy for decades, and some for little more than a year. Many of the authors cultivate a contemplative lifestyle, and for some, this self-cultivation takes place in the context of a religious tradition or spiritual community. For others, there is no specific religious identity or spiritual practice. We, as the two editors of this volume, exemplify the book's diversity.
Judith has been a visionary voice in the nation-wide contemplative education movement for the last three decades from her institutional base at Naropa University, a nonsectarian, Buddhist-inspired private college and graduate school. She has been a major contributor to the articulation of an ethic of pluralism for interreligious dialogue in the classroom. 1 She is one of the team leaders with the Center for the Advancement of Contemplative Education (CACE) at Naropa. In 2007, she designed and directed, with a group of her academic colleagues, Naropa's first annual seminar on contemplative teaching for university faculty from diverse disciplines across the country. Judith's training and work as a scholar-practitioner align principally with Indo-Tibetan Buddhism. She is on the steering committee of the Buddhist Critical-Constructive Reflection Group in the American Academy of Religion, and she served for a decade on the board of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies.
Fran is a mid-career scholar-practitioner in a secular university community. In 2004, she underwent a profound inner shift that led her to develop contemplative pedagogies after a decade of fairly traditional teaching. In 2007, her university opened its Meditation Room, a spacious classroom equipped with meditation cushions and yoga mats, and she currently teaches all of her classes in this space dedicated for interior learning. Although her original training as a scholar and practitioner took place within the Christian tradition, she is now more integrative than tradition specific in her contemplative approach and research. She has served as a co-chair of the Teaching Religion section within the American Academy of Religion and as a workshop facilitator for the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion.
As the reader will see, there is no single contemplative pedagogy and no single prototype of the contemplative professor. With such a wide range of institutional settings and individual commitments expressed in this book, how could there be a single pedagogical way? But, as contributors, we do agree on one thing: there is a singular place for meditation in the classroom.
We came to this conclusion cautiously. Although familiar with the benefits of meditation through our own practice and studies of recent scientific research, we needed to ask whether the benefits of meditation were directly relevant to the students' development as “liberal artists.” For, as we know, there are many beneficial human explorations that have no place in a classroom. Our years of collecting and analyzing qualitative data from contemplative methods have brought us to the conclusion that meditation is not only a beneficial human endeavor, but also a fulfillment of the aims and purposes of liberal education.

INTERIORITY AND LIBERAL EDUCATION
In 2007, the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) published College Learning for the New Global Century , a comprehensive analysis of higher education that outlines “Essential Learning Outcomes” such as “inquiry and analysis,” “critical and creative thinking,” “personal and social responsibility,” “ethical reasoning and action,” and the “foundation and skills for lifelong learning.” 2 These current learning outcomes are congruent with earlier documents. For example, The Great Conversation: The Substance of a Liberal Education (1952) proposed that liberal education aimed to foster “excellence, both private and public,” and to “train the mind.” 3
At the heart of such documents is the importance of interior accomplishments as an outcome of liberal education. The College Learning for the New Global Century authors propose that it is precisely the inner learning that distinguishes “liberal” education from “instrumental” education:
Throughout history, liberal education—especially the arts and humanities—has been a constant resource not just for civic life but for the inner life of self-discovery, values, moral inspiration, spi