Cultural Histories of Meditation

The main focus of the project will be on the practice of meditation techniques. What are the elements involved in different techniques? What are the principal similarities and differences between them? And, most crucially, how have these practices developed in different cultural contexts?

According to present plans (and partly depending on financing), the project will consist of the following parts:

1. "Cultural Histories of Meditation" - main conference and publications

2. Workshops in different parts of the world connected to the writing of scholarly books and articles

a) "East Asian meditative traditions" - international conference in Taiwan, 29-30 October 2009, followed by the publication of a conference volume.

b) "Kanhwa Sŏn (Keyword Meditation) in Comparative Perspective: Background, Development, and Practice" - international conference in Korea, 11-13 August 2010.

c) "Beyond Dhikr: The Role of Meditation in Islamic Religious Life" - international conference at Stanford University, U.S.A., 2011 or 2012.

d) "Meditation and Buddhist Path Systems" - international workshop at UCLA, U.S.A., winter 2012.

e) "Cross-fertilization of Meditative Practices and Themes in Western Religions" - international symposium at University of Wales, Lampeter, 2013.

3. Scholarships for doctoral students in connection with the project.

4. The development of a research-oriented and web-based Encyclopaedia of Meditation covering both science and the humanities.

Project leader: Halvor Eifring, University of Oslo, Norway; project secretary: Kaif Mahmood, Jamia Millia Islamia, India.

Sponsors: University of Oslo (Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages), National Tsing Hua University (Monsoon Asia and Multiculturalism Project / Research Center for Social Sciences and Humanities)