Close Your Eyes and Relax: Secularizing Meditative Practice among Indonesian Non-Buddhist Youths

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-313-9_9How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Meditation; Buddhism; Secularization; Neoliberalism; Self-care

Abstract

The way each person deals with problems in his or her life certainly varies, but in this era of neoliberalism, there is a tendency for individuals to rely on their own abilities, for example through self-care activities. Holding on to religion, which is a traditional product, is not an impossibility in modern times. For example, the practice of meditation, which is one of the Buddhist spiritual practices, has also been adopted as a therapeutic method by the general public, including non-Buddhist youth groups. This research then tries to explore how the secularization process occurs in the practice of meditation among these young people without any compromise with the religious practices they believe in. Using a phenomenological approach, each individual's meditation experience is described subtly to find out how the dynamics of emotions and various intersections that arise when practicing meditation by detaching the religious side of meditation. The research findings show that the transition from sacred to profane in the practice of meditation proves that the universalization of religious practices provides opportunities for the general public to adopt religious teachings, even integrating their values into other religious practices, in order to survive and maintain wellness amid the onslaught of neoliberalism.

Copyright

© 2024 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Izmy Khumairoh
AU  - Maria Gratia Rosarina
AU  - Marsella Tri Anjani
PY  - 2024
DA  - 2024/12/07
TI  - Close Your Eyes and Relax: Secularizing Meditative Practice among Indonesian Non-Buddhist Youths
BT  - Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Culture and Sustainable Development (ICOCAS 2024)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 52
EP  - 58
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-313-9_9
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-313-9_9
ID  - Khumairoh2024
ER  -