The Hidden Presence and Influence of Thai Buddhist Meditation Practices in the UK

这个项目考察了泰国小乘佛教在英国的冥想实践，这些实践很少有文献记载，但在西方人、散居海外的佛教徒和学术界中却有独特的实践和团体。对这些练习的研究具有重要意义，因为它将告诉我们有关小乘冥想技巧和英国佛教的多样性，以及这些鲜有研究的技巧有助于心理健康和福祉的潜力，为未来的研究人员提供信息。传统的泰国冥想与佛教衍生的冥想形成鲜明对比，后者从20世纪70年代开始在全球流行起来。然而，泰国的做法更早地传到了英国，从20世纪50年代开始，当时西方人第一次试图在英国建立一个佛教僧侣社区。它们提供了非常独特的特征，包括更多地关注身体转化和达到深度冥想状态。它们反映了技术的更大范围和多样性，其历史可以追溯到几个世纪以前。相比之下，正念来自有限的佛教传统，主要来自现代缅甸的Vipassana(洞察修行)、禅宗和藏传佛教。因此，与正念和正念本身相关的传统一直是大多数学术研究的焦点。与此同时，许多其他类型的佛教冥想技巧在很大程度上被忽视了。尽管这种情况已经开始改变，但还没有系统地研究那些传入英国的泰国传统，它们在正念日益兴起的过程中表现如何，以及它们与之相比如何。此外，一些传入英国的泰国传统更古老，也更具特色。它们既包括新旧形式的泰式冥想，也包括殖民时期的激进变革，这场变革导致一度流行的前现代化方法不那么受重视。然而，由于英国很早就接受了各种泰国传统，以及世俗、散居和皈依宗教团体的结合，显然是对这些习俗进行研究的地方。正念在英国很受欢迎，原因有很多，包括它对健康的贡献，被科学研究证明是合法的，以及人们可以从中赚钱的商品化。由于泰国的做法没有经历过这两个过程，我预计通过这项研究，他们的从业者社区对他们施加的不同价值观将会出现。虽然《正念》总体上不强调佛教的源头和伦理框架，但从我的初步调查中，我预计这些以泰国为基础的做法会引起对佛教源头的独特回应，包括推动对涉及伦理、心理和因果关系的复杂佛教教义的深入研究。我的总体问题是：英国存在哪些泰式技巧，它们与更熟悉的技巧有何不同，它们在英国佛教中和英国佛教之外的影响力如何，以及为什么人们对它们知之甚少？此外，实践者赋予他们的价值观与那些赋予正念的价值观有何不同，这些价值观如何影响群体的性格？他们对幸福的贡献是否值得社会和神经科学调查的关注？我的方法包括应用于泰国佛教冥想实践社区的多地点民族志田野调查。民族志方法将包括探索可用的文本来源、参与者观察、深度访谈和口述历史。由于主题的主观性，这些开放式方法可能允许灵活性和意外信息的出现。口述历史将在从线人那里获得第一手信息方面发挥重要作用，因为口述传统是佛教师生关系不可或缺的一部分。

This project examines Thai Theravada Buddhist meditation practices in Britain, which are little documented but have informed distinctive practices and groups, among Westerners and Diaspora Buddhists, as well as academia. A study of these practices is significant for what it will tell us about the diversity of Theravada meditation techniques and British Buddhism as well as the potential of these little-studied techniques to contribute to mental health and wellbeing, providing information for future researchers. Traditional Thai meditation is little documented in contrast to the Buddhist-derived Mindfulness that began to gain global popularity from the 1970s onwards. Yet the Thai practices were transmitted to the UK earlier, beginning in the 1950s, when Westerners first attempted to establish a Buddhist monastic community in the UK. They offer very distinctive features including a greater focus on physical transformation and on the attainment of deep meditative states. They reflect a greater range and diversity of techniques with histories going back centuries. In contrast, Mindfulness is drawn from a limited range of Buddhist traditions, primarily from modern Burmese vipassana (insight practices), Zen and Tibetan Buddhism. The traditions linked to Mindfulness and Mindfulness itself have therefore been the focus of most scholarship. Meanwhile, the many other types of Buddhist meditation techniques have largely been ignored. While this has begun to change , there has been no systematic study of those Thai traditions that came to the UK, how they have fared during the growing rise of Mindfulness and how they compare to it. Furthermore, some of the Thai traditions that came to the UK are older and distinctive. They include both old and new forms of Thai meditations, demarcated by a radical shake-up during the colonial period that caused once-popular pre-modernisation methods to be less emphasised. Yet Britain, with its early reception of a variety of Thai traditions, as well as its combination of secular, Diaspora and convert practice groups, is an obvious place to conduct research on these practices. Mindfulness has become popular in Britain for a number of reasons including its reputed contribution to wellbeing, legitimated by scientific studies, and commodification out of which people can make money. Since the Thai practices have gone through neither process, I anticipate different values placed on them by their practitioner communities to emerge through this study. While Mindfulness on the whole de-emphasizes the source Buddhist and ethical framework, I anticipate from my initial investigations that these Thai-based practices elicit distinctive responses to the Buddhist sources, including a drive towards in-depth study of complex Buddhist doctrines concerning ethics, psychology and causality.My overall questions are: what Thai techniques are present in the UK, how different are they from more familiar techniques, how influential have they been in and beyond British Buddhism, and why is less known about them? Further, how do the values placed on them by practitioners differ from those placed on Mindfulness, and how do these values influence the dispositions of the groups? Do they warrant the attention of social and neuroscientific investigations into their contribution to wellbeing?My methodological approach includes multi-sites ethnographic fieldwork applied to communities of Thai Buddhist Meditation Practices.Ethnographic methods will include exploring available text sources, participant observation, in-depth interviews and oral history. These open-ended methods will potentially allow for flexibility and the emergence of unexpected information due to the subjective nature of the topic. Oral history will play an important role in gaining first-hand information from informants as oral tradition is an integral part of Buddhism's teacher-pupils relationships.