Leiden University Student Repository

Knibbe, Guido (2020)

Meeting life in Plum Village: Engaging with precarity and progress in a mediation center

Master thesis | Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology (MSc)

With increasingly pressing and widespread ecological, social and personal crises, the forward march of progress has come to a dead end, and this time is ripe for sensing precarity, as Tsing (2015) announces. A sense of precarity is prevalent among practitioners in the Plum Village meditation center. In a case study, I join practitioners to encounter opportunities for engaging with the challenges of precarity and new possibilities for progress. With these experiences I point out the relevance of the Plum Village tradition in our earthwide precarious predicament. My aim in this thesis is to speak to the possibility of changing with mindfulness practice the dualist worldview that is at the root of widespread unsustainable progress practices. The devastating consequences of the forward march toward limitless growth demand a change of direction. My commitment to sustainable, inclusive living leads me to assess to what extent wholesome directions emerge for people and our planet in the...Show moreWith increasingly pressing and widespread ecological, social and personal crises, the forward march of progress has come to a dead end, and this time is ripe for sensing precarity, as Tsing (2015) announces. A sense of precarity is prevalent among practitioners in the Plum Village meditation center. In a case study, I join practitioners to encounter opportunities for engaging with the challenges of precarity and new possibilities for progress. With these experiences I point out the relevance of the Plum Village tradition in our earthwide precarious predicament. My aim in this thesis is to speak to the possibility of changing with mindfulness practice the dualist worldview that is at the root of widespread unsustainable progress practices. The devastating consequences of the forward march toward limitless growth demand a change of direction. My commitment to sustainable, inclusive living leads me to assess to what extent wholesome directions emerge for people and our planet in the other-than-modern views and practices that are taught in the Plum Village tradition.Show less

Author

Knibbe, Guido

Faculty

Faculty of Social & Behavioural Sciences

Supervisors

Littlejohn, A.
Maaker, E. de

ECTS Credits

15

Language

en