“Pagis deftly draws readers into the world of contemporary vipassana meditation, and in so doing shows us how fruitful—and important—sociological attention to the varied social practices that retool the relations of self and other, private and public, visible and invisible, can be. Inward is a beautifully rendered ethnography with important implications for the study of the body and self-making.”
—Courtney Bender, Columbia University
“This striking ethnography sticks in one’s mind: rooms full of silent meditators, coordinating their body rhythms on a tacit channel, observing sensations over every inch of their bodies, and washing away pains not by seeking their causes but by detached attention. Pagis depicts meditation in a secular age, not as religion but as bodies among bodies giving each other space to repair the inroads of too much social self.”
—Randall Collins, University of Pennsylvania
“Pagis’s beautifully written, brilliantly argued ethnography of meditation makes three major contributions: it shows how some of our most private experiences are socially enabled; it demonstrates how our selves are not only linguistically but sensuously mediated; and it reveals how attention is not merely a faculty but a practice. All three have profound consequences for understanding the sociality of human beings.”
—Andreas Glaeser, University of Chicago
“Pagis’s monograph supplies a valuable and accurate description, as well as a highly sensitive analysis of the happenings in the Goenka Vipassana centers. It weaves together personal experience, theory, and interviews with others to create an elegantly persuasive account that contributes a unique and important exposition to the growing literature of the new cultural field of Buddhist meditation outside Buddhist Asia and also to the sociology of secularity and religion in postmodern times. In addition, it contributes a sensitive phenomenological account of meditation practice that is all the more important now, considering the current flood of quantitative studies on the effects of mindfulness.”
—Journal of Buddhist Ethics
“Pagis’s book is a tour de force for those interested in social constructivist theories of self-development; sociologists of religion, spirituality, and Buddhism; and meditators. The book would provide excellent contributions to sociology courses on these topics. The book is not only carefully constructed, painstakingly grounded in various historical and sociological literatures, but written in an interesting and accessible manner, which students either at the undergraduate or graduate level would enjoy.”
—American Journal of Sociology
“Pagis weaves theory, participant interviews, and her own personal experiences seamlessly together, resulting in a reading experience that continually surprises, engages, and persuades. Inwards is a welcome addition to the growing body of literature on the secular and religious study of meditation and should be considered essential reading for those interested in the transformative powers of interiority.”
—Tyler Carter, H-Net
“In search of the deeper meaning of our lives, we look into the spiritual traditions which often guide us to a realm of transcendental subjectivity. However, the world around us just does not disappear as the result of a theoretical understanding and we are often left in a dichotomy of the secular and the spiritual. Some of the Eastern traditions have worked on this problem of split-search. Vipassana, a Buddhist meditation of mindfulness, one of the prominent ways of a meaningful search, has become quite a visible social phenomenon. Having its origin in the monastic spheres of Theravada Buddhism in Southeast Asia, it is now being practised by many in the upper-middle educated strata in post-industrial societies of developing and developed nations.The practice emphasizes on one sitting silently with oneself turning the focal point of attention from the world to one’s interior. The ones who try the teaching find preliminarily that we have turned ourselves into social objects and are living constantly reacting to the world. Vipassana teaches a consistent and concentrated effort to stay away from the self as seen by others. The momentum of the practice in solitude soon spills over into daily life, thus orienting one to connect with the world by using the meditative sensory cues.The author discusses the subject with extensive participant observations and ethnographic data. The popularisation of meditative practices in the modern world often trying to keep itself far away from the influences of the established religions, brings forth a cultural gap which needs to be filled up with modern ways of searching backed by scientific temper. The book uses Vipassana as a window for understanding the place of the body-consciousness in the process of discovering, knowing, monitoring, and healing one’s self and critically approaches to connect it with the social world, trying to re-discover and thus reaffirm the ancient truths through the modern context. As the teachings are essentially related to practice, the author meticulously explores the ways of being and becoming a Vipassana practitioner in relation with the testimonies of real-life practitioners.The book is indeed a door to one who is curious to know about the practice of Vipassana, a critical explanation to the sceptic who doubts on the practicality of this inward spiritual approach to address the challenges of the outward secular modern life, a practical guide to know and compare the methods adopted by the real-life practitioners, both preliminary and advanced, and an invitation to the sincere seekers of the Truth to practise the ancient spiritual wisdom of Vipassana.”
—Prabuddha Bharata, October 2024: Vol. 129, No. 10