Inward: Vipassana Meditation and the Embodiment of the Self
Author:
Michal Pagis
ISBN:
9788194783022
Binding:
Hardcover
Year:
2024
Pages:
226 with 2 b/w figures and 1 b/w photo
Size:
16 x 24 x 2 cm
Weight:
497 grams
Price:
INR
1195.00
Western society has never been more interested in interiority. Indeed, it seems more and more people are deliberately looking inward—toward the mind, the body, or both. Michal Pagis's Inward focuses on one increasingly popular channel for the introverted gaze: vipassana meditation, which has spread from Burma to more than forty countries and counting. Lacing her account with vivid anecdotes and personal stories, Pagis turns our attention not only to the practice of vipassana but to the communities that have sprung up around it. Inward is also a social history of the westward diffusion of Eastern religious practices spurred on by the lingering effects of the British colonial presence in India. At the same time Pagis asks knotty questions about what happens when we continually turn inward, as she investigates the complex relations between physical selves, emotional selves, and our larger social worlds. Her book sheds new light on evergreen topics such as globalization, social psychology, and the place of the human body in the enduring process of self-awareness.
Michal Pagis
Michal Pagis is assistant professor of sociology at Bar-Ilan University.