Meditation and the post‐secular condition

Abstract

This paper looks at the links between meditation practice and the post-secular turn in the wider domain of culture. The latter is a multi-faceted phenomenon, and the article focuses on one of its facets—namely the assertion of immanence over transcendence. This calls for a reinterpretation of the habitual opposition between secularism and religion. Meditation is often embedded in either a religious or secular framework, with contemporary forms increasingly of the latter kind. A third way is suggested, in favour of a meditation practice that acknowledges the post-secular turn. This is particularly called for at a time when secularist forms of meditation such as mindfulness have been decontextualised to the extent of undermining the ethical context of meditation. The approach championed here builds on the phenomenological experience of meditation and on some aspects of the teachings of Dōgen Zenji in thirteenth-century Japan.