The diploma project will deal with the extension of the Zen centre located in the small village of Vrážné. In general, in this landscape around the town of Jevíčko, the number of residents in these small villages and settlements is declining and the picturesque, but over time decaying farms with residential and farm buildings remain. One of the hopes of bringing life back to this gradually declining village structure is in this particular case the Zen school of Kwan Um, which bought one of these properties and began to repair it slowly. Zen meditation itself comes from East Asia, namely from the South Korea. How to transform this tradition into a rural environment, how to support the community of this school and find harmony with the whole village and local traditions? These are the questions which the diploma project will address.

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Thesis (M.A.R.)--Emmanuel School of Religion, Johnson City, Tennessee, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 61-63) and vita.

Thesis--University of Chicago. / Includes texts in Chinese and Japanese. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 219-235).

Thesis (M.Phil.)--Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 124-131). Also available in electronic version. Access restricted to campus users.

The aim of this dissertation is to reflect on technologies of the self, a term coined by Michel Foucault to study western practices of self-formation. Influenced by his work on subjectivity and by Science and Technology Studies (STS), I explore two forms of meditation – Vipassana meditation in the tradition of S.N. Goenka and Thich Nhat Hanh’s practices of mindfulness – in order to analyze the entanglements between technologies, associations and subjectivity. Two research questions guided this study. First, how do Vipassana and Zen assemblages bring forth subjective transformations? Second, what are the politics of meditation practice, considering that Vipassana and Zen perform particular paradigms of subjectivity and aim at transforming the “social”? In order to address these questions, I relied on qualitative research methods, developing a multifaceted methodology that included participant observation at four meditation retreats, semi-structured interviews with meditators, the analysis of relevant literature and my own personal experiences as a beginner. I argue that the mechanisms of subjectification employed by meditation rely on two main devices: the transformation of habitual webs of associations, including couplings between selves, other humans, nonhumans and spaces and the installation of new automatisms. Vipassana and Zen technologies invite subjects to become aware of particular automatisms – regular ways of eating, sitting, walking and breathing - and to direct their attention towards them in novel ways, installing specific ways of managing their selves (stopping and breathing whenever they hear the sounds of bells; developing an attitude of equanimity when they are looking for sensations in their bodies). Vipassana and Zen are mediators that generate new experiences and ways of being informed by meditation, as well as a number of social applications that rely on the paradigmatic changes enacted by these practices. Informed by the dualism between modern and nonmodern, I argue that Zen and Vipassana can be understood as technologies of the nonmodern self (Pickering, 3 2010), suspending the dualism between body and mind, self and others, humans and nonhumans, contributing towards the establishment of nondual paradigms of selfhood and innovative forms of social organization that include new ways of performing human reformation, social action and humanenvironment couplings. The theoretical contributions of this dissertation are threefold. First, I want to extend current STS scholarly work on the self. Second, I want to contribute towards a post-humanist understanding of meditation assemblages. Finally, I am informed by Michel Foucault’s insights on technologies of the self to study meditation, but instead of focusing on the history or genealogy of the western self, I analyze a number of devices of subjectification mobilized to operate subjective changes and to transform the social.

Hoichi is an original musical composition for orchestra. It is approximately 42 minutes in length. The piece is inspired by a Japanese folk tale entitled Hoichi, the Earless. This story about a blind lute player takes place in Shimonoseki, the city in which I was born. The contrast between chamber sonority and orchestral forces symbolizes Hoichi's battle against evil spirits. Although he eventually loses his ears and dies the music turns into a strong life assertion toward the end. I relate this to a Zen Buddhist notion: when you lose (transcend) everything, you gain everything. The piece ends with a placid ascending line, which represents spiritual purification of the evil spirits. On a more personal level, this work will be my attempt to console and encourage the victims and their families of the earthquake which struck Japan three years ago.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 320-323). / Microfiche. / xxi, 323 leaves, bound 29 cm