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The Knowledge Landscape of 念 (niàn) / Mindfulness: Intercultural Ethics for

Transcreation

Zhuomin HuangRichard FayRoss White

19th CultNet Meeting Durham. 21st-23rd April, 2016

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Content• The Conceptual Migration of Mindfulness • The Complexities and Dynamics in the

Transcreation of Knowledge Landscapes

• Intercultural Ethics

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Some Terms

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Knowledge Landscape • A metaphor for the study of

the complex intellectual, personal and physical environment in which people work (Clandinin & Connelly, 1995: 673)

• ‘a sense of expansiveness and the possibility of being filled with diverse people, things, and events in different relationships’

• ‘understanding professional knowledge as comprising a landscape calls for a notion of professional knowledge as composed of … relationships among people, places, and things, we see it as both an intellectual and a moral landscape’

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Transcreation• ‘Transformative Creation’

• The processes and products of interthinking (Littleton & Mercer, 2013) and inter-transformative-thinking

• the inter-transformative complexities of knowledge development

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Part 1:The Conceptual Migration of Mindfulness

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Mindfulness

Emptiness De-attachment Chan/Zen

The practice of ‘HEART’

niàn Stillness and Observation

East West

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Mindfulness in the Orient• The Origin of Mindfulness:- Indian Buddhism (2600 years ago)- ‘Sati’: ‘memory’ - the constant

presence of mind, meaning ‘remember to be aware of’

• Dimensions of Teachings

• Spreading (1st Century): S.E. Asia: e.g. Thailand: สติ (saL dtiL)

China: 念 (niàn)Vietnam (niệm)Korea: 念 / 염 (nyem)Japan: 念 (nen)

Religion

Morality

Psychology

Cognition

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2. Merged with Chinese Traditional Philosophies ( 诸子百家 ) :Cognition/PsychologyMindfulness: ‘True Balance ( 禅定 )’ -Yin Yang ‘Balance’ ( 阴阳消长 )-Daoism ‘Body + Energy + Spirit’ ( 形气神 ) -D./Confucius ‘Man-Nature-Unity’ ( 天人合一 )MoralityMindfulness: ‘Compassion’ ( 慈悲观 ) -Confucius ‘The Study of Ren’ ( 仁学 ; i.e. Benevolence)

3. Gradually fading in the 20th Century

Mindfulness in China1. The Chinese Character: reciting and remembering by heart (i.e. 口吟心忆 )

The Hundred

Schools of Thoughts

Buddhism

DaoismConfucius

(niàn)

释

道儒

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Psychotherapies• The late 19th and 20th: the ‘third wave’ of

refashioning the traditions

• Jon Kabat-Zinn (1982): ‘a process of paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally’

• The effectiveness of treating psychological problems , especially for reducing anxiety, depression and stress (Khoury et al., 2013)

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Education• Ellen Langer (1993; 2013; 2000: 220): a flexible state of mind in

which new information and new contexts are actively engaged

• A mindfulness-approach to learning

• Example key qualities: ₋ openness to new information; ₋ continuous creation of new categories; ₋ implicit awareness of multiple perspectives.

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Intercultural Communication• Stella Ting-Toomey (1988; 2007; 2010): a means of rethinking one’s

assumptions about oneself and the world by being attentive and attuned to ‘I-identity’, ‘they-identity’ and ‘we identity’

• A dimension of Facework-Based Model of Intercultural Competences: flexibility, openness, awareness, tolerance, empathy and creativity in IC (Ting-Toomey & Kurogi, 1998).

• Other examples: - Intercultural Competences (Gudykunst, 1993; Deardorff, 2009)

- Cultural Intelligence: a metacognitive process (Thomas, 2006; Earley & Ang, 2003)

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Migrations to and across the Occident

Mindfulness in Intercultural Communication:

Origins: Psychotherapy? Education? Oriental Buddhism?

‘Mindfulness (Thich, 1991) means … According to Langer (1989; 1997), to act mindfully, we should learn to…’ (Ting-Toomey & Kurogi, 1998).

An interview of Ting-Toomey (Perez Canado, 2008):

- the social psychological perspectives of mindfulness offered by Langer

- ‘… actually taken from a very strong concept in Buddhism … so it has a very strong Eastern philosophical root’

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The Conceptual Migration of Mindfulness

A map of the migratory complexity involving:

• Multi-lingual• Multi-disciplinary• Multi-directional• Multi-ideological• Multi-cultural • Multi-chronemic

Perspectives

Mig

ratio

ns th

roug

h Ti

me

East West

Indian Buddhism

‘sati’

East Asia: e.g. China 念 (niàn)Southeast

Asia: e.g. Thailand

สติ (saL dtiL)

Tibet

Oriental Religions/Philosophies

Western

Disciplines

Intercultural Communication

Education

Psychotherapy

Migrations across SpaceAncient

Recent

Future

Zone One

Zone Three Zone Two

Zone One: Migrations across the ancient Orient

Zone Two: Migrations across modern Western Disciplines

Religious – Philosophica

l – Secular

Zone Three: Occidental Oriental Exchanges

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Part 2:The Complexities and Dynamics in the Transcreation of Knowledge Landscapes

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Knowledge Flows

HICLMICCounter-flow

Dominant-flow

Dominant-flows: Knowledge that originated from HIC and that has influenced practice in LMIC

Counter-flows: knowledge that originated from LMIC and that has influenced practice in HIC

(White et al., 2014).

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HICLMICCounter-flow

Dominant-flow

Criticism: It may be that implicit and explicit barriers are serving to limit counterflows. For example, it is possible that prejudicial attitudes in HIC serve to inhibit counterflows.

(White et al., 2014)

Knowledge Flows

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Counter-flow

(White et al., 2014)

Dominant Power

Structure

Comparative Lack of

Research in LMIC

Challenges of

measuring counter-

flows

Prejudicial attitudes towards non-western

approaches

Recommendation 1: To maximize the potential for

counter-flows

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Recommendation 2: To foster common-flows

HICLMICDominant-flow

(White et al., 2014)

Common Flow

Counter-flow

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The Originating Orient to the Appropriating Occident

• Appropriation flow: Western scholars adopted, appropriated even, those ‘mechanics’ of mindfulness which they could make knowable, operationalisable, and measurable for the evidence-based culture of Western sciences and related professional practices (e.g. Psychotherapy) (White & Sashidharan, 2014):

e.g. practitioners from the powerful North/HIC have lifted the concept from its traditional root (in the South/LMIC), and transplanted it to a secularised context, and bent on pragmatic purposes in which the (often English-medium) academic and psychotherapeutic discourses of Western approaches are privileged (Bodhi, 2011: 35).

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Dominant Flows from the Occident to the Orient

• Since 2009• Western understanding of

mindfulness - A psychological (meditation) tool

for improving negative emotions (e.g. stress & depression)

- A modern pursuit: Mindfulness for Success ( 成功学 )

‘approved by the West’

‘a high status in the West’

‘influential in the West’,

‘popular in the West’

‘a Western psychotherapy’

“ 正念疗法，已被西方医疗界所肯定多年，。。。现已成为西方身心医疗的方法之一。 ”— 《正念》“ 正念修行在西方世界拥有崇高的地位和广泛的影响力，。。。它是西方国家最为普及、最爱关注、最有影响力的佛教修行体系。”— 《图解正念：成功者必有正念》

Gaining credentials and reinforcing the privileges

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Acknowledging Sources/Credentials

Western favoured/privileged

Eastern perspectives‘approved by the West’

‘a high status in the West’

‘influential in the West’,

‘popular in the West’

‘a Western psychotherapy’

Western Perspectives‘Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR)… removed the Buddhist framework and eventually downplayed any connection between mindfulness and Buddhism, instead putting it in a scientific context’‘… mindfulness is not itself Buddhist at all but really a universal pathway to sanity and well-being…’ ‘Historically, mindfulness has been called “the heart” of Buddhist meditation…’

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Counter-flows from the Orient

• Clarifying the Western-based understandings of mindfulness:

‘non-judgemental’? ‘present-centred’?

• Defending ‘authentic’ (typically Buddhist) understandings of mindfulness from the distortions, misunderstandings, and dilutions of Western understandings of the concept (e.g. Dreyfus & Thompson, 2007; Bodhi, 2011; Varela & Shear, 1999)

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The Promise of Common Flows

• Further explicated flows of responses, and potentially conversations (Bodhi, 2010; Kirmayer, 2015):

Inconsistency? Unauthenticity?

OR

Creative ‘Misreadings’? New Possibilities?

• Hyland’s (2011): ‘the origins, nature and functions of mindfulness - from its roots … to modern secular, therapeutic perspectives - have established a foundation upon which to examine various conceptions of mind …’ (p. 37).

Mig

ratio

ns th

roug

h Ti

me

East West

Indian Buddhism

‘sati’

East Asia: e.g. China 念 (niàn)Southeast

Asia: e.g. Thailand

สติ (saL dtiL)

Tibet

Oriental Religions/Philosophies

Western

Disciplines

Intercultural Communication

Education

Psychotherapy

Religious – Philosophica

l – Secular

Migrations across SpaceAncient

Recent

Future

Zone One

Zone Three Zone Two

①

②③

④

①: Flows from the Originating Orient to the Appropriating Occident

②: Dominant Flows from the Occident to the Orient

③: Counter Flows from the Orient to the Occident

④: Opportunities of conversations and the promise of common-flows

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Part 3:Intercultural Ethics

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A call for Intercultural Ethics• All ‘transcreators’ of knowledge landscapes should

be ：informed about, and respectful of, the origins of

the ideas they use; accepting of the co-existence of other ways of

seeing and understanding things; andopen to the mutually enriching interconnections

between these different ways of thinking

• A collective wisdom of discipline(s) (e.g. Asante, Miike & Yin, 2013)

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Intercultural Ethics• Resonances with e.g.: awareness (Ting-Toomey, 1988),

decentred-attitude (Holliday, 2013) and responsibility (Guilherme et al., 2010; Phipps, 2013)

• Phipps (2013): to ‘work within conceptualization and critiques of globalization, democracy and human rights’ (p. 11), and to frame the knowledge-work with ‘justice and equality… and take their work towards an embrace of complexity and open-endedness; engagement with what is … believed to be restorative, collaborative, participatory, sensory, even healing; to allowing for methodological creativity and artistry…’ (p. 14)

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Intercultural Ethics for Knowledge-Landscape Transcreation

• Important role for intercultural ethics in the evolving knowledge landscapes of all disciplines, and in the transcreational processes through which they develop

• Our transcreational knowledge projects: e.g. mindfulness, intercultural communication, global mental health, education

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