Ritualizing and Learning in Two Buddhist Centres in Toronto

Knowing Body, Moving Mind: Ritualizing and Learning in Two Buddhist Centres in Toronto by Patricia Q. Campbell B.F.A. York University, 1990 B.A. University of Waterloo, 2002 M.A. Wilfrid Laurier University, 2004 DISSERTATION Submitted to the Department of Religion and Culture, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Religious Studies Wilfrid Laurier University 2009 Patricia Q. 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Canada Abstract This book explores learning through ritualizing in introductory meditation courses offered at two Tibetan-based, western Buddhist centres in Toronto. Through interviews with several of the centres' newcomers, experienced members and teachers, it explores students' reasons for enrolling in meditation classes as well as their attitudes towards religion and ritual. The study's primary focus is on respondents' experiences of learning through formal practices such as meditation postures and techniques. Ritualizing is interpreted in part through performance theory, an approach which highlights the performative elements of ritual and the physical enactment of ritualized postures and gestures. Learning through ritualized activities creates a unique kind of understanding, a tacit type of knowledge that is located in muscle and bone rather than solely in the brain. But meditation involves forms of ritualizing in addition to its physical postures and gestures. The conception of ritualizing employed here thus extends beyond performance—those activities that are done to be seen—to include practices which take place in meditators' minds. Thus, meditative concentration techniques are also considered ritualizing. From this perspective, the mind is regarded as an aspect of the body that is also capable of ritualized behaviour. Respondents indicated that there was a range of different types of learning experienced in the meditation classes. With the aid of an influential learning model called Bloom's taxonomy, this study explores the distinct types or "domains" in which meditation students learned. They include gaining new factual or intellectual knowledge, experiencing changes in attitudes, emotions or values and developing new physical skills and techniques. Linking ritualized activities to learning theory illustrates the ways in which ritualizing contributes to new learning in these distinct domains. 1 Acknowledgements: A number of people have made important contributions to the development of this book. First and foremost are the members and teachers at Friends of the Heart and Chandrakirti Centre, especially those who generously gave their time and took the risk of participating in interviews for this study. Thanks to Lama Catherine, Gen Thekchen, Joyce, Richard, Meg, Gwen, Marlene, David, Priscilla, Marlon, Carol and Chenma for their generous guidance and assistance at the centres as I conducted my research. I would also like to thank Mavis Fenn and Faydra Shapiro for their encouragement and assistance as they read the manuscript drafts and provided very helpful comments and questions. Kay Koppedrayer's assistance with the practicalities of university bureaucracy has also been invaluable. Special thanks to Ronald Grimes, without whose patience, understanding and wisdom this project would never have seen completion. And, as always, to my husband Robert Campbell, whose enduring confidence, encouragement and humour support me in all things. For my father. 11 Table of Contents Introduction 1 Chapter One: The Centres 23 Friends of the Heart 26 Chandrakirti Centre 34 Outreach 43 Chapter Two: Participants 45 Chapter Three: Classes 87 Introductory meditation class structure 88 Rituals of entry 90 Opening prayer 92 Meditation 94 Talks or lectures 105 Group discussion and socializing 110 Closing rituals Ill Ritual and introductory meditation classes 113 Ritualization and ritualizing 115 Performance theory and restoration of behaviour 121 Conclusion 123 Chapter Four: Learning 126 Bloom's taxonomy 130 Cognitive learning 131 Affective learning 134 Psychomotor learning 141 A fourth domain? 147 "Practice" as changing behaviour 156 Respondents' reflections on learning 160 Conclusion 173 Chapter Five: Ritualizing 176 Ritualizing and decorum 178 Prostrations 181 Learning, Experimentation and Invariance 187 Cognitive learning and ritualizing 191 Ritualizing and meditation 201 Meditation: learning through the body 204 Conclusion 227 Chapter Six: Change 231 Newcomers: learning and change 236 Teacher's objectives 254 Conclusion 260 Appendix A: Research Methods 270 Appendix B: Opening Prayers 274 Friends of the Heart 274 Chandrakirti Centre 274 References 276 iii Introduction Ikitual activity may serve as a mode of inquiry and discovery. Theodore W. Jennings Ritual activity is ever present in human behaviour. From a simple handshake to complex religious ceremonies, we are all engaged in ritual activities, to one degree or another, just about every day. Despite their prevalence, the functions of ritual activities remain unclear, a fact that has much to do with the wide variety of behaviours we associate with ritual. Scholars of ritual have speculated for some time about possible common functions that such widely disparate behaviours might serve. In an influential article entitled "On Ritual Knowledge," Theodore W. Jennings proposes that an important function of ritual is the generation of new knowledge. In this view, ritual is a means by which its participants make discoveries about themselves and about their world. This book investigates the idea that ritualizing, the behaviours through which ritual is formed, adapted, and preserved, may lead to new learning. The question I set out to answer was this: How or to what degree does ritualizing contribute to learning about a new spiritual tradition? In popular usage, the term "ritual" has come to mean action that is redundant, routine or empty of meaning. This rather negative view is one reason many ritualists, people who participate in rituals, do not like the word. While ritual can have all these qualities, scholarly studies of ritual show that it can also be experimental, creative or even revolutionary. The term "ritual" is difficult to define, pardy because of the wide variety of phenomena to which we apply the word. Definitions focus on either a few key qualities or a long, ostensibly definitive, list. Stanley J. Tambiah, for example, offers the following definition: "Patterned and ordered sequences of words and acts, often expressed in multiple media, whose content and arrangement are characterized in varying degree by formality (conventionality), stereotypy 1 (rigidity), condensation (fusion), and redundancy (repetition)." While this definition highlights important performative elements of ritual, particularly the acts and the media in rituals are presented, the qualities Tambiah selects portray ritual predominantly as rote repetition. Further, he can say only that the list of qualities he chooses apply to ritual "in varying degree." In fact, any number of these qualities may be absent in any given ritual. Roy A. Rappaport's definition is more concise than Tambiah's: "The performance of more or less invariant sequences of formal acts and utterances not entirely encoded by the performers."4 While highlighting some of the same qualities of ritual—its usual invariance, formality, for example—Rappaport's definition focuses on the idea that ritual acts do not fully originate with their performers. They are received and are essentially re- performed. This emphasis serves Rappaport's overall purpose, which is to argue for ritual's role in communicating, sanctifying

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