Drifting Through Samsara PDF Download

"Goenka's Vipassana movement is distinguished for its consistent refusal to identify as Buddhist and its rich rhetorical repertoire for repackaging Theravada Buddhist teachings in pseudo-scientific and secular language. This book is an in-depth qualitative study of Goenka's movement in New Zealand. It illustrates the implication of the movement's discourse on shaping unique processes and narratives of conversion and disengagement. It argues that conversion to this movement is tacit and paradoxically results in the members' rejection of religious labels and categories. The book subsequently examines disengagement in the context of tacit conversion, outlining three pathways: (1) pragmatic leaving, (2) disaffiliation, and (3) deconversion. Pragmatic leavers refer to individuals who disengaged prior to developing a commitment and their language is characterised by pragmatisms, dualistic discourse, and ambivalence, and their post-disengagement involves an active gravitation towards practices with easily accomplished goals. Disaffiliates and deconverts are individuals who disengaged after years of intense commitment to the movement. One of the distinguishing features of disaffiliation narratives is self-doubt resulting from the movement's ambiguous discourse regarding progress, and that post-disengagement often involves the retrospective adoption of the Buddhist identity. The book argues that consequential to its linguistic strategies as well as the movement's relation to the host culture, deconversion from this movement is a rare exit pattern. The book thus also questions the normative participant recruitment approach in conversion studies and argues that a simple reliance on the informants' identification or rejection of categories fails to encompass the tonalities of conversion in the contemporary spiritual landscape"--