Instruction Dialogues in the Zhuangzi: An “Anthropological” Reading

Defoort, Carine

doi:10.1007/s11712-012-9294-x

Cited by 13 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…Defoort's important paper dealing with 'instruction dialogues' (Defoort, 2012) faces a significant categorization problem: the example she chose from the 7 th chapter of the Inner Chapters [Yīng Dì…”

Section: I1 Categories Of 'Instruction Interactive Texts'mentioning

confidence: 99%

Dislodging Mundane Wisdom: The Inner Chapters of the Zhuangzi and the New Testament Gospels

Pfister¹

2019

Cultivating a Good Life in Early Chinese and Ancient Greek Philosophy

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Section: I1 Categories Of 'Instruction Interactive Texts'mentioning

confidence: 99%

Dislodging Mundane Wisdom: The Inner Chapters of the Zhuangzi and the New Testament Gospels

Pfister¹

2019

Cultivating a Good Life in Early Chinese and Ancient Greek Philosophy

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“…It fails to grasp the true significance of the tree, which exceeds all mundane measurement and evaluations of utility. This critique of mastery is echoed in the technique of 'anti-teaching' (Defoort, 2012). Not only does this involve a reluctance and outright refusal of masters (子 ) to instruct, it also 'contain[s] a measure of not teaching, of letting go, undoing, liberating, or undermining'.…”

Section: II Beyond Survivalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While a lot of English language scholarship has focused on issues traditionally associated with academic philosophy, the term 'philosophy' can only with difficulty be applied to the Chinese thought of the Warring States in retrospect (Defoort, 2001;Fraser, 2011). 12 I follow the suggestions of some scholars in concentrating on the dimensions of fabulation and metaphor in reading this story of the useless tree (Chong, 2006;Defoort, 2001Defoort, , 2012. Its storytelling, when read with care, reveals multiple layers of significance (Wu, 2007).…”

Section: Kwekmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Importance of Being Useless: A Cross-Cultural Contribution to the New Materialisms from Zhuangzi

Kwek

2018

Theory, Culture & Society

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The recent 'material turn' focuses on materiality in two distinctive ways: one, by including nonhuman agencies, another, by mining indigenous knowledges for alternative conceptions of agency and human-thing relations. A troubling gap persists between the two endeavors. The gap insinuates an us-them dichotomy, and more importantly, curtails communication between radically different visions of thingly agency-thereby impeding the political drive of these conceptual enterprises. This paper is an essay in cross-cultural transposition. Through a close reading of a story of a useless tree in an ancient proto-Daoist text, Zhuangzi (莊子), I show how its fabulist and oneiric form illuminates a distinctive perspective on uselessness. Conversely, the trope of uselessness lets us begin from what I call a 'situated affectivity' amidst more-than-human materialities. The paper concludes with a brief comparison of three modalities of uselessness from different 'cosmologies' of thought-a foretaste of the potentials of cross-cosmological endeavors.

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“…For example, 'my brain was on the blink (放空)', being oblivious of myself (忘我)' and 'sitting and forgetting all things (坐忘)' -which are metaphors from the Chinese classic literature (Defoort, 2012)-were frequently mentioned by interviewees. The use of these terms suggests that the tourists were immersed in their present-centred experience.…”

Section: Dimension 2: Living In the Present (Present-centred Awareness)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The classical text Zhuangzi (莊子) from Dao (道) philosophy discusses the interaction of nature, the life of a human being and the philosophy of the mind (Defoort, 2012).…”

Section: Temporarily Without Thinking/absence Of Cognitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An exploration of mindfulness and its experiential benefits: Taiwanese backpackers in Australia

Chen¹

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Stress in everyday life is common in our postmodern society leading some people to seek relief and fulfilment from a range of leisure and lifestyle activities such as travel experiences. Travel in itself, even adventurous or unstructured travel does not guarantee that travellers will receive positive benefits from their experiences. However, the notion of mindfulness may play an important role in producing positive consequences from different experiences. Thus, this study explores the nature and experiential benefits of 'meditative mindful' tourist experiences that can be experienced during travel.Mindfulness is a mental state that may facilitate positive experiences. Understanding the importance of mindfulness is becoming a mainstream field of academic study in many therapeutic settings.However, there has been little discussion of mindfulness theory as it might be applied to tourism studies. Previous research in tourism has mainly focused on socio-cognitive mindfulness related to visitor learning rather than meditative mindfulness experiences. These include contexts such as tourist-wildlife encounters, appreciation of scenery, or through interaction with other people. The conceptual framework in this thesis is based on the Eastern notion of meditative mindfulness and has been used in Western therapeutic studies. In the past decade, evidence of the effectiveness and application of meditative mindfulness has grown dramatically due to a developing dialogue between Buddhist traditions and Western clinical psychology. There is a growing interest in whether meditative mindful experiences can occur outside of formal therapeutic settings, including travel.However, it is not clear how meditative mindful tourism experiences might be defined or whether they occur at all during travel. Furthermore, few studies have investigated the antecedents and consequences of meditative mindful experiences in tourism contexts.This thesis presents an exploratory study of the occurrence as well as the antecedents and consequences of the meditative mindfulness phenomenon in a tourism context. A qualitative methodology based on an interpretive constructivist paradigm was adopted for the data collection.Taiwanese backpackers in Australia were selected as respondents and snowball sampling was used to recruit participants. In total, 43 semi-structured interviews were completed, and a total of 77 instances of meditative mindful experiences were identified. The semi-structured interviews were conducted in Brisbane (at backpacker hostels) and at Uluru (Uluṟu-Kata Tjuṯa National Park), as these two main sites provided the best opportunities to meet Taiwanese backpackers. Two interview protocols were used in screening and extended interviews for qualifying and exploring the three research objectives. The interviews were transcribed and analysed using thematic analysis. NVivo 10 qualitative analysis software was used to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the data analysis process.iii The findings indicated that meditative mindful ...

show abstract

Instruction Dialogues in the Zhuangzi: An “Anthropological” Reading

Cited by 13 publications

References 12 publications

Dislodging Mundane Wisdom: The Inner Chapters of the Zhuangzi and the New Testament Gospels

Dislodging Mundane Wisdom: The Inner Chapters of the Zhuangzi and the New Testament Gospels

The Importance of Being Useless: A Cross-Cultural Contribution to the New Materialisms from Zhuangzi

An exploration of mindfulness and its experiential benefits: Taiwanese backpackers in Australia

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