'What it means to be truly human': The postsecular hack of mindfulness. (June 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Arat, Alp
• Is Part Of: Social compass. Volume 64:Number 2(2017:Jun.)
• Page Start: 167
• Page End: 179
• Publication Date: 2017-06
• Subjects: discourse -- meditation -- mindfulness -- postsecular -- secular; discours -- méditation -- mindfulness -- post-séculier -- séculier; Religion and sociology -- Periodicals; 306.605
• DOI: 10.1177/0037768617697390
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0037-7686

Abstract

The present ubiquity of meditation represents the latest ripple in the easternisation of the West. The mindfulness movement in particular has emerged as a popular expression of this contemplative turn. The vast majority of scholarly work on this subject rests on the assumption that mindfulness represents the culmination of the traditional trajectory of secularisation. Drawing on a discourse-analytic study of how contemporary mindfulness is constructed and made meaningful however, this article argues that these developments point towards a new modality of the secular. While the surface language of mindfulness operates in complete discursive isolation from the religious, its ontological foundation is nevertheless found to rest on a claim towards a transcendent whole. In the final analysis, this post secular hack of mindfulness signals a sacralisation of the secular with significant implications for the sociology of religion.