Methodology and Intended Audience Sample Clauses

Methodology and Intended Audience. This work is both inter- and multi-disciplinary. The former because my methodological approach does not stem from any single field, nor do I address a prescribed set of scholars from one particular discipline. Interdisciplinary methodology, of course, is neither novel, nor particularly problematic. But it is noteworthy in this case because the success of the project is predicated on being able to present a study on mindfulness and selfhood to disciplines that at first glance may not be interested in or related to either mindfulness meditation or the self. The methodology takes root in the liminal spaces between disciplines, and the challenge is to connect with related fields, in this case the academic study of religion, psychology, philosophy, neuroscience, history and medicine. That is to say that this is also a multi-disciplinary study because in my attempts to reach those fields, I employ their various methods at times as well. For example, I first introduce the thickened narrative self within phenomenological discourse, but subsequently use Buddhist historical and cognitive psychological methods to connect with different disciplines and interlocutors in chapters two and three. The study is therefore inter-disciplinary because I do not have a single home methodological tradition, and it is multi-disciplinary because I use a number of methodologies to reach related fields. If the dissertation had a home discipline, however, it would be the academic study of religion. Within that general field, this dissertation takes Buddhist studies as its main perspective, most notably the academic work on Indo-Tibetan and Zen traditions. While discussing Buddhist understandings of mindfulness and self, for example, I will frequently cite Zen and Tibetan passages as source material for MBSR literature. This may all go without saying, of course, because the topics themselves are signature Buddhist subjects. In any case, although mindfulness and self frequently manifest as secular phenomena in MBSR in the contemporary setting, I use the tools of religious studies to understand how Buddhist historical discourse on mindfulness and selfhood inform their contemporary manifestation within the mindfulness literature. Within the academic study of Buddhism, the dissertation could be classified as a work on Buddhist modernism, with the recent works of Xxxxx XxXxxxx and Xxxx Xxxxxx serving as prime exemplars in the discipline. XxXxxxx, for one, defines Buddhist