Contemplative Learning and Inquiry across Disciplines

21 What Next?: Contemplating the Future of Contemplative Education

21 What Next? Contemplating the Future of Contemplative Education Edward W. Sarath The decade-plus that has passed since the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) launched its Contemplative Practice Fellowship Program, which might be seen as a landmark event in the modern-day contemplative studies movement, has seen a rising tide of publications, conferences, and curricular innovations that clearly suggest the field to be more than a passing fad.1 In this essay, I reflect on this work through the lens of an emergent worldview called Integral Theory (Wilber, 2000, 2006). Mapping the interior and exterior dimensions of the human being and cosmos and recognizing the importance of diverse epistemologies, or ways of knowing, as central to inner-outer union, the integral vision cedes an important place for contemplative practices and related studies. It also brings into play an expanded slate of considerations that shed new light on current practices and possible future horizons for the contemplative education field. These include a more clearly defined conception of contemplative practice, delineation of a broader theoretical spectrum, and the situating of contemplative education within a non-dual perspective that, as posited by most all of the world’s wisdom traditions, is predicated on the inextricable link between individual consciousness and the cosmic wholeness. Just as contemplative educators are able to step back and examine conventional education from an expanded and more critical perspective, consideration of contemplative education from the even more expansive integral vantage point further extends the critical framework through which the field might be viewed and thus able to progress. 361 362 Edward W. Sarath Integral Overview I begin with a brief overview of four key integral principles that are of relevance to the discussion. First is the identification of first-, second-, and third-person realms or perspectives within the inner-outer spectrum of reality (EsbjörnHargens , 2010; Wilber, 2006). First person is the interior, subjective domain of “I,” second person the intersubjective “We” that can be seen as a kind of inner-outer bridge, and third person the objective, exterior “It” realm. Much of contemplative education may be seen as the addition of a first-person interior realm—with meditation being a key first-person methodology—to the largely third-person confinement lamented by a long legacy of educational thinkers (e.g., Bruner, 1960; Gardner, 1993; Maslow, 1971; Whitehead, 1929). Integral education synthesizes all three realms, distinguishing itself both from conventional approaches and other alternatives such as “holistic” education (Gunnlaugson, 2010). Although appropriation of these principles to the arts has been limited, I argue elsewhere (Sarath, 2010, and 2013 in press) that jazz, due to its improvisatory core, exemplifies the capacity of the arts to bring a robust, creative/interactive, and thus second-person aspect, to the integral synthesis. A second key integral feature is its emphasis on engagement with diverse epistemologies, or “Integral Methodological Pluralism,” as means for achieving first-, second-, third-person synthesis. Contemplative practice is among the variety of methodologies that uphold both transformational and hermeneutic functions within the epistemological spectrum that comprises “Integral Life Practice” (Wilber, Leonard, Patton, & Morelli, 2008). In other words, transformational practice promotes expansion of inner experience, correlative to which are new interpretive insights. A third facet pertains to the evolutionary trajectory that, proceeding from less-differentiated to more-differentiated wholeness, integral theorists locate in a variety of systems. Of particular relevance is the progression from pre-modern, modern, and postmodern to integral stages of sociocultural development (Wilber, 2006), the latter three most directly relating to the present analysis. Modernism is characterized by a split between first-person subjective/ spiritual and third-person objective/scientific domains, as exemplified in the dualism commonly ascribed to the French philosopher Rene Descartes and which prevailed well into the twentieth century. Post-modernity involves the subordination of first-person interiors and the emergence of a second-person, intersubjective dimension; for example, the notion that reality and meaning are not rooted in transcendental or universal phenomena but rather are “culturally constructed” according to the relativistic factors of one’s time and place. The 363 What Next? integral stage involves the embrace of modern and postmodern insights in a first-, second-, third-person synthesis. Fourth is the non-dual, integral worldview as an overarching conceptual framework that informs the broad variety of practices and premises that comprise integral contemplative education. Construed most robustly, non-duality—some expression of which is posited by most of the...