I do not feel that the contemplative practices in this class result in cognitive, emotional, and somatic self-awareness. I think taking a moment to rest in class is beneficial for the anti-capitalist refusal of grind-culture in academics, but not much beyond giving our eyes a much-needed break from sensory stimuli. 

Contemplative and mindfulness practices are often misinterpreted to be universal in essence. As Maria Ishikawa argues in her article, “Mindfulness in Western Contexts Perpetuates Oppressive Realities for Minority Cultures: The Consequences of Cultural Appropriation”, “knowledge appropriation, in the case of mindfulness practices of North American societies, fails to recognize the original and specific cultural purposes of mindfulness.” Beyond this, I think that a bare-bones acknowledgement of Buddhism, does not equate true recognition of the ways in which knowledge appropriation treats culturally-specific knowledge as terra nullius, or land without ownership and therefore available to be claimed and taken. 

Terra nullius can be extended to culturally specific practices. Knowledge that does not fall into western conceptualizations of productive or scientifically-sound reasoning is inherently invaluable, until western, or dominant forms of knowledge, add value to it through ‘modernization’, secularization, and other forms of cultural extraction and abstraction. As Ishikawa writes, “individualized mindfulness practices as appropriated by the dominant cultures of North America is a manifestation of knowledge as terra nullius because these practices are not presented as ‘of value’ in their original collectivist and holistic purpose”. Cultural concepts of who we are in connection to the surrounding world, like Daoist practices, are abstracted and appropriated to their symbols (yin-yang), which are capitalized upon and used for t-shirt logos and computer avatars. ‘Mindfulness’ is not an individualistic, momentary, or a periodic practice, as misinterpreted by the west. I disagree with the assumption that we can ‘become present’ and practice contemplative practices to fulfill some sort of purpose or outcome. As Suzuki Shunryu wrote in his book Zen Mind, “These forms are not a means of obtaining the right state of mind […] when you try to attain something, your mind starts to wander about somewhere else. When you do not try to attain anything, you have your own body and mind right here.”