religions Article Teaching Transnational Buddhist Meditation with Vipassan¯ a (Neiguan ) and Mindfulness (Zhengnian 正念) for Healing Depression in Contemporary China Ngar-sze Lau   Citation: Lau, Ngar-sze. 2021. Teaching Transnational Buddhist Meditation with Vipassan¯ a(Neiguan ) and Mindfulness (Zhengnian 正 念) for Healing Depression in Contemporary China. Religions 12: 212. https://doi.org/10.3390/ rel12030212 Academic Editor: Brooke Schedneck Received: 10 February 2021 Accepted: 17 March 2021 Published: 20 March 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2021 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). Department of Special Education and Counselling, The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China; enslau@eduhk.hk Abstract: This paper examines how the teaching of embodied practices of transnational Buddhist meditation has been designated for healing depression explicitly in contemporary Chinese Buddhist communities with the influences of Buddhist modernism in Southeast Asia and globalization. Despite the revival of traditional Chan school meditation practices since the Open Policy, various transnational lay meditation practices, such as vipassan¯ a and mindfulness, have been popularized in monastic and lay communities as a trendy way to heal physical and mental suffering in mainland China. Drawing from a recent ethnographic study of a meditation retreat held at a Chinese Buddhist monastery in South China, this paper examines how Buddhist monastics have promoted a hybrid mode of embodied Buddhist meditation practices, mindfulness and psychoanalytic exercises for healing depression in lay people. With analysis of the teaching and approach of the retreat guided by well- educated Chinese meditation monastics, I argue that some young generation Buddhist communities have contributed to giving active responses towards the recent yearning for individualized bodily practices and the social trend of the “subjective turn” and self-reflexivity in contemporary Chinese society. The hybrid inclusion of mindfulness exercises from secular programs and psychoanalytic exercises into a vipassan¯ a meditation retreat may reflect an attempt to re-contextualize meditation in Chinese Buddhism. Keywords: transnational meditation; vipassan ¯ a; mindfulness; mind; body; healing; depression; Han Chinese 1. Introduction On the second evening of the eight-day “Healing Depression Vipassan ¯ a Medita- tion Retreat in Winter Solstice 2019”, at the meditation hall (Figure 1) of Gengxiang Monastery 耕香寺, during the question and answer session after the Dharma talk on ¯ Anandabhaddekarattasuttam . , Yaqi, a female meditator, shared shyly about her observed body sensation: “Something is suppressing. [I can] feel that something is causing me difficulty to breathe. It makes me feel very uncomfortable. Something is suppressing [in the body].” “Did you feel this after you arrived here? Or did you experience it before?” asked with a caring tone by Wuyou, a 40-year-old Chinese Buddhist monk, one of the monastic meditation teachers of this retreat. “A long time ago I had this experience. Recently it happened again. During the body scan exercise yesterday, while [I was] scanning around the neck area, and observing the throat internally and externally ... ” Yaqi replied with a low and depressed voice. “A feeling of suppression?” asked Wuyou. “Yes, a feeling of suppression.” Yaqi confirmed. “Being aware of this feeling. Don’t resist it. Notice it gently. As you feel the uncomfortable sensation, you can send loving-kindness to it. Relax it slowly. Religions 2021, 12, 212. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12030212 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions