Mindful meaning-breaking: Transformation of semiosis in Chan Buddhist meditation
Mindful meaning-breaking: Transformation of semiosis in Chan Buddhist meditation

Summary/Abstract: The human psyche can be studied indirectly by the interrogation of individuals and by the examination of behaviour and the brain. It can also be observed directly through introspection. Buddhist tradition is dedicated to the latter: Systematic first-person study of the mind. Tragel’s chapter is dedicated to exploring how meaning is unmade, and Buddhism offers thorough insight into altering one’s meaning-making processes in the direction of cessation rather than the unlimited continuance of semiosis. The specific metasemiosic awareness of the demolishing functions of signs presents semiotic selves with constructive doubt, and, consequently, a flexibility of meaning-making as it proceeds. Her paper looks into the transformation towards this flexibility, making use of epistemic access to the first-person perspective in meditation. Via discussion of “mindful meaning-breaking”, she aims to introduce a semiotic framework for analysing Chan meditation/mindfulness and to emphasize the theoretical relevance of “exemption from meaning”. Contemplation is intrinsically ethical and semiotics intrinsically contemplative. Based on this understanding, Tragel is generally wandering around the lines of what she calls contemplative semiotics. Her interests involve topics such as semioethics, introspective practices, transformation of cognitive processes, the cultural psychology of meditation, and the semiotic approach to Buddhism in theories of the Tartu-Moscow School member, orientalist Linnart Mäll.

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