Periodic Reporting for period 2 - HEARTOPENINGS (Heart openings: The experience and cultivation of love in Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam)
Reporting period: 2022-11-01 to 2024-04-30
Scholarship has not responded satisfactorily to the current crisis of interreligious misunderstanding, sectarian strife, and rising fundamentalism. Ethical attempts to respect difference have resulted in reifications and the encouragement of difference. Could the kinds of experiences that scholars and practitioners call religious, divine, spiritual, or mystical share a "common core"? Notwithstanding that this old hypothesis has been rejected by scholars as a universalization of Western and Christian concepts of experience and religion, the Heart Openings project investigates the possibility of undisclosed commonalities with a new set of methods.
Seeking to develop new interreligious understandings, the project specifically inquires into the experience and cultivation of love in religious and contemplative practice. Methodologically, it gathers information through interviews and participant observation conducted in collaboration with Buddhists, Christians, and Muslims in Denmark, United Kingdom, USA, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, Tanzania, and Egypt.
Using audiovisual and micro-phenomenological methods, Heart Openings seeks to examine in detail the sensory and emotional structures of specific experiences of love and other qualities related to the heart. Through participant observation and life story interviews, the project examines and compares how the cultivation and experiences of love impact and emerge from people’s everyday lives across and beyond different contemplative and religious traditions.
To initiate a comparative study of religious experience is a daunting task since the very idea of the existence of such a category of experience that we could call religious is still an open question. There is simply no consensus across or within the various traditions of Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, or other religions about how to understand such experiences. While experience is key to the devotional practices of some traditions, others decidedly downplay its significance. Neither practitioners nor scholars share a common definition of what constitutes "religious experience".
While recognizing the significant definitional problems, our point of departure is that the problem with the study of religious experience is not only conceptual and theoretical, but above all methodological. There is a striking lack of detail in descriptions of the experiences on which earlier studies are based. This is not surprising, given the general distrust of subjective experience and the fact that people can have great difficulty describing even the simplest of their everyday experiences. As pointed out by Petitmengin (2006; see also Hurlbert and Schwitzgebel 2007) lived subjective experience has often been excluded from the field of scientific investigation. Paradoxically, the insistence on the impossibility of adequate description was also shared by the early proponents of the idea of a unifying experiential core. As James (1985[1902]: 380) points out in his discussion of mysticism, which he considers a subcategory of the broader phenomenon of religious experience: "no adequate report of its contents can be given in words ... its quality must be directly experienced; it cannot be imparted or transferred to others."
This study aims to re-examine the hypotheses of these early scholars, but – drawing upon recent developments in phenomenology and anthropology – it disagrees with their claim that such experiences are essentially impossible to describe (see Petitmengin 2006; Taves 2009; Luhrmann 2012; See also Turner and Bruner 1986; Jackson 1989, 1996).
Seeking to develop new interreligious understandings, the project specifically inquires into the experience and cultivation of love in religious and contemplative practice. Methodologically, it gathers information through interviews and participant observation conducted in collaboration with Buddhists, Christians, and Muslims in Denmark, United Kingdom, USA, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, Tanzania, and Egypt.
Using audiovisual and micro-phenomenological methods, Heart Openings seeks to examine in detail the sensory and emotional structures of specific experiences of love and other qualities related to the heart. Through participant observation and life story interviews, the project examines and compares how the cultivation and experiences of love impact and emerge from people’s everyday lives across and beyond different contemplative and religious traditions.
To initiate a comparative study of religious experience is a daunting task since the very idea of the existence of such a category of experience that we could call religious is still an open question. There is simply no consensus across or within the various traditions of Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, or other religions about how to understand such experiences. While experience is key to the devotional practices of some traditions, others decidedly downplay its significance. Neither practitioners nor scholars share a common definition of what constitutes "religious experience".
While recognizing the significant definitional problems, our point of departure is that the problem with the study of religious experience is not only conceptual and theoretical, but above all methodological. There is a striking lack of detail in descriptions of the experiences on which earlier studies are based. This is not surprising, given the general distrust of subjective experience and the fact that people can have great difficulty describing even the simplest of their everyday experiences. As pointed out by Petitmengin (2006; see also Hurlbert and Schwitzgebel 2007) lived subjective experience has often been excluded from the field of scientific investigation. Paradoxically, the insistence on the impossibility of adequate description was also shared by the early proponents of the idea of a unifying experiential core. As James (1985[1902]: 380) points out in his discussion of mysticism, which he considers a subcategory of the broader phenomenon of religious experience: "no adequate report of its contents can be given in words ... its quality must be directly experienced; it cannot be imparted or transferred to others."
This study aims to re-examine the hypotheses of these early scholars, but – drawing upon recent developments in phenomenology and anthropology – it disagrees with their claim that such experiences are essentially impossible to describe (see Petitmengin 2006; Taves 2009; Luhrmann 2012; See also Turner and Bruner 1986; Jackson 1989, 1996).
The Heart Openings project began in May 2021. The first project year (medio 2021–medio 2022) was dedicated to fieldwork, film recordings, and editing in Egypt and in Denmark (PI); recruitment of junior scholars (three postdocs and two PhDs); and development of our research design and our approach to research ethics and data protection in collaboration with the senior advisors of the project and the ERC Ethics Office.
In 2022 our first film “Light upon light” (Suhr and Lotfy) about experiences of luminosity and love was completed, based on research and recordings with Sufi communities and the Hassala Film Collective in Egypt and Denmark. The film has been screened in 15 countries at 25 international film festivals and academic conferences and we are now using the film to facilitate a deeper collaboration and understanding between researchers and research participants who based on this first example can develop and expand the ways in which we apply our key methods; micro-phenomenology, life story interviews, and audiovisual research techniques.
The second project year (medio 2022–medio 2023) was used on intensive training of junior scholars in the main methods of the project, including the organization of workshops with key advisors and experts such as prof. Claire Petitmengin, Katrin Heimann, Martijn van Beek, Cheryl Mattingly, Line Dalsgaard, Noa Vaismann, Arne Bro, and Jennifer Deger (ethics advisor). In collaboration with advisors, the ERC Ethics Office, and the AU Research Ethics Committee, we enhanced our research design and approach to ethics and data protection in each of the individual sub-projects. We practiced and documented our use of the methods in the research group both to produce valuable insights on our own experiences and understandings of love, and to get a thorough understanding of how it feels not only to use these methods as researchers but also how it is to be exposed to them as research participants.
In Spring 2023, the individual sub-projects continued with fieldwork in Denmark, Nepal, Egypt, Tanzania, the US, and the UK. Fieldwork in Papua New Guinea was postponed because the postdoctoral researcher Olivia Barnett-Naghshineh became pregnant. Instead Olivia developed and initiated a project with a Sufi community in Norwich, UK – a project that she could safely conduct while being pregnant and while also working on the development of her book manuscript on care, love, affect, and exchange in Goroka, Papua New Guinea.
The third project year (Autumn 2023) has continued with additional fieldwork in Denmark, Egypt, the US, and the UK as well as preliminary joint analyses of research data. In addition we have prepared conference papers for a number of events, including a dedicated panel for the project at the American Academy of Religion, San Antonio, November 2023, and three presentations at the International Conference on Love Studies, Las Palmas, January 2024. Furthermore, we have completed an intensive mid-term ethics workshop with our Research Ethics Advisor, prof. Jennifer Deger, who supervised and engaged with our ongoing work.
Two of the postdoctoral researchers, Renee Ford and Hanne Bess Boelsbjerg, are planning to conclude their research ultimo 2024. For this reason their remaining fieldwork, analyses, and subsequent development of manuscripts are primary focus points in the Spring of 2024. They aim for an English language monograph on devotional love in Tibetan Buddhism (Renee Ford) and a Danish language monograph on the cultivation of the heart in a Danish contemplative community inspired by Buddhism (Hanne Bess Boelsbjerg).
PhD-researchers Katrine Pahuus and Kenni Hede have successfully completed their MA-theses in 2023 and have now moved to the second half of their PhD’s, each aiming to produce a monograph and a film. Kenni Hede aims to complete his PhD medio 2025. Katrine Pahuus is currently pregnant. She aims to complete her work after parental leave, medio 2026. Both PhD-researchers have contributed to the core questions of our joint project with perspectives that were not anticipated initially.
As the PI, I have been coordinating and mentoring the abovementioned sub-projects. I am also conducting a sub-project with colleagues in Egypt and a sub-project with postdoc Hanne Bess Boelsbjerg and assoc. prof. Martijn van Beek in Denmark. I am initiating the development of a separate monograph with my colleagues in Egypt as well as facilitating the publication of joint volumes in the project group.
Pregnancies and parental leave have temporarily delayed some of our work, but taking this into account I assess that the project is mostly proceeding according to the original plan. Our initial fieldwork has resulted in unexpected methodological developments and insights (described below). We have established good relations to many of the communities we wish to include in the project and we have produced a rich – although still unfinished – set of data and film recordings, including in-depth life story and microphenomenological interviews on experiences of love and related qualities of the heart in several languages and socio-cultural contexts.
The second half of the project will be dedicated to the completion of fieldwork, analyses, and the development of monographs, ethnographic films, and edited volumes presenting the findings of the individual sub-projects and the larger comparative analysis of the project.
In 2022 our first film “Light upon light” (Suhr and Lotfy) about experiences of luminosity and love was completed, based on research and recordings with Sufi communities and the Hassala Film Collective in Egypt and Denmark. The film has been screened in 15 countries at 25 international film festivals and academic conferences and we are now using the film to facilitate a deeper collaboration and understanding between researchers and research participants who based on this first example can develop and expand the ways in which we apply our key methods; micro-phenomenology, life story interviews, and audiovisual research techniques.
The second project year (medio 2022–medio 2023) was used on intensive training of junior scholars in the main methods of the project, including the organization of workshops with key advisors and experts such as prof. Claire Petitmengin, Katrin Heimann, Martijn van Beek, Cheryl Mattingly, Line Dalsgaard, Noa Vaismann, Arne Bro, and Jennifer Deger (ethics advisor). In collaboration with advisors, the ERC Ethics Office, and the AU Research Ethics Committee, we enhanced our research design and approach to ethics and data protection in each of the individual sub-projects. We practiced and documented our use of the methods in the research group both to produce valuable insights on our own experiences and understandings of love, and to get a thorough understanding of how it feels not only to use these methods as researchers but also how it is to be exposed to them as research participants.
In Spring 2023, the individual sub-projects continued with fieldwork in Denmark, Nepal, Egypt, Tanzania, the US, and the UK. Fieldwork in Papua New Guinea was postponed because the postdoctoral researcher Olivia Barnett-Naghshineh became pregnant. Instead Olivia developed and initiated a project with a Sufi community in Norwich, UK – a project that she could safely conduct while being pregnant and while also working on the development of her book manuscript on care, love, affect, and exchange in Goroka, Papua New Guinea.
The third project year (Autumn 2023) has continued with additional fieldwork in Denmark, Egypt, the US, and the UK as well as preliminary joint analyses of research data. In addition we have prepared conference papers for a number of events, including a dedicated panel for the project at the American Academy of Religion, San Antonio, November 2023, and three presentations at the International Conference on Love Studies, Las Palmas, January 2024. Furthermore, we have completed an intensive mid-term ethics workshop with our Research Ethics Advisor, prof. Jennifer Deger, who supervised and engaged with our ongoing work.
Two of the postdoctoral researchers, Renee Ford and Hanne Bess Boelsbjerg, are planning to conclude their research ultimo 2024. For this reason their remaining fieldwork, analyses, and subsequent development of manuscripts are primary focus points in the Spring of 2024. They aim for an English language monograph on devotional love in Tibetan Buddhism (Renee Ford) and a Danish language monograph on the cultivation of the heart in a Danish contemplative community inspired by Buddhism (Hanne Bess Boelsbjerg).
PhD-researchers Katrine Pahuus and Kenni Hede have successfully completed their MA-theses in 2023 and have now moved to the second half of their PhD’s, each aiming to produce a monograph and a film. Kenni Hede aims to complete his PhD medio 2025. Katrine Pahuus is currently pregnant. She aims to complete her work after parental leave, medio 2026. Both PhD-researchers have contributed to the core questions of our joint project with perspectives that were not anticipated initially.
As the PI, I have been coordinating and mentoring the abovementioned sub-projects. I am also conducting a sub-project with colleagues in Egypt and a sub-project with postdoc Hanne Bess Boelsbjerg and assoc. prof. Martijn van Beek in Denmark. I am initiating the development of a separate monograph with my colleagues in Egypt as well as facilitating the publication of joint volumes in the project group.
Pregnancies and parental leave have temporarily delayed some of our work, but taking this into account I assess that the project is mostly proceeding according to the original plan. Our initial fieldwork has resulted in unexpected methodological developments and insights (described below). We have established good relations to many of the communities we wish to include in the project and we have produced a rich – although still unfinished – set of data and film recordings, including in-depth life story and microphenomenological interviews on experiences of love and related qualities of the heart in several languages and socio-cultural contexts.
The second half of the project will be dedicated to the completion of fieldwork, analyses, and the development of monographs, ethnographic films, and edited volumes presenting the findings of the individual sub-projects and the larger comparative analysis of the project.
Based on the results of the preliminary work, we believe that the contributions of the project as a whole will include: A) the initiation of academic and public debates on religious differences and commonalities based on in-depth micro-phenomenological and ethnographic descriptions; B) significant methodological innovation in the study of religious and contemplative experience; C) a range of contributions specific to debates within the study of Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam; D) a significant expansion and development of micro-phenomenology adapted to be used across a new range of linguistic and socio-cultural contexts and in combination with audiovisual media; E) an expansion of the scope of collaborative approaches in audiovisual and multimodal anthropology, including the development of a new framework for research ethics and data protection when applying audiovisual research methods in projects involving sensitive personal data.
FIRST MAJOR PUBLICATION
The debates provoked by the release of our first film “Light upon light” (Suhr and Lotfy 2022) among publics within and beyond academia and in several different social and cultural contexts was a breakthrough for our project. The film constitutes a significant methodological development in the study of religious experience, combining approaches inspired by micro-phenomenology and audiovisual anthropology, thereby advancing both the discipline of micro-phenomenology and anthropology in opening an area of research through new interdisciplinary perspectives. The film is also significant for both anthropology and micro-phenomenology in constituting a novel and impactful example of knowledge communication, successfully communicating insights from a research project to a broad audience, including 25 international film festivals and conferences in 15 countries, a theatrical release, panel debates, newspaper articles, interviews on radio and tv, etc. Finally the film offers new ways of establishing and developing anthropological research in ongoing collaboration between researchers and research participants – a contribution with implications for our approach to ethics, informed consent, and authorship. This was recognized in a Special Mention awarded to the film for the research collaboration and the immersive research techniques at the Jean Rouch International Film Festival in Paris 2023. The rare collaboration between an Egyptian producer (Hala Lotfy, Hassala Films) and a Danish director/anthropologist (Christian Suhr) was described as a groundbreaking event in the world of documentary film by Rasmus Steen, Head of Documentary, International Media Support (IMS).
Additional developments in the first half of the Heart Openings project beyond state of the art:
A)
It is of crucial significance for microphenomenology, and for scholarly debates on human experience, that we can describe and compare subjective experiences based on nuanced understandings of the different linguistic and socio-cultural factors that are part of the shaping of individual experiences. The challenge of accomplishing this begins with the complexities in translating the very word “experience” in a way that gives meaning to people who are not familiar with academic debates on this topic. Similarly with the English word “love”. In Arabic, for example, the word “love” corresponds to a very large vocabulary relating to different modalities of love and different kinds of hearts and heart states. A less expansive use of words for love and the heart is exemplified by the Tibetan context. In Tibetan it often appears to be necessary to ask into modalities of compassion or empathy, in addition to love, in order to be able to relate the experiential qualities that are being referred to by such words to experiential descriptions of similar qualities provided in other linguistic and socio-cultural contexts.
Through workshops with participants and colleagues in Denmark and Egypt, we have developed vocabularies that can be used to apply micro-phenomenology in a way that is sensitive to the nuances of colloquial Arabic and Danish, and at the same time allows us to produce meaningful comparisons in other cultural, religious, and socio-political contexts. We have also initiated this work in Tibetan and Tok Pisin.
Preliminary findings have been presented at the American Academy of Religion, San Antonio, November 2023 and in the Danish language article ”Hvordan oplever vi kærlighed?” (How do we experience love, Suhr, Boelsbjerg, Heimann 2021). We were approached by the Journal of Contemplative Studies with a request to produce a special issue focusing on this topic and aim for a publication within the coming two years.
B)
We have discovered and developed ways in which film can be successfully used as an active part of micro-phenomenological analysis to assess and communicate structures of lived experience. Micro-phenomenology provides a powerful tool to identify subtle and often unrecognized structures of lived experience. The interviewer helps the interviewee evoke a concrete experience by recounting the experience with the words of the interviewee, and then asking simple questions that allow the interviewee to retrieve further dimensions of the experience. The medium of film, as developed in the discipline of audiovisual and multimodal anthropology, provides complimentary opportunities for enabling micro-level analyses of the verbal, bodily, and emotional interactions between research participants, researchers, and the environments in which particular kinds of experience emerge. In the Heart Openings project, we seek to deepen the research process by using film excerpts from everyday situations and ritual practices, as well as film excerpts from micro-phenomenological interviews as the basis for reflection and feedback in the collaboration between research participants and researchers.
C)
Together with the ERC Ethics Office, the AU Research Ethics Committee, and our ethics advisor, Jennifer Deger, we have developed a framework for ethics and data protection when using audiovisual research techniques in projects involving sensitive personal data. This work has created a strong basis for our individual sub-projects, and we are pleased to see how our approach is also inspiring for colleagues in Denmark and abroad who are working on related projects and with whom we have shared our approach. When fieldwork is completed, it is our intention to evaluate the process and to publish our approach to ethics and data protection in articles that may assist other researchers in the development of their approaches.
FIRST MAJOR PUBLICATION
The debates provoked by the release of our first film “Light upon light” (Suhr and Lotfy 2022) among publics within and beyond academia and in several different social and cultural contexts was a breakthrough for our project. The film constitutes a significant methodological development in the study of religious experience, combining approaches inspired by micro-phenomenology and audiovisual anthropology, thereby advancing both the discipline of micro-phenomenology and anthropology in opening an area of research through new interdisciplinary perspectives. The film is also significant for both anthropology and micro-phenomenology in constituting a novel and impactful example of knowledge communication, successfully communicating insights from a research project to a broad audience, including 25 international film festivals and conferences in 15 countries, a theatrical release, panel debates, newspaper articles, interviews on radio and tv, etc. Finally the film offers new ways of establishing and developing anthropological research in ongoing collaboration between researchers and research participants – a contribution with implications for our approach to ethics, informed consent, and authorship. This was recognized in a Special Mention awarded to the film for the research collaboration and the immersive research techniques at the Jean Rouch International Film Festival in Paris 2023. The rare collaboration between an Egyptian producer (Hala Lotfy, Hassala Films) and a Danish director/anthropologist (Christian Suhr) was described as a groundbreaking event in the world of documentary film by Rasmus Steen, Head of Documentary, International Media Support (IMS).
Additional developments in the first half of the Heart Openings project beyond state of the art:
A)
It is of crucial significance for microphenomenology, and for scholarly debates on human experience, that we can describe and compare subjective experiences based on nuanced understandings of the different linguistic and socio-cultural factors that are part of the shaping of individual experiences. The challenge of accomplishing this begins with the complexities in translating the very word “experience” in a way that gives meaning to people who are not familiar with academic debates on this topic. Similarly with the English word “love”. In Arabic, for example, the word “love” corresponds to a very large vocabulary relating to different modalities of love and different kinds of hearts and heart states. A less expansive use of words for love and the heart is exemplified by the Tibetan context. In Tibetan it often appears to be necessary to ask into modalities of compassion or empathy, in addition to love, in order to be able to relate the experiential qualities that are being referred to by such words to experiential descriptions of similar qualities provided in other linguistic and socio-cultural contexts.
Through workshops with participants and colleagues in Denmark and Egypt, we have developed vocabularies that can be used to apply micro-phenomenology in a way that is sensitive to the nuances of colloquial Arabic and Danish, and at the same time allows us to produce meaningful comparisons in other cultural, religious, and socio-political contexts. We have also initiated this work in Tibetan and Tok Pisin.
Preliminary findings have been presented at the American Academy of Religion, San Antonio, November 2023 and in the Danish language article ”Hvordan oplever vi kærlighed?” (How do we experience love, Suhr, Boelsbjerg, Heimann 2021). We were approached by the Journal of Contemplative Studies with a request to produce a special issue focusing on this topic and aim for a publication within the coming two years.
B)
We have discovered and developed ways in which film can be successfully used as an active part of micro-phenomenological analysis to assess and communicate structures of lived experience. Micro-phenomenology provides a powerful tool to identify subtle and often unrecognized structures of lived experience. The interviewer helps the interviewee evoke a concrete experience by recounting the experience with the words of the interviewee, and then asking simple questions that allow the interviewee to retrieve further dimensions of the experience. The medium of film, as developed in the discipline of audiovisual and multimodal anthropology, provides complimentary opportunities for enabling micro-level analyses of the verbal, bodily, and emotional interactions between research participants, researchers, and the environments in which particular kinds of experience emerge. In the Heart Openings project, we seek to deepen the research process by using film excerpts from everyday situations and ritual practices, as well as film excerpts from micro-phenomenological interviews as the basis for reflection and feedback in the collaboration between research participants and researchers.
C)
Together with the ERC Ethics Office, the AU Research Ethics Committee, and our ethics advisor, Jennifer Deger, we have developed a framework for ethics and data protection when using audiovisual research techniques in projects involving sensitive personal data. This work has created a strong basis for our individual sub-projects, and we are pleased to see how our approach is also inspiring for colleagues in Denmark and abroad who are working on related projects and with whom we have shared our approach. When fieldwork is completed, it is our intention to evaluate the process and to publish our approach to ethics and data protection in articles that may assist other researchers in the development of their approaches.