Reading writing breathing: a post-Buddhist autoethnographic meditative enquiry?

What kinds of autoethnography are possible when there is no Self? This provocative question stems from my PhD-by-publication, 7 texts published over 7 years (2017-2024). 'Reading, writing breathing' (2024), focusses on text I produced via a process of meditation on the breath. This paper will therefore feature excerpts from this article, meditative writing, in the context of recent scholarship on the breath, particularly from literary studies. As a long-term meditator I will address a conundrum. It is unique and fundamental to Buddhism that there is no Self and yet, there is singularity of experience. Experiences of embodiment, non-philosophy, poetic modes of writing and reading will be shared via personal incidents, family culture and challenging experiences, such as memories of childhood racism. My meta-reflection appears to be that I have re-invented a post-Buddhist form of post-qualitative enquiry, an invitation to do philosophy with meditative writing and something we still might call performative autoethnography. Possibly. I called this ‘Meditative enquiry’ a type of ‘unmaking [of] the autoethnographic self’ (2021). One thing that nonself-based autoethnography appears to do well, through open-ended enquiry, curiosity, doubt and presence is to allow insight. But, we might ask, whose insight is this, to whom does it belong?

• https://boomerang-project.org.uk/ae-netw...