Meditation and Aspiration at Kagyu Monlam Chenmo in Bodh Gaya

This article examines practices of meditation and aspiration performed during the Kagyu Monlam Chenmo in Bodh Gaya, within the Karma Kagyu institutional and devotional network associated with the 17th Karmapa Trinley Thaye Dorje. It focuses on the collective recitation of Samantabhadra’s King of Aspiration Prayers, not only as a liturgical performance, but as a contemplative practice shaped by attention, bodily endurance, repetition, and joint participation. The article argues that Bodh Gaya provides a setting in which meditation is not separated from ritual, place, institution, and religious labour. Drawing on James A. Beckford’s social constructionist approach, I examine how lay and monastic practitioners take part in forming a contemplative space under the Bodhi Tree. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, the article shows how collective aspiration works within a disciplined meditative framework, while allowing individual attention to take shape by accompanying a common ritual rhythm. The Monlam may therefore be understood as a site where lineage continuity is ritually sustained within a specific Karma Kagyu setting. By focusing on aspiration, repetition, and sacred place, the article contributes to discussions of lived Buddhism and to the study of meditation as a social and spatial practice.