Description

Conducting research in an animated world: A case for suffering

ALEXANDRA FIDYK

Assistant Professor, Department of Secondary Education, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada

Abstract

In the particularity of suffering, a case is made for new approaches in research which extend beyond the methods which are common to social science and educational research. In looking at the cosmological and ontological positioning inherent in an imaginal paradigm, characteristics of what it means to live in an animated world are outlined. By elaborating what such a world looks like, epistemological and axiological differences are considered in relation to the importance of suffering. By approaching suffering as a gift from the perspectives of depth psychology and Zen Buddhism, one can gain a richer and more critical understanding of the ways new approaches open up apparently familiar issues.

Keywords: suffering, ontology, imaginal, epistemology, axiology, cosmology, animated, Buddhism