Ritual Resilience through Full-Moon Meditation: Reclaiming the Sacred Value of Sojiwan Temple in a Commodified Heritage Landscape.

The commodification of cultural heritage has significantly disrupted the sacredness of religious sites in Indonesia, posing a challenge for communities seeking to preserve spiritual value within economically driven landscapes. This study focuses on Sojiwan Temple, a ninth-century Buddhist monument in Central Java, where full-moon meditation has emerged as a form of ritual resilience that reasserts spiritual authority in the face of dominant secular and touristic agendas. Using ethnographic fieldwork, in-depth interviews, and textual analysis of Buddhist canonical sources, this research examines how local practices reassert sacrality in a space increasingly framed by tourism and state narratives. Field data involved semi-structured interviews with 12 participants including monks, lay practitioners, and cultural officials combined with immersive observation of four full-moon meditation cycles between May and August 2025. The findings reveal that Sojiwan’s significance has transformed across historical periods from a ritual center in the classical era, to a colonial object of spectacle, to a symbol of national identity post-independence. However, heritage interpretations remain dominated by state discourses that marginalize local spiritual agency. The data suggest that state-driven narratives prioritize visual preservation and economic value, often at odds with local ritual meaning. In response, community-led full-moon meditations serve as counter-hegemonic practices that reaffirm sacred continuity and foster collective identity through embodied rituals, shared mindfulness, and the symbolic reclamation of sacred space. Theoretically, the study integrates Durkheim’s and Eliade’s notions of sacrality with Casanova’s secularization theory to argue that rituals function as adaptive responses to cultural erosion. Sacrality is understood here not as fixed essence, but as socially enacted meaning maintained through community ritual and symbolic continuity. Comparative references to Borobudur, Cetho, and Jerónimos Monastery further demonstrate the global applicability of ritual-based heritage resilience. These comparisons highlight both convergences such as ritual persistence amid commodification and divergences in local governance structures. The study concludes that meditation practices not only sustain spiritual depth but also inform inclusive heritage governance and contribute to sustainable tourism strategies. By linking ritual agency to participatory heritage management, this paper offers actionable insights for policy and community-based conservation.