Temporal Immersion: A Processual Conceptualisation of Meaningful Tourism Experiences in a Living Buddhist Monastery
Abstract
While meaningful tourism experiences are increasingly understood as emerging through interactions with place, people, and culture, less is known about how they develop within living heritage environments. This study explores how visitors construct meaningful experiences through engagement with the everyday temporal organisation of a living Buddhist monastery. The research was conducted through participant observation, reflexive field journals, and 12 informal interviews with residential tourists during a 22-day qualitative case study at Key Monastery in the Indian Himalayas. Data were analysed using Reflexive Thematic Analysis. Findings indicate a sequential experiential response beginning with curiosity and observation, followed by learning, participation, adjustment to the monastic rhythm, and reflection and personal response. Rather than emerging solely from individual sacred moments or prolonged isolation, meaningful experiences developed through sustained interaction with recurring temporal practices, including communal routines, shared meals, silence, and the rhythm of monastic life. To conceptualise this process, the study proposes temporal immersion as a lens for understanding how visitors gradually become attuned to the temporal organisation of community life. The study contributes to tourism scholarship by conceptualising temporality as an experiential dimension of meaningful tourism and offering a process-oriented perspective on meaningful experiences in living heritage environments.
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