A Day in the Life of an Aesthetic Tantrika: ¯ From Synaesthetic Garden to Lucid Dreaming and Spaciousness
Journal Title: Religions - Year 2018, Vol 9, Issue 3
Abstract
This essay addresses the question of the relationship between Aesthetics and Tantra, in the world-view and life-world of Hindu Tantric visionary Abhinavagupta (ca. 975–1025 C.E.) and his tradition. I respond to a classic work on Abhinavagupta’s understanding of aesthetic experience and religious experience by shifting the focus from ultimate experience to the life of a liberated being. I argue that Abhinavagupta’s blending of Aesthetics and Tantra naturally follows from his view of liberation, which re-integrates the body and senses into the religious life, and affirms the reality of the material world in which the liberated being is embedded. I recover the very humanness and boundedness of Abhinavagupta as an additional way of understanding liberation. I draw on hymns of praise, descriptions of ritual, thoughts on hermeneutics of Being, and complex metaphors, from Abhinavagupta’s tradition, and engage with various thinkers, including Performance Theorist Richard Schechner and neurologist James Austin, to flesh out complex metaphors depicting the relationship between consciousness and the world. I conclude by reflecting on similarities between the Trika model of Self, as interpreted by Abhinavagupta’s student Ks.emaraja, and lucid dreaming.
Authors and Affiliations
Kerry Martin Skora
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP25949
- DOI https://doi.org/10.3390/rel9030081
- Views 350
- Downloads 10
History, Culture and Traditions: The Silent Spaces in the Study of Spirituality at the End of Life
Recent increase in the number of studies on spirituality manifests growing recognition of the importance of spirituality, as well as mounting interest in studying spirituality in healthcare. Most studies on spiritualit...
Walking Meditation: Being Present and Being Pilgrim on the Camino de Santiago
The Camino de Santiago has witnessed an unprecedented number of walkers in recent years. Traditionalists feel that the Camino is suffering from excess—too many visitors and too much strain on the infrastructure, accomp...
The Spiritual Care Team: Enabling the Practice of Whole Person Medicine
We will soon be piloting a project titled “Integrating Spirituality into Patient Care” that will form “spiritual care teams” to assess and address patients’ spiritual needs in physician outpatient practices within Adve...
Theodicies as Failures of Recognition
This paper examines the ethical failure of theodicies by integrating the perspectives of philosophical argumentation and literary reading and analysis. The paper consists of two main parts. In the first part, we propos...
Against the Grain and Over the Line: Reflections on Comparative Methodology
This article distills theoretical arguments that I advance in Foreigners and Their Food, arguments relevant to a wide range of religious studies scholars. In addition, it makes the case for comparison as a method that sh...