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Making a Good Atman: Yoga as an Art of the Soul

Making a Good Atman: Yoga as an Art of the Soul

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Leicester Friends Talk 20th March 2021 Making a Good Atman: Yoga as an Art of the Soul

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Dear Friends,
Leicester Friends would like to invite you to our talk this Saturday.

Making a Good Atman: Yoga as an Art of the Soul 

A talk by Dr Jessica Frazier
of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies

Yoga is everything to everyone – it calms you, makes you fitter, makes you mindful, and unites you with god. How can it be such a magical key to every door, and is this what the original yogis who lived in the time of the Upanisads, the Mahabharata, and the Yoga Sutras had in mind? Is there a ‘right’ use of yoga? 

A journey into the many yogas of ancient India shows how many goals there could be. And if we go deeper into the neurology of the mind, we see how yoga harnessed a power for India that few other cultures ever discovered. Yoga offers a way to Craft Yourself, shaping the soul like an artist sculpting the perfect artwork.

Saturday 20th March 2021
At 4pm GMT

Warm regards,
LeicesterFriends of the OCHS
Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies
E: lf@ochs.org.uk
W: www.ochs.org.uk

Zoom meeting details
Time: Mar 20, 2021 04:00 PM London

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88005672869?pwd=eUZTQnQvcUQ2c01hdWp1UVJwYzlrUT09

Meeting ID: 880 0567 2869
Passcode: 171303

To phone in: Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kdsjIgwNYI

Saturday 20th March 2021
At 4pm GMT

Warm regards,
LeicesterFriends of the OCHS
Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies
E: lf@ochs.org.uk
W: www.ochs.org.uk

Zoom meeting details
Time: Mar 20, 2021 04:00 PM London

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88005672869?pwd=eUZTQnQvcUQ2c01hdWp1UVJwYzlrUT09

Meeting ID: 880 0567 2869
Passcode: 171303

To phone in: Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kdsjIgwNYI

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Article in the Hindustan Times

Article in the Hindustan Times

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A vital, unique effort: Vir Sanghvi on the work of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies

“At a time when Hinduism is increasingly influencing political agendas, it is sometimes hard to remember that there is another kind of Hinduism: one that lends itself to academic studies.”
 
Read the article in the Hindustan Times where our Director Shaunaka Rishi Das discusses the ethos of the Centre and the need for academic Hindu Studies.
 
Link to article: here
Vaiśeṣikasūtra – A Translation

Vaiśeṣikasūtra – A Translation

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Vaiśeṣikasūtra – A Translation

Our Research Fellow Dr Ionut Moise has just published a new translation of the Vaiśeṣikasūtra together with Professor Ganesh U. Thite. 

Get the book here.

Book Description

The book introduces readers to Indian philosophy by presenting the first integral English translation of Vaiśeṣikasūtra with the earliest extant commentary of Candrānanda on the old aphorisms of Vaiśeṣika school of Indian philosophy.

The book offers a comprehensive description of the fundamental categories of ontology and metaphysics, among which the category of ‘particularity’ (viśeṣa) plays a major role in the ‘problem of individuation’ of ‘substance’ and ‘nature’ in both Indian and Western metaphysics. The book should be read primarily in relation to Aristotle’s Categories and is structured in three parts. Part 1 contains a general introduction to Indian philosophy and the Vaiśeṣika system. Part 2 is a textual-philological discussion on the commentary itself, since its first publication in 1961 by Muni Jambūvijayaji up until the present day. Part 3 is a philosophical translation that reads Vaiśeṣika in the global context of Comparative Philosophy and makes the text accessible to all philosophy readers interested in ontology and metaphysics.

A new reference work and a fundamental introduction to anyone interested in Indian and Comparative Philosophy, this book will be of interest to academics and students in the field of Classical Studies, Modern Philosophy and Asian Religions and Philosophies.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction to Indian Philosophy and Vaiśeṣika 
2. Sources and Resources on Vaiśeṣikasūtra 
3. Vaiśeṣikasūtra. Transliteration and Translation

Authors

Ionut Moise is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Exeter, UK, and a Research Fellow at The Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, UK where he teaches Comparative Philosophy. He is the author of Salvation in Indian Philosophy also published by Routledge (2020).

Ganesh U. Thite is Emeritus Professor at Tilak Maharashtra Vidyapeeth, Pune, and former Head of the Department of Sanskrit and Prakrit languages at the University of Pune.

Assessing medieval Śākta history in the light of Indian inscriptions

Assessing medieval Śākta history in the light of Indian inscriptions

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Assessing medieval Śākta history in the light of Indian inscriptions

Dr Bihani Sarkar
24 February 2021, 2.00-3.00

Abstract: In studies of religious history in early India, inscriptions have sometimes been overlooked as conveying ‘mundane’ information about secular aspects of religion considered unimportant. Religious texts, philosophical and liturgical, and practices, on the other hand, have received comparatively greater interest as vehicles of doctrine, mythology and tradition. In recent years, scholarship on Indian religions has begun to show the importance of inscriptional material for a more precise historical and conceptual understanding of Indian religious traditions from the ‘early medieval’ period, Śaivism, Vaiṣṇavism, Tantric Buddhism and Śāktism. Not only do these pieces of material history offer basic information needed for the construction of any historical argument, such as dates, names, and places, but they can reveal wider conceptual and political narratives. How were deities conceived and described? How did temples grow powerful? How did local deities grow powerful? Why were donors making grants? Who were the donors? What kinds of donations did they make? What rituals were performed for the recipient deities? Which were the important devotee-lineages? And much more.

This lecture focuses on the historical insights epigraphical evidence offers for our understanding of the development of the Goddess’s worship. Between the 7th and the 13th centuries CE, many epigraphs, etched on copper or stone slabs, on cave-temple entrances, or on the bases of statuary, were commissioned by subcontinental rulers and communities, which formalized grants to powerful forms of the Goddess and asserted devotion to them. These sources attesting Śākta piety plot the process of patronage of the Goddess cult, the consolidation of political authority through such patronage, strategies involved in the formation of kingdoms, who the worshippers of the Goddess were, modes of her worship and the chief geographical centres of her influence.
 
Dr Bihani Sarkar: is Lecturer (Hourly-Paid, fixed term) in Religious Studies: Hinduism and Buddhism (University of Winchester), Associate Faculty Member of the Oriental Institute (University of Oxford), and Research Member of Common Room, Wolfson College (University of Oxford). Bihani’s publications include Heroic Shāktism: The Cult of Durgā in Ancient Indian Kingship, (Oxford University Press, 2017) and Classical Sanskrit Tragedy: the concept of suffering and pathos in Medieval India (Bloomsbury, forthcoming 2021).
New Light on Śāktism and Haṭhayoga

New Light on Śāktism and Haṭhayoga

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New Light on Śāktism and Haṭhayoga

Dr James Mallinson
10 February 2021, 2.00-3.00

Abstract: This lecture will build upon, and in many ways revise, ideas first presented in a lecture entitled Śāktism and Haṭhayoga which I gave at the OCHS Śākta Traditions conference held in Oxford in 2011. I shall present a more detailed analysis of the Śākta contributions to haṭhayoga as formalised in Sanskrit texts from the eleventh century onwards, focusing specifically on Buddhist, Śaiva and Vaiṣṇava tantric traditions. I shall argue that the distinctive techniques of haṭhayoga were innovations in Indian religious practice and show how the different Śākta traditions introduced different methods of physical yoga practice.

Dr James Mallinson: is Reader in Indology and Yoga Studies at SOAS University of London. He is Chair of SOAS’s Centre for Yoga Studies and the Principal Investigator of the ERC-funded Hatha Yoga Project, for which he is preparing five critical editions of Sanskrit texts on physical yoga and a monograph on its early history. Dr Mallinson is the author of several books and articles on yoga, and the co-author, with Dr. Mark Singleton, of Roots of Yoga (Penguin Classics 2017).

Before they were foxy ladies, they were lady foxes: Yoginīs and Ḍākinīs in Hindu and Buddhist Tantra

Before they were foxy ladies, they were lady foxes: Yoginīs and Ḍākinīs in Hindu and Buddhist Tantra

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Before they were foxy ladies, they were lady foxes: Yoginīs and Ḍākinīs in Hindu and Buddhist Tantra

Prof. David G. White
27 January 2021, 2.00-3.00

Abstract: Before there was “tantric sex” there was “tantric violence,” which saw tantric yogis venturing alone into cremation grounds and other fearsome landscapes in the dead of night to offer their bodies up to Yoginīs and Ḍākinīs, noisy nocturnal hordes of flesh-eating female creatures that preyed on the living and the dead. The early tantric scriptural record, which relates the conditions under which males voluntarily offered themselves up for possession and consumption by these ferocious shape-shifters, offers a window onto the unique tantric appropriation of a pre-existing South Asian (if not pan-Eurasian) demonological substratum. In this lecture, I juxtapose scriptural and art historical data to demonstrate the persistence of this demonological paradigm across South, Inner and East Asian tantric traditions.

Prof. David G. White is the J. F. Rowny Professor of Comparative Religions at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he has been teaching since 1996. Prior to coming to Santa Barbara, he taught at the University of Virginia between 1986 and 1996. There, he founded the University of Virginia Study Abroad Program in Jodhpur, India in 1994. White is the sole foreign scholar to have ever been admitted to the Centre d’Études de l’Inde et de l’Asie du Sud in Paris, France, where he has been an active Research Fellow since 1992. His current research interest concerns contacts and exchanges in matters of demonology. Prof. White’s book publications include The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali (Princeton University Press, 2014), Yoga in Practice (Princeton University Press, 2012), Sinister Yogis (University Press of Chicago, 2009), Kiss of the Yogini: “Tantric Sex” in its South Asian Context (University Press of Chicago, 2003), The Alchemy Body: Siddha Traditions in Medieval India (University Press of Chicago, 1996).  

Hindu Lockdown Stories

Hindu Lockdown Stories

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Hindu Lockdown Stories

Dear Friends,

Wishing you all a happy new year, hope you are all well and safe.

The Leicester Friends group would like to invite you to our next talk, and we have the pleasure of Shaunakaji, director of the OCHS talking about Lockdown and our scriptures.

Hindu Lockdown Stories

A talk by Shaunaka Rishi Das
of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies

As we begin a new year, a new strain of virus, and a new lockdown, some of us may think 2020 was not so bad after all. What is clear is the fact that isolation and social distancing are a new reality we can’t avoid. 

We know that sages and sadhus have made a virtue of social distancing, often abandoning society altogether to meditate in the Himalayas. But that seems not to be an easy option for mere mortals – especially as we can’t even travel there.

Happily, there are many ways to meditate, and hearing stories of dharma, avatars, and sadhus – katha – is a most popular form. Meditating on these stories can touch our lives with their spirit and lift us from our own isolation and social difficulty.

This talk draws from the Ramayana and the Bhagavata Purana to explore a Princess’s year long isolation; the lockdown of an entire community, and the spreading of disease that threatened to destroy the environment.

Saturday 16th Janurary 2021
At 4pm GMT

Join Zoom Meeting:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87071275191

Or join by phone:
Meeting ID: 870 7127 5191
Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kdPHscZczx

These talks are open to all; please share links with friends and family.

 

Warm regards,
LeicesterFriends of the OCHS
Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies
E: lf@ochs.org.uk
W: www.ochs.org.uk

Hinduism and the Goddess – Śāktism and Śākta traditions

Hinduism and the Goddess – Śāktism and Śākta traditions

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Śākta Traditions Online Lecture Series MT20

Watch the final lecture of the Śākta traditions Online Lecture Series by Dr Bjarne Wernicke-Olesen.

Abstract: Hinduism cannot be understood without the Goddess and the goddess-oriented Śākta traditions. Worship of the Goddess pervades Hinduism at all levels, from village deities to high-caste pan-Hindu goddesses to esoteric, tantric goddesses. Nevertheless, these highly influential forms of South Asian religion have only recently begun to draw a more broad scholarly attention. The Goddess and her network of Śākta traditions is often subsumed under the broad category of ‘Śāktism’, which is by many considered one of the major branches of Hinduism next to Śaivism and Vaiṣṇavism. Śāktism is, however, less clearly defined than the other major branches and sometimes surprisingly difficult to discern from Śaivism in its tantric forms. These sometimes very complex and challenging forms of Śākta religion therefore provide a test case for our understanding of Hinduism and raise important theoretical questions with regard to the study of religious traditions in South Asia.
In this lecture I wish to go up from the particular and provide a brief overview of the state of research. I will address some of the problems and challenges we face in the study of Śākta traditions and propose a model for how we may meaningfully speak of Śāktism as a major Hindu tradition, relating textual details with broader theoretical questions and the longue durée of the history of Śākta traditions.
 
 
All of the Lectures in this series can be watched here on our YouTube channel. 
Lockdown and the darkness ahead: Coping through Meaning and Means

Lockdown and the darkness ahead: Coping through Meaning and Means

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Lockdown and the darkness ahead: Coping through Meaning and Means

A talk by Dr. Ramesh Pattni DPhil (Oxford)
OBE of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies
 
We are going through unprecedented times not experienced in recent history where suffering and death is a persisting existential reality. Human beings have tried to make meaning of suffering and death and solutions have been formulated by religious traditions through millennia. Vedanta and Yoga offer tools and techniques for dealing with suffering in the moment and liberation ultimately from all suffering. The Sanskrit term Sādhanā literally means “that by which something is performed” or more precisely “means to an end.” In the sphere of religion, it is always used to indicate the essential discipline that leads to the attainment of the liberation and release from suffering. Find out what are the Sādhanā-s and Siddhi-s in the traditions of Vedanta and Yoga and how these can help us not only to move towards the final goal of liberation but give us the benefit of mental wellbeing in these times of the lockdown and the coming winter. There will be a guided meditation to demonstrate the effects of the practice of dhyāna.
Kali, Karma and Global Transformation

Kali, Karma and Global Transformation

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Kali, Karma and Global Transformation.

A talk by Dr. Raj Balkaran
of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies

This talk draws from the wellspring of Hindu teachings to make sense of the tumultuous times we’re living through. First, we look to classical Hindu philosophy to outline four types of karma, and consider the relationship between personal and collective karma. Secondly, we examine the rich narratives of Kālī to show what she represents and how she functions in human life. Thirdly, we dovetail karmic theory with the teachings of Kālī to provide a framework for making sense of the massive shifts occurring across the globe – indeed for finding meaning amid the chaos of our times.