Desire in its widest sense is fundamental to human existence and has been the focus of much discussion in religious traditions over the centuries. Desire has been seen as a negative quality which keeps people in bondage, as generally seen in Buddhism, but desire for a greater good has also been seen as a positive force in different traditions. The aim of this conference is explore the idea of desire and its understanding in Christianity and Indian religions and to generate discussion of comparative philosophy and theology across traditions.
Archives: Lectures
The teleology of meditation
Graduate seminar
Drawing from a range of examples, this seminar will present a thesis about the ways in which the goal of meditation within specific spiritual traditions affects practice. It will raise questions about the nature of meditation and other spiritual practices and about individual and communal experience. Christopher Wood is a DPhil student in the Theology Faculty. His background is in Theology (Birmingham) and he has research interests in the history of ideas, comparative religion, and the interface between Theology and Psychology.
Understanding the Pancaratra
This seminar presented by the Prof. Narasimhachary (OCHS Shivdasani Fellow) and Prof. Gavin Flood (OCHS Academic Director) will explore issues of text and interpretation through focussing on texts of the Pancaratra corpus.
Understanding the Pancaratra
This seminar presented by the Prof. Narasimhachary (OCHS Shivdasani Fellow) and Prof. Gavin Flood (OCHS Academic Director) will explore issues of text and interpretation through focussing on texts of the Pancaratra corpus.
Women poets of Hinduism
Shivdasani Seminar
Poetry by women can be traced back in South Asia to the 6th century BCE, when Buddhist nuns recorded their joy at finding freedom from the drudgery of everyday life and at achieving not merely social but spiritual liberation in religion. Centuries later, from the 9th century onward, a more durable and powerful tradition of poetry appeared in songs by the women poets of devotional Hinduism, which afforded space to people on the margin, such as, women, lower castes and outcastes, and sparked a cultural awakening that retains its vitality even today. Women, powerless and silent in many domains of community life, found strength in their sense of the divine and their own voice in poetry and songs. Against this historical background this lecture will introduce the poetry of Antal, a 9th century Vaisnava a poet, of Akka Mahadevi of the Virasaiva sect from the 12th century, of Lalla, a 14 century Saiva poet, and songs by the 16th century Vaisnava princess Mirabai. Understanding the intensity of their approaches to the idea of the divine will aid us in appreciating how these works have affected the people of India and continued as a living tradition of women’s spiritual quest.
Playing around with Sakuntala: Translating Sanskrit drama for performance
This lecture considers possible strategies for translating the conventions and aesthetic of Sanskrit drama for a modern English-peaking audience. It takes the form of a case study of Dr. Johnson’s own translation of The Recognition of Sakuntala for Oxford World’s Classics, and reflects on some unintended consequences.
Texts of Hindu sacred law and the construction of women’s lives (as part of ‘Towards equality: writing/reading gender in texts of Hinduism’ workshop)
In India the treatises of law founded upon the sacred books of the Hindus had a far-reaching and defining influence on social life. As foundational documents of the Hindu way of life which codified social relations as well as personal belief as religious imperatives, these texts have exerted the deepest influence on the lives and conduct of women through history and their teachings have not yet entirely lost their force. In this lecture I shall consider some of the provisions in Hindu sacred law that moulded the lives of women, as derived from the writings of Manu and other ancient Hindu lawgivers, as well as some later writers on this basis we shall attempt to understand the intimate connection between the religious framework and the social, which has laid the basis of women’s status, roles, rights and duties in Hindu society.
Towards equality: Women neither as goddess nor as victim (as part of ‘Towards equality: writing/reading gender in texts of Hinduism’ workshop)
This talk will introduce the theme of the worskshop and will address the problem of traditional representations of women as Goddess or Victim and will provide a historical overview of the problem. This will set the scene and provide the background for the discussion that follows.
The concept of nivrtti as translated in the lives of women in Hinduism: A survey (as part of ‘Towards equality: writing/reading gender in texts of Hinduism’ workshop)
Nivrtti denotes disengagement with worldly conventions. Of course it is used more in the context of samnysins/samnyasinis in connection with the pursuit of moksa (liberation). But this paper intends to release the word nivrtti from this narrow application and look at it in a wider context. The paper will examine the instances in the texts which have representations of women who go against the conventional, mother/warrior image. For instance is the brahmavadini/scholar woman like Gargi for instance, discarding by choice the role of a married woman and opting for a life of scholarly/spiritual search? Again is Savitri exerting her independence and opting to marry Satyavan in spite of her father’s advice? Sulabha again could be someone who did not want to marry anyone because she was far superior to all those who wooed her. She makes the deliberate choice to become a bhiksuni. There are any number of these examples in Sanskrit texts which will form the basis of the talk.