1st Edition
Transformational Embodiment in Asian Religions Subtle Bodies, Spatial Bodies
This volume examines several theoretical concerns of embodiment in the context of Asian religious practice. Looking at both subtle and spatial bodies, it explores how both types of embodiment are engaged as sites for transformation, transaction and transgression.
Collectively bridging ancient and modern conceptualizations of embodiment in religious practice, the book offers a complex mapping of how body is defined. It revisits more traditional, mystical religious systems, including Hindu Tantra and Yoga, Tibetan Buddhism, Bon, Chinese Daoism and Persian Sufism and distinctively juxtaposes these inquiries alongside analyses of racial, gendered, and colonized bodies. Such a multifaceted subject requires a diverse approach, and so perspectives from phenomenology and neuroscience as well as critical race theory and feminist theology are utilised to create more precise analytical tools for the scholarly engagement of embodied religious epistemologies.
This a nuanced and interdisciplinary exploration of the myriad issues around bodies within religion. As such it will be a key resource for any scholar of Religious Studies, Asian Studies, Anthropology, Sociology, Philosophy, and Gender Studies.
List of Figures
Notes on Transliteration
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Katherine C. Zubko and George Pati
Chapter 1: The Subtle Body of Vital Presence in Contemplative Practices of Abhinavagupta’s Trika Saivism and Longchenpa's Great Perfection
Kerry Martin Skora
Chapter 2: Daoist Body-Maps and Meditative Praxis
Louis Komjathy
Chapter 3: Yuasa Yasuo’s Contextualization of the Subtle Body: Phenomenology and Practice
Edward J. Godfrey
Chapter 4: Dismembering Demons: Spatial and Bodily Representations in the Fifteenth-Century Ekali¿gamahatmya
Adam Newman
Chapter 5: Subtle Body: Rethinking the Body’s Subjectivity through Abhinavagupta Body
Loriliai Biernacki
Chapter 6:
Embodied Experience in the Maharthamañjari of Mahesvarananda
Sthaneshwar Timalsina
Chapter 7: Sensing the Ascent: Embodied Elements of Muhammad’s Heavenly Journey in Nizami Ganjavi’s Treasury of Mysteries
Matthew R. Hotham
Chapter 8: Bodies in Translation: Esoteric Conceptions of the Muslim Body in Early-modern South Asia
Patrick J. D’Silva
Chapter 9: The Prostituted Body of War: U.S. Military Prostitution in South Korea as a Site of Spiritual Activism
Keun-Joo Christine Pae
Chapter 10: Frisky Methods: Subtle Bodies, Epistemological Pluralism and Creative Scholarship
Jay Johnston
Chapter 11:
Bliss and Bodily Disorientation: The autophagous mysticism of Georges Bataille and the Taittiriya Upani¿ad
Matthew J. Robertson
Biography
George Pati is Associate Professor of Theology and International Studies and the Surjit S. Patheja Chair in World Religions and Ethics at Valparaiso University, USA. His research interests include religious literature in the Malayalam language, South Asian devotional traditions, the mediation of Hindu devotion through texts, rituals, and performances of Kerala, South India, and the body and religion. He is the author of Religious Devotion and the Poetics of Reform: Love and Liberation in Malayalam Poetry (2019).
Katherine C. Zubko is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and NEH Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at University of North Carolina, Asheville, USA. Her research interests include aesthetics, ritual, performance, dance anthropology, and embodied religion in South Asia. She is the author of Dancing Bodies of Devotion: Fluid Gestures in Bharata Natyam (2014).