1st Edition

Transformational Embodiment in Asian Religions Subtle Bodies, Spatial Bodies

Edited By George Pati, Katherine C. Zubko Copyright 2020
    268 Pages
    by Routledge

    268 Pages
    by Routledge

    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).