Download or read book Tantric Visual Culture written by Sthaneshwar Timalsina and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-11-19 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Indian culture relies greatly on visual expression, and this book uses both classical Indian and contemporary Western philosophies and current studies on cognitive sciences, and applies them to contextualize Tantric visual culture. The work selects aspects of Tantric language and the practice of visualization, with the central premise to engage cognitive theories while studying images. It utilizes the contemporary theories of metaphor and cognitive blend, the theory of metonymy, and a holographic theory of epistemology with a focus on concept formation and its application to the study of myths and images. In addition, it applies the classical aesthetic theory of rasa to unravel the meaning of opaque images. This philosophical and cognitive analysis allows materials from Indian culture to be understood in a new light, while engaging contemporary theories of cognitive science and semantics. The book demonstrates how the domains of meaning and philosophy can be addressed within any culture without reducing their intrinsic cultural significance. By addressing these key aspects of Tantric traditions through this approach, this book initiates a much-needed dialogue between Indian and Western theories, while encouraging introspection within the Indic traditions themselves. It will be of interest to those studying and researching Religion, Philosophy and South Asian Culture.
Download or read book Language of Images written by Sthaneshwar Timalsina and published by Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers. This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While Indian visual culture and Tantric images have drawn wide attention, the culture of images, particularly that of the divine images, is broadly misunderstood. This book is the first to systematically address the hermeneutic and philosophical aspects of visualizing images in Tantric practices. While examining the issues of embodiment and emotion, this volume initiates a discourse on image-consciousness, imagination, memory, and recall. The main objective of this book is to explore the meaning of the opaque Tantric forms, and with this, the text aims to introduce visual language to discourse. Language of Images is the result of a long and sustained engagement with Tantric practitioners and philosophical and exegetical texts. Due to its synthetic approach of utilizing multiple ways to read cultural artifacts, this work stands alone in its attempt to unravel the esoteric domains of Tantric practice by means of addressing the culture of visualization.
Download or read book Tantric Visual Culture written by Sthaneshwar Timalsina and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-11-19 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Indian culture relies greatly on visual expression, and this book uses both classical Indian and contemporary Western philosophies and current studies on cognitive sciences, and applies them to contextualize Tantric visual culture. The work selects aspects of Tantric language and the practice of visualization, with the central premise to engage cognitive theories while studying images. It utilizes the contemporary theories of metaphor and cognitive blend, the theory of metonymy, and a holographic theory of epistemology with a focus on concept formation and its application to the study of myths and images. In addition, it applies the classical aesthetic theory of rasa to unravel the meaning of opaque images. This philosophical and cognitive analysis allows materials from Indian culture to be understood in a new light, while engaging contemporary theories of cognitive science and semantics. The book demonstrates how the domains of meaning and philosophy can be addressed within any culture without reducing their intrinsic cultural significance. By addressing these key aspects of Tantric traditions through this approach, this book initiates a much-needed dialogue between Indian and Western theories, while encouraging introspection within the Indic traditions themselves. It will be of interest to those studying and researching Religion, Philosophy and South Asian Culture.
Download or read book Buddhist Practice and Visual Culture written by Julie Gifford and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2011-03-16 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Providing an overall interpretation of the Buddhist monument Borobudur in Indonesia, this book looks at Mahayana Buddhist religious ideas and practices that could have informed Borobudur, including both the narrative reliefs and the Buddha images. The author explores a version of the classical Mahayana that foregrounds the importance of the visual in relation to Buddhist philosophy, meditation, devotion, and ritual. The book goes on to show that the architects of Borobudur designed a visual world in which the Buddha appeared in a variety of forms and could be interpreted in three ways: by realizing the true nature of his teaching, through visionary experience, and by encountering his numinous presence in images. Furthermore, the book analyses a particularly comprehensive and programmatic expression of Mahayana Buddhist visual culture so as to enrich the theoretical discussion of the monument. It argues that the relief panels of Borobudur do not passively illustrate, but rather creatively "picture" selected passages from texts. Presenting new material, the book contributes immensely to a new and better understanding of the significance of the Borobudur for the field of Buddhist and Religious Studies.
Download or read book The Tantric Way written by Ajit Mookerjee and published by . This book was released on 1977 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Teaching South and Southeast Asian Art written by Bokyung Kim and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-04-10 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume challenges existing notions of what is “Indian,” “Southeast Asian,” and/or “South Asian” art to help educators present a more contextualized understanding of art in a globalized world. In doing so, it (re)examines how South or Southeast Asian art is being made, exhibited, circulated and experienced in new ways in the United States or in regions under its cultural hegemony. The essays presented in this book examine both historical and contemporary transformations or lived experiences of monuments and regional styles (sites) from South or Southeast Asian art in art making, subsequent usage, and exhibition-making under the rubric of “Indian,” “South Asian,” “or “Southeast Asian” Art.
Download or read book Tantra Art written by Ajit Mookerjee and published by . This book was released on 1972 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Tantric Art and Meditation written by Michael R. Saso and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 1990-01-01 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tantric Art and Meditation: The Tendai Tradition describes the four basic meditations of Tantric Buddhism: the Eighteen-path Mandala, the Lotus-womb Mandala, the Vajra-thunder Mandala, and the Goma Rite of Fire. The book summarizes the teachings of Tendai Tantric Buddhism, as practiced on Mt. Hiei, Kyoto, by a Master of the Homan devotional (Bakhti) school, one of the major kinds of Tantric Meditation practiced in Japan. Profuse woodblock and line art illustrate the mudra, mantra, and mandala of Tantric practice.
Download or read book Tantra written by Imma Ramos and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2020-09-22 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A captivating study of the ancient Indian movement that has influenced and intrigued the world for more than a millennium. The Tantras, a set of sacred manuscripts that emerged in India from around the sixth century CE, detail rituals for attracting spiritual, worldly, and supernatural power. These rituals, which focus on the power of fierce gods and goddesses and center around yoga, self-deification, sexual rites, and the consumption of intoxicants, became an integral part of the meditations and philosophical practices of Tantric Hinduism and Buddhism. This book examines the philosophies, core beliefs, and artistic expressions of Tantra, and its impact on religious, cultural, and political landscapes across the globe. In tracing the history of the movement, author Imma Ramos reveals Tantra’s origins and continued relevance in India, as well as its redefinition as it was adopted by Western popular culture during the 1960s. Tantra: enlightenment to revolution accompanies a major exhibition at the British Museum, and is illustrated extensively with masterpieces of sculpture, painting, print, and ritual objects from India, Nepal, Tibet, China, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, dating as far back as the eighth century CE.
Download or read book Art for a Modern India 1947 1980 written by Rebecca M. Brown and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2009-03-17 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following India’s independence in 1947, Indian artists creating modern works of art sought to maintain a local idiom, an “Indianness” representative of their newly independent nation, while connecting to modernism, an aesthetic then understood as both universal and presumptively Western. These artists depicted India’s precolonial past while embracing aspects of modernism’s pursuit of the new, and they challenged the West’s dismissal of non-Western places and cultures as sources of primitivist imagery but not of modernist artworks. In Art for a Modern India, Rebecca M. Brown explores the emergence of a self-conscious Indian modernism—in painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture, film, and photography—in the years between independence and 1980, by which time the Indian art scene had changed significantly and postcolonial discourse had begun to complicate mid-century ideas of nationalism. Through close analyses of specific objects of art and design, Brown describes how Indian artists engaged with questions of authenticity, iconicity, narrative, urbanization, and science and technology. She explains how the filmmaker Satyajit Ray presented the rural Indian village as a socially complex space rather than as the idealized site of “authentic India” in his acclaimed Apu Trilogy, how the painter Bhupen Khakhar reworked Indian folk idioms and borrowed iconic images from calendar prints in his paintings of urban dwellers, and how Indian architects developed a revivalist style of bold architectural gestures anchored in India’s past as they planned the Ashok Hotel and the Vigyan Bhavan Conference Center, both in New Delhi. Discussing these and other works of art and design, Brown chronicles the mid-twentieth-century trajectory of India’s modern visual culture.
Download or read book Tantric Buddhist Practice in India written by Anthony Tribe and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-06-03 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using a commentary on the influential text, the Mañjuśrī-nāmasaṃgīti, ‘The Chanting of the Names of Mañjuśrī’, this book deals with Buddhist tantric meditation practice and its doctrinal context in early-medieval India. The commentary was written by the 8th-9th century Indian tantric scholar Vilāsavajra, and the book contains a translation of the first five chapters. The translation is extensively annotated, and accompanied by introductions as well as a critical edition of the Sanskrit text based on eight Sanskrit manuscripts and two blockprint editions of the commentary’s Tibetan translation. The commentary interprets its root text within an elaborate framework of tantric visualisation and meditation that is based on an expanded form of the Buddhist Yoga Tantra mandala, the Vajradhātu-maṇḍala. At its heart is the figure of Mañjuśrī, no longer the familiar bodhisattva of wisdom, but now the embodiment of the awakened non-dual gnosis that underlies all Buddhas as well their activity in the cosmos. The book contributes to our understanding of the history of Indian tantric Buddhism in a period of significant change and innovation. With its extensively annotated translation and lengthy introductions the book is designed to appeal not only to professional scholars and research students but also to contemporary Buddhists.
Download or read book Goddess Traditions in Tantric Hinduism written by Bjarne Wernicke Olesen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-09-16 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hinduism cannot be understood without the Great Goddess and the goddess-orientated Śākta traditions. The Goddess pervades Hinduism at all levels, from aniconic village deities to high-caste pan-Hindu goddesses to esoteric, tantric goddesses. Nevertheless, the highly influential tantric forms of South Asian goddess worship have only recently begun to draw scholarly attention. This book addresses the increasing interest in the Great Goddess and the tantric traditions of India by exploring the history, doctrine and practices of the Śākta tantric traditions. The highly influential tantric forms of South Asian goddess worship form a major part of what is known as ‘Śāktism’, and is often considered one of the major branches of Hinduism next to Śaivism, Vaiṣṇavism and Smārtism. Śāktism is, however, less clearly defined than the other major branches, and the book looks at the texts of the Śākta traditions that constitute the primary sources for gaining insights into the Śākta religious imaginative, ritual practices and history. It provides an historical exploration of distinctive Indian ways of imagining God as Goddess, and surveys the important origins and developments within Śākta history, practice and doctrine in its diversity. Bringing together contributions from some of the foremost scholars in the field of tantric studies, the book provides a platform for the continued research into Hindu goddesses, yoga, and tantra for those interested in understanding the religion and culture in South Asia.
Download or read book An Indian Tantric Tradition and Its Modern Global Revival written by D.E. Osto and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-03-06 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyzes the contemporary global revival of Nondual Śaivism, a thousand-year-old medieval Hindu religious philosophy. Providing a historical overview of the seminal people and groups responsible for the revival, the book compares the tradition’s medieval Indian origins to modern forms, which are situated within distinctively contemporary religious, economic and technological contexts. The author bridges the current gap in the literature between "insider" (emic) and "outsider” (etic) perspectives by examining modern Nondual Śaivism from multiple standpoints as both a critical scholar of religion and an empathetic participant-observer. The book explores modern Nondual Śaivism in relation to recent scholarly debates concerning the legitimacy of New Age consumptive spirituality, the global spiritual marketplace and the contemporary culture of narcissism. It also analyzes the dark side of the revived tradition, and investigates contemporary teachers accused of sexual abuse and illegal financial activities in relation to unique features of Nondual Śaivism’s theosophy and modern scholarship on new religious movements (NRMs) and cults. This book shows that, although Kashmir Śaivism has been adopted by certain teachers and groups to market their own brand of "High Tantra," some contemporary practitioners have remained true to the system’s fundamental tenets and teach authentic (albeit modern) forms of Nondual Śaivism. This book will be of interest to academics in the fields of religion and Asian philosophies, especially South Asian, tantric, neo-tantric and yoga philosophies, alternative and New Age spiritualities, religion and consumerism, and NRMs and cults. Winner of the inaugural 2021 New Zealand Asia Society Book Award, second prize.
Download or read book Studies on Tantra in Bengal and Eastern India written by Madhu Khanna and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-02-20 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the tantric concept of Shakti, or the principal female cosmic entity and her pilgrimage sites. It offers a first-hand view of the multidimensional ways in which Shakti asserted its supremacy over existing Vaishnava and orthodox Brahmanical traditions in post mediaeval Bengal and India. The interdisciplinary chapters pave the way to understanding the intra-textual relationships between philosophical and conceptual ideas in literary texts and their oral transmission. Divided into three thematic sections: Cult Inclusiveness, Śakti Pithas, and the Śākta Philosophy, the book invites readers to explore a contested area of scholarship from unique perspectives, offering rich insights into the nature of negotiations between diverse religious streams. It also urges readers to examine the many innovative approaches and theoretical models on the goddess culture of East India. The book is of interest to students and scholars of religious textual studies, anthropology, pilgrimage studies, comparative religion, Sanskrit and Bengali languages, regional studies, South Asian cultures, goddess traditions and cultural history of mediaeval Bengal.
Download or read book Garland of Visions written by Jinah Kim and published by University of California Press. This book was released on 2021-02-16 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Garland of Visions explores the generative relationships between artistic intelligence and tantric vision practices in the construction and circulation of visual knowledge in medieval South Asia. Shifting away from the traditional connoisseur approach, Jinah Kim instead focuses on the materiality of painting: its mediums, its visions, and especially its colors. She argues that the adoption of a special type of manuscript called pothi enabled the material translation of a private and internal experience of "seeing" into a portable device. These mobile and intimate objects then became important conveyors of many forms of knowledge—ritual, artistic, social, scientific, and religious—and spurred the spread of visual knowledge of Indic Buddhism to distant lands. By taking color as the material link between a vision and its artistic output, Garland of Visions presents a fresh approach to the history of Indian painting.
Download or read book Impact of Tantra on Religion and Art written by Teja Nārāyaṇa Miśra and published by . This book was released on 1996-12-31 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Book Offers An Account Of Tantra S Evolution, Cultic Variations, Culture, Philosophy, Mysticism, Etc. And Shows How Tantrism Has Deeply Influenced Major Indian Religions And The Art Tradition.
Download or read book The Tantra written by Victor M. Fic and published by Abhinav Publications. This book was released on 2003 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bibliography Index The Tantra Is A Body Of Theories, Techniques And Rituals Developed In India In Antiquity, Which Has Two Fundamental Aspects. The First Aspect Of The Tantra Is The Theory Of Creation, Which Posits That The Universe Has No Beginning And No End, And That All Its Manifestations Are Merely The Projections Of Divine Energy Of Its Creator. The Second Aspect Of The Tantra Is The Belief That The Performance Of Tantrik Techniques And Rituals Facilitates Access To This Divine Energy, Enabling Their Practitioners To Empower Themselves, As Well As Empower Others Associated With Them In The Guru-Disciple Relationship. Thus The Knowledge And Proper Application Of Tantrik Techniques And Rituals Is Believed To Harness The Creator'S Cosmic Energies To The Promotion Of The Mundane As Well As Spiritual Goals Of Their Practitioners. Between The Vii And The Xii Centuries A.D. These Theories, Rituals And Practices Spread To Other Parts Of Asia. In These Parts Their Interaction With Indigenous Traditions Of Shamanism And Other Magical Cults Resulted In Potent Hybrids. These Not Only Served The Personal Needs Of Their Practi- Tioners, But Were Used By The Kings To Summon The Cosmic Forces To Legitimize Their Right And Power To Rule The Ancient Monarchies. Elaborate And Artistically Beautiful Icons Were Developed In Sculpture, Painting, Bronze And Bas-Relief To Portray The Basic Concept Of Tantrik Theories And Various Deities Of The Hindu And Buddhist Pantheons. This Book First Explores The Origin Of The Tantra In India, Its Development And Emergence Of Various Schools Of Hindu And Buddhist Tantrism Over The Centuries. Then It Explores Their Spread From Tantrik Universities In Bihar And Other Centres Of Tantrik Scholarship And Rituals Practised In West Bengal, Orissa And South India At That Time To Nepal, Tibet, Mongolia, China, Japan And Indonesia. The Coloured Plates Illustrate The Iconographic Presentation Of The Basic Theories And Concepts Of The Tantra, As Well As Various Deities Associated With The Pantheons Of Hindu And Buddhist Tantrism Drawn From Different Parts Of The World.
