Interdisciplinary Seminar in the Study of Religions/Mysticism Seminar
Full Name (inc. titles):
Dr Simon Podmore
Date:
Friday, January 28, 2011 - 14:00 to 15:00
Location:
OCHS Library
According to Rudolf Otto’s ‘Idea of the Holy’, while elements of a so-called ‘mysticism of horror’ are well-acknowledged in Hindu traditions, this remains an under-recognised, yet undeniably present, strain in Western Christian mysticism.
Interdisciplinary Seminar in the Study of Religions/Mysticism Seminar
Full Name (inc. titles):
Professor Richard Gombrich
Date:
Friday, February 18, 2011 - 14:00 to 15:00
Location:
OCHS Library
This seminar examines accounts of religious experience in early Buddhism as gleaned from our textual sources. Of particular importance here has been the role of meditation and living an upright and ethical life.
Professor Gombrich was the Boden Professor of Sanskrit for many years. He is a world authority on Buddhism and has written definitive works on early Buddhism and the Theravada tradition. Among his publications are What the Buddha Thought, How Buddhism Began andTheravada Buddhism.
Mysticism is a term that has fallen out of use in recent years, partly due to the critique of essentialism in the history of religions, partly due to the recognition that mysticism is particular to tradition and culture and partly due to the orientation to understand religion in terms of a politics of culture that sees religion purely in constructivist terms.
Mysticism Seminar/Interdisciplinary Seminar for the Study of Religions
Full Name (inc. titles):
Dr Gregory Shushan
Date:
Monday, May 9, 2011 - 14:00 to 15:00
Location:
OCHS Library
In recent decades, the study of ‘religious’ or ‘mystical’ experiences has been criticised by postmodern scholars who argue that because all experience is dependent upon language and culture, it is unintelligible to speak at all of some cross-culturally comparable event called ‘religious experience’. Because experience cannot precede culture, such scholars assert that it is ‘naive’ or otherwise methodologically or theoretically unsound to claim that the origins of religious beliefs can lie in ‘religious’ experience.
