Hariti is the ancient Indian goddess of childbirth and women healers, known at one time throughout South and Southeast Asia from India to Nepal and Bali. Daughters of Hariti looks at her 'daughters' today, female midwives and healers in many different cultures across the region. It also traces the transformation of childbirth in these cultures under the impact of Western biomedical technology, national and international health policies and the wider factors of social and economic change. The authors ask what can be done to improve the high rates of maternal and infant deaths and illnesses still associated with childbirth in most societies in this area and whether the wholesale replacement of indigenous knowledge by Western biomedical technology is necessarily a good thing.
What is the current state of traditional healing practices in contemporary Asian societies? How are their practitioners faring in the encounter with Western science and its biomedical approach? How are traditional healing practices being transformed by the politics of health within the modern nation-state and by the processes of commodification typical of modern economies? How do patients in Asian societies see the various healing options now open to them?The authors, all of whom are anthropologists, observe the clashes and complementarities between traditional therapies and biomedicine, which, in its many manifestations, is the dominant form of medicine supported by national governments, and is emblematic of the modernity to which they aspire. Some of the medical traditions, such as the sophisticated herbal-humoral systems of Tibetan medicine and Indian Ayurveda, are becoming well known in the West, both through scholarly study and through their increasing popularity with Western patients interested in their healing potential. This book adds a new dimension to their study, being focused unlike most previous writing on practice rather than textual tradition.
The Wiley Blackwell Companion to East and Inner Asian Buddhism combines outstanding contributions covering Buddhism as it developed and is practiced in this region. These newly-commissioned essays provide fresh scholarly perspectives on a wide range of concepts, texts, and practices. Offers a comprehensive and balanced survey of Buddhism within East and Central Asia, from the time of the Buddha through to the present day Provides fresh perspectives on a wide range of concepts, texts, traditions, doctrines, practices, and institutions – on topics spanning gender roles, tantric rituals, and the spread of Zen into Europe Brings together cutting-edge research by an interdisciplinary and international contributor team, including historians, literature scholars, and historians, as well as those from religious studies Presents a panoramic view of the extraordinary richness and variety of local Buddhist expressions and practices within Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Tibetan, cultures
The initial stages of the Mindfulness movement involved a limited set of meditative practices which derived from modernist forms of Buddhism in Asia and the West and had been restated in terms distant from those of life and practice in Asian Buddhist societies. Early research focussed on the effects and therapeutic efficacy of this modernized and secularized set of practices, which could be assimilated with relative ease within contemporary scientific thought and biomedical practice. However, as the Mindfulness movement has grown, it has provided an invitation to consider the much wider range of meditative forms existing within Asian Buddhist traditions. The chapter discusses some of these meditative forms, along with parallel contemplative practices within Hindu and Daoist traditions. A better understanding of this multiplicity of contemplative forms and techniques and that of the cultural and philosophical context which they assume and imply can both stimulate an expansion and rethinking of Western modes of scientific thought, and aid us to develop a more varied and productive range of therapeutic applications.
We have seen already that panentheism thrives even in religious traditions rejecting theism. The chapter suggests that for doctrinally atheistic religious traditions, such as Buddhism, religious praxis rather than doctrine affords a window into expressions of panentheism. In Tibetan Buddhism, Samuel notes there is not a focus on the interactions with God as omnipotent deity; deity in this tradition is much more diffuse, with conceptions of karma and the cultivation of subtle energies filling in the gaps a deity might otherwise occupy. In this chapter, the theme of panentheistic connectivity finds expression in the transformations that occur on the bodily level through practices that generate connections between a subtle, spiritual life force and the physical body. The Tibetan Longevity Practices discussed operate on this principle. The implicit panentheism of this longevity practice demonstrates a pervasive and lively panentheistic world view. Even if this panentheistic perspective is frequently doctrinally unacknowledged, it remains a potent force in religious life.
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While much recent scholarship on Tantra has tended to distance it from the world of pragmatic ritual healing, mediumship and spirit-possession, and treat it primarily as an elevated mode of pursuit of enlightened consciousness, Frederick Smith’s recent book The Self Possessed is the most comprehensive presentation so far of the reverse position, that all of these modes of interaction with the divine, whether to do with healing, sorcery or spiritual liberation, share common assumptions and a common idiom. Here, and in other recent writing, Smith presents the idea of entry, pervasion or possession (āveśa) as a fundamental trope in Indic thought, encompassing everything from conception (seen as the individual jīva taking over possession of the embryo) to Tantric ritual, the temporary occupation of another body and malevolent spirit-attack. If this is true, however, does this suggest that we are applying the wrong set of categories to understand Indic and perhaps also other religious traditions? This article sketches an alternative mode of looking at the field of “possession,” broadly defined, and explores some of its implications.
Subtle-body practices are found particularly in Indian, Indo-Tibetan and East Asian societies, but have become increasingly familiar in Western societies, especially through the various healing and yogic techniques and exercises associated with them. This book explores subtle-body practices from a variety of perspectives, and includes both studies of these practices in Asian and Western contexts. The book discusses how subtle-body practices assume a quasi-material level of human existence that is intermediate between conventional concepts of body and mind. Often, this level is conceived of in terms of an invisible structure of channels, associated with the human body, through which flows of quasi-material substance take place. Contributors look at how subtle-body concepts form the basic explanatory structure for a wide range of practices. These include forms of healing, modes of exercise and martial arts as well as religious practices aimed at the refinement and transformation of the human mindbody complex. By highlighting how subtle-body practices of many kinds have been introduced into Western societies in recent years, the book explores the possibilities for new models of understanding which these concepts open up. It is a useful contribution to studies on Asian Religion and Philosophy.
Subtle-body practices are found particularly in Indian, Indo-Tibetan and East Asian societies, but have become increasingly familiar in Western societies, especially through the various healing and yogic techniques and exercises associated with them. This book explores subtle-body practices from a variety of perspectives, and includes both studies of these practices in Asian and Western contexts. The book discusses how subtle-body practices assume a quasi-material level of human existence that is intermediate between conventional concepts of body and mind. Often, this level is conceived of in terms of an invisible structure of channels, associated with the human body, through which flows of quasi-material substance take place. Contributors look at how subtle-body concepts form the basic explanatory structure for a wide range of practices. These include forms of healing, modes of exercise and martial arts as well as religious practices aimed at the refinement and transformation of the human mindbody complex. By highlighting how subtle-body practices of many kinds have been introduced into Western societies in recent years, the book explores the possibilities for new models of understanding which these concepts open up. It is a useful contribution to studies on Asian Religion and Philosophy.
Subtle-body practices are found particularly in Indian, Indo-Tibetan and East Asian societies, but have become increasingly familiar in Western societies, especially through the various healing and yogic techniques and exercises associated with them. This book explores subtle-body practices from a variety of perspectives, and includes both studies of these practices in Asian and Western contexts. The book discusses how subtle-body practices assume a quasi-material level of human existence that is intermediate between conventional concepts of body and mind. Often, this level is conceived of in terms of an invisible structure of channels, associated with the human body, through which flows of quasi-material substance take place. Contributors look at how subtle-body concepts form the basic explanatory structure for a wide range of practices. These include forms of healing, modes of exercise and martial arts as well as religious practices aimed at the refinement and transformation of the human mindbody complex. By highlighting how subtle-body practices of many kinds have been introduced into Western societies in recent years, the book explores the possibilities for new models of understanding which these concepts open up. It is a useful contribution to studies on Asian Religion and Philosophy.--Publisher website.
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