This dissertation looks at an attempt in Buddhist history to theorize the role and status of the body as the prime focus of soteriological discourse. It studies a text titled Explanation of the Hidden Vajra Body (Rdo rje lus kyi sbas bshad), composed by Yang dgon pa Rgyal mtshan dpal (1213-1258). This work, drawing on a wide range of canonical tantric Buddhist scriptures and Indic and Tibetan commentaries, lays out in detail a Buddhist theory of embodiment that brings together the worldly realities of the body with their enlightened transformation. This dissertation analyzes the ways Yang dgon pa theorizes the body as the essential ground of the salvific path, and endeavors to provide a thematic guide to his rich and complex discussion of what the body is and does, from a tantric perspective. The thesis parses a key term, dngos po'i gnas lugs, that Yang dgon pa uses as an organizing principle in Explanation of the Hidden. If taken literally, the term means something like "the nature of things" or "the nature of material substance," but Yang dgon pa deployed the term specifically to refer to the nature of the human psychophysical organism, in its ordinary state. By way of this term, Yang dgon pa argues that the body itself makes enlightenment possible. In the course of this thesis, I consider the prior history of this category as it was gradually developed by a series of Bka' brgyud writers until it reached Yang dgon pa. Then, in light of this category, I explore Yang dgon pa's own vision of embodiment. This vision, I argue, reflects an attempt to refocus soteriological attention on the power of the body, over and above the mind, as the salient basis for non-dual knowing. Finally, I reflect upon the lasting contributions of Yang dgon pa's conception of the body to the ongoing exploration of such topics in the history of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist soteriology, as well as upon why some of the more radical elements of his thinking seem to have been eliminated in subsequent generations of his lineage.

This thesis contains a critical edition and annotated translation of the Khecarīvidyā of Ādinātha, an early haṭhayogic text which describes the physical practice of khecarīmudrā. 31 witnesses have been collated to establish the critical edition. The notes to the translation adduce parallels in other works and draw on Ballāla's Bṛhatkhecarīprakāśa commentary and ethnographic data to explain the text. The first introductory chapter examines the relationships between the different sources used to establish the critical edition. An analysis of the development of the text concludes that its compiler(s) took a chapter describing the vidyā (mantra) of the deity Khecarī from a larger text to form the framework for the verses describing the physical practice. At this stage the text preserved the Kaula orientation of the original work and included verses in praise of madirā, alcohol. By the time that the text achieved its greatest fame as an authority on the haṭhayogic practice of khecarīmudrā most of its Kaula features had been expunged so as not to offend orthodox practitioners of haṭhayoga and a short fourth chapter on magical herbs had been added. The second introductory chapter concerns the physical practice. It starts by examining textual evidence in the Pali canon and Sanskrit works for practices similar to the haṭhayogic khecarīmudrā before the time of composition of the Khecarīvidyā and then discusses the non-physical khecarīmudrās described in tantric works. There follows a discussion of how these different features combined in the khecarīmudrā of the Khecarīvidyā. Then a survey of descriptions of khecarīmudrā in other haṭhayogic works shows how the haṭhayogic corpus encompasses various differnt approaches to yogic practice. After an examination of the practice of khecarīmudrā in India today the chapter concludes by showing the haṭhayogic khecarīmudrā has generally been the preserve of unorthodox ascetics. In the third introductory chapter are described the 27 manuscripts used to establish the critical edition, the citations and borrowings of the text in other works, and the ethnographic sources. The appendices include a full collation of all the witnesses of the Khecarīvidyā, critical editions of chapters from the Matsyendrasaṃhitā and Haṭharatnāvalī helpful in understanding the Khecarīvidyā, and a list of all the works cited in the Bṛhatkhecarīprakāśa.

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This study's primary ambition is to present an overview of the key texts from a genre of Tibetan craniological manuals (Tib. thod brtags) as well as some of their translations, thus illustrating the diversity of this tradition. Based on the reviewed material, a comparison with secondary literature will be made and a few re-evaluations of known facts suggested. Because the only available comprehensive translation of any craniological text was published in 1888 (!) and all the subsequent works have relied on it without necessary critical approach, I decided to translate that original text once again and reveal any possible misinterpretations. As a result, I hope this thesis will contribute to the already present academic (mainly ethnographical oriented) discussion about the use of skulls in Tibet, as its philological support, hence filling up this blank methodological spot. Keywords Tibetan studies, Tibetology, Philology, Tibet, Buddhism, vajrayāna, tantra, ritual object, ritual vessel, human skull, calvaria, cranium, skull cup, craniology, manual, Kapālika gal gnad ming tshig bod, chos, bon, kapāla, ka li, thod pa, thod phor, thod bum, thod zhal, thod rus, bha+ndha, bhandha, ban+dha, bhan ja, dung chen, thod brtag, thod brtags, thod rabs, thod bshad, thod pa'i mtshan, snod, sgrub rdzas, thod sgrub,...

This thesis elaborates the results of the research I carried out wtihin the year 2009 in a paid course of female tantric initiation. The theme of the thesis was inspired by my previous interest in the Goddess movement. As this movement is not yet concretized in the Czech republic, I have chosen participating in a closed women's group which is very close to it due to a specific combination of religion, philosophy and psychology. My goal was to find out what form the women's spirituality has in the Czech environment and what kind of women are drawn to it. While the first part of the thesis deals with the universal characteristics of the current eclectic spirituality generally described as the New Age movement, the second part is devoted to the research itself. I come to the conclusion that the symbol of the Goddess, the key idea of the thesis, is not perceived only as a religious concept but also as a medium by means of which women define their needs and problems resulting from their femininity. By this particular case, I advert to the very psychotherapeutic dimension of women's spirituality. Keywords: New Age, tantra, The Goddess, body, spirituality, femininity, self-realization, strength, motherhood

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No description available.

This thesis examines the traces of theological and broader religious discourses in selected works of three major twentieth-century poets. Each of the texts examined in this thesis encodes within its poetics a distinct, theologically derived conception of the ontological status of the self in relation to the Absolute. Yeats primarily envisions the relation as one of essential identity, Jones regards it as defined by alterity, and Eliot depicts it as dialectical and paradoxical. Critics have underestimated the impact on Yeats’s late work of his final and most sustained engagement with Indic traditions, which issued from his friendship and collaboration with Shri Purohit Swami. Though Yeats projected Theosophical notions on the Indic texts and traditions he studied with Purohit, he successfully incorporated principles of Classical Yoga and Tantra into his later poetry. Much of Yeats’s late poetics reflects his struggle to situate the individuated self ontologically in light of traditions that devalue that self in favor of an impersonal, cosmic subjectivity. David Jones’s The Anathemata encodes a religious position opposed to that of Yeats. For Jones, a devout Roman Catholic committed to the bodily, God is Wholly Other. The self is fallen and circumscribed, and must connect with the divine chiefly through the mediation of the sacraments. In The Anathemata, the poet functions as a kind of lay priest attempting sacramentally to recuperate sacred signs. Because, according to Jones’s exoteric theology, the self must love God through fellow creatures, The Anathemata is not only circular, forming a verbal templum around the Cross; it is also built of massive, rich elaborations of creaturely detail, including highly embroidered and historicized voices and discourses. Critics have long noted the influence of Christian mystical texts on Eliot’s Four Quartets, but some have also detected a countercurrent within the later three Quartets, one that resists the timeless even as the poem valorizes transcending time. This tension, central to Four Quartets, reflects Eliot’s engagement with the dialectical theology of Karl Barth. Eliot’s deployment of paradox and negation does not merely echo the apophatic theology of the mystical texts that figure in the poem; it also reflects the discursive strategies of Barth’s theology. The self in Four Quartets is dialectical and paradoxical: suspended between time and eternity, it can transcend its own finitude only by embracing it.

[EN] This PhD in Fine Arts is the introduction to a Yantric Theory of Drawing as a result of researching plastic forms from the universal principles present in perceptive reality. Based on the yantra as an active element in the drawing of a integral mandalic vision, Drawing re-presents a vision of the world based on aesthetic distance, in which the sum and multiplication of all the parts is contemplated from one point of view, a naked eye. This perspective is transdimensional, whereby co-creative man is capable of making his own vision real, enjoying the aesthetic experience through the practice of Art. Art is the fifth element in which contact with Beauty takes place in a disinterested way. This thesis in its Form and Consciousness explores the fundaments of these aesthetic formulations through its most yogic roots in India. We will add a metaphor to such aesthetic formulations and explain them through the voice of the artist, in which the process of transmutation of the matter, the transformation of the Nature into Art takes place. The shilpi yogi is the inspiration and aspiration of the being which indwells the imagery artist who develops images of himself, the imprints of personal consciousness transcended through transpersonal art forms. Its being, its Presence, can be modulated through plasticity, from the purest abstraction to the finest figurative art. This thesis represents a plastic voyage to the very heart of India, in which an artist and a sadhu go hand in hand as a symbolic encounter between indosophy and the sublime plastic representative of the tragedy of duality, sunk in life under the weight of chiaroscuro. Light is the Great Symbolic Metaphor and the primordial object of the mystery of Science. The space of the heart is the fifth plastic element on which we base our Yantric Theory of Drawing. We use this to reintegrate the coherence of Art from all times and places, reinterpreting it from an optimistic historical standpoint. Drawing gives us the power to make this real (maya-magic), through the yantric vision. This thesis is the foundational preface to a way to make real the dream of the imagined, a function which Art, the original inoculant, has had throughout history. Such a possibility of form-function-power is endorsed by the most ancient foundations of civilization: the great symbolic potential which was crystalised in Man, the complex system of ancient times which doesn't respond to limits, but rather to constellations, the tantra, inspiration and aspiration of quantic meta-physics. / [ES] Esta tesis doctoral en Bellas Artes es la introducción de una Teoría Yántrica del Dibujo como resultado de una investigación de la forma plástica desde principios universales presentes en la realidad perceptiva. Basada en el yantra como elemento activo dibujístico de una visión mandálica integral, el Dibujo viene a re-presentar una visión del mundo basada en la distancia estética, en la que la suma y multiplicación de todas las partes es contemplada desde un punto de vista y un ojo genuino, transdimensional, en el que el hombre co-creativo es capaz de realizar su propia visión y disfrutar de la experiencia estética a través de la práctica del Arte. El Arte es el quinto elemento en el que el contacto con la Belleza de modo desinteresado tiene lugar. Esta tesis, como Forma y Consciencia explora los fundamentos de estas formulaciones estéticas, a través de sus raíces más yóguicas, en India. A tales formulaciones estéticas les añadimos una metáfora y las explicamos a través de la voz del artista, en el que se da el proceso de transmutación de la materia, la transformación de la Naturaleza en Arte. El silpi yogui es la inspiración y aspiración del ser que habita en el artista imaginero, quien desarrolla sus propias imágenes o la huella de la consciencia personal que se supera a sí misma a través de la plástica de lo trans-personal. Su ser, solo Presencia, se deja modular en el vehículo plástico desde la más pura abstracción a la más fina figuración. Esta tesis representa un viaje plástico al corazón de la India, en el que van de la mano una artista y un sadhu como encuentro simbólico de la indosofía y el sublime representante plástico de la tragedia de la dualidad, sumido en la vida y el peso del claroscuro. La Luz es la Gran Metáfora simbólica y el objeto de misterio primordial de la Ciencia. El espacio del corazón es el quinto elemento plástico en el que se basa nuestra Teoría Yántrica del Dibujo para reintegrar la coherencia del Arte de todos los tiempos y lugares, desde un punto de vista histórico optimista que está en nuestras manos hacer real (magia-maya), a través de la visión yántrica para el Arte, a que da pie el Dibujo. Esta tesis es el prolegómeno fundacional de una vía de hacer real el sueño de lo imaginado, como ha venido haciendo el Arte como inóculo original a lo largo de la Historia. Tal posibilidad de forma-función-poder está avalada por los más antiguos fundamentos de la civilización, el gran potencial simbólico que fue posible cristalizar en el Hombre, el sistema complejo de la antigüedad que no responde a límites, sino a constelaciones, el tantra, inspiración y aspiración de la meta-física cuántica. CLARA M. SEVILLA SEGUÍ / [CAT] Aquesta tesi doctoral en Belles Arts és la introducció d'una Teoria Iàntrica del Dibuix com a resultat d'una investigació de la forma plàstica des de principis universals presents en la realitat perceptiva. Basada en el iantra com a element actiu del dibuix d'una visió integral del mandala, el Dibuix vindria a re-presentar una visió del món basada en la distància estètica, en què la suma i multiplicació de totes les parts és contemplada des d'un punt de vista i un ull genuí, "transdimensional", en què l'home co-creatiu és capaç de realitzar la pròpia visió i gaudir de l'experiència estètica a través de la pràctica de l'Art. L'Art és el cinquè element en què el contacte amb la Bellesa hi té lloc de forma desinteressada. Aquesta tesi, en tant que Forma i Consciència, explora els fonaments d'aquestes formulacions estètiques mitjançant unes arrels basades en sistema del ioga, pel que fa a l'Índia. A aitals formulacions estètiques els afegim una metàfora, i les expliquem per mitjà de la veu de l'artista, l'individu en qui es produeix el procés de transmutació de la matèria, la transformació de la Natura en Art. El silpi iogui és la inspiració i aspiració de l'ésser que habita en l'artista imaginer, qui desenvolupa les seves pròpies imatges o l'empremta de la consciència personal que se supera a si mateixa a través de la pràctica d'allò trans-personal. El seu ésser, tan sols Presència, es deixa modular en el vehicle plàstic des de la més pura abstracció fins a la figuració més fina. Aquesta tesi representa un viatge plàstic al cor de l'Índia, en què una artista i un sadhu, plegats, conflueixen de manera simbòlica en la indosofia i el sublim representant plàstic de la tragèdia de la dualitat, immers en la vida i el pes del clarobscur. La Llum és la Gran Metàfora simbòlica i l'objecte primordial de la ciència. L'espai del cor és el cinquè element plàstic en què es basa la nostra Teoria Iàntrica del Dibuix, el propòsit del qual consisteix a reintegrar la coherència de l'Art de tots els temps i llocs, des d'un punt de vista històric i optimista, que tenim a les nostres mans convertir en real (màgia-maia) a través de la visió iàntrica per a l'Art, a què dóna peu el Dibuix. Aquesta tesi és el prolegomen fundacional d'una via per tal de materialitzar el somni respecte d'allò imaginat, com ha vingut fent l'Art com a inòcul originari al llarg de la Història. Aquesta possibilitat de forma-funció-poder és avalada pels més antics fonaments de la civilització, el gran potencial simbòlic que fou possible cristal·litzar en la figura de l'Home, el sistema complex de l'antiguitat que no respon a límits, sinó a constel·lacions, el tantra: inspiració i aspiració de la meta-física quàntica. / Sevilla Seguí, CM. (2016). Forma y Consciencia: Fundamentos para una Teoría Yántrica del Dibujo [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/63259 / TESIS

The thesis deals with philosophical aspect of Dzhgchen, which is the core of the Yungdrung Bon traditon. It is very special spiritual tradition because of it's very special nondualistic view of man and universe. First part deals with the history and division of it's teachings and it's Dzogchen lineages. Next part focuses on explanation of differences in views of sutra, tantra and Dzogchen, mainly from the standpoint of the view of base, path, fruit, emptiness, clarity, conscioussness and mind and it's nature. Next part provides translation of the text Twelve little tantras and it's deep explanation. Last part, and most important one, focuses on philosophical examination of some key aspects of Dzogchen, mainly on it's view of autenticity of mindnature. This part also compares Pramenides's fragments with some key points of view of Buddhism and Dzogchen, which may lead to some unexpected conclusions about man's thinking and the problem of it's intentionality.