28 de julio, 2022
May 2022 was a hot month full of interesting activities related to Indological studies. For May 12-14, the Department of South Asian, Tibetan, and Buddhist Studies at Vienna University, with support from the Center for Contemporary South Asia at Brown University and the Asian Research Institute at the University of Singapore organized the workshop Mantra: Sound, Materiality, and the Body.1
The intention of this workshop was to bring together a variety of international scholars to present novel approaches to the study of mantra. Typically, mantra has been the subject of study linked either to classical Indian culture or tantra, and through the Sanskrit language, almost exclusively. Thus, the workshop sought to unveil new routes, temporalities and scenarios to explore the facets of the world of mantra. As part of the exercise, there was a motivation to discuss in depth what characterizes a mantra and how, by inviting approaches from anthropology, art history or sound studies (for example), the study of mantra can benefit considerably.
There were a dozen panels, with some virtual participation.
Borayin Larios y Adrián Muñoz, core members of Proyecto YoLA®, were present, the former as one of the co-organizers of the workshop and the latter as a presenter. In collaboration with Dr. Finnian Gerety, Larios seeks through events such as this one to catapult the study of mantras in an interdisciplinary way to establish the academic field of (Mantra Studies). in a similar way to what has happened with the study of yoga in recent years. For his part, Muñoz presented a proposal to explore the mantras that appear in the cheap and popular literature related to the Nāth Yogis, proposing an approach from the point of view of Folk Tantra.
On the other hand, the Institute of Religious Studies at the Jagiellonian University and the Centre for Yoga Studies of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London organized the second issue of the international conference Yoga Darśana Yoga Sādhana. The conference took place in the beautiful city of Krakow, Poland from May 18-21, 2022. It was the second prosperous academic event, following the successfulul conference held in 2016 —also in Krakow— under the thematic lines of "Traditions, transmissions and transformations". The 2022 edition’s thematic axis was "Methods, migrations and mediations".
They were very nourished and numerous days where specialists from different countries of the world met. These were four intense days in which speakers distributed over twenty panels with four speakers each, discussed a very broad spectrum of topics and problems related to the history, phenomenology, and practice of yoga. While some focused on historical and philological aspects, others dedicated their research to sociological or interdisciplinary topics. This attests, on the one hand, to the fact that the field of yoga studies is booming and growing and, on the other hand, highlights the wide range of approaches that the phenomenon of yoga can encompass.
The event was graced with four keynotes. On the first day, Australian National University doctor Shameem Black delivered her lecture "Right Hand, Left Hand: The Flexible Politics of Yoga", where she discussed ways of translating yogic and tantric imaginaries into contemporary literary works. These forms can be symptomatic of varied ideological motivations or agendas, characterized as "spiritual tourism," "terrorism," and "tantrism".
On the second day, Amanda Lucia (University of California, Riverside) returned to the origins of her interests and elaboration of her celebrated book White Utopias: The Religious Exoticism of Transformational Festivals (published in 2020). There the author discusses, among other topics, the intersection of whiteness, the "spiritual, but not religious" and issues of cultural appropriation, especially in transformational spiritual festivals held in California, USA.
The former member of the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune, India, Meera Nanda, presented on the third day the lecture “Yogic Perception and Hindu Sciences. From Early Beginnings to Our Own Troubled Times”. Nanda discussed the historical trajectory and discursive dynamics that led to the perception of yoga as a "scientific" method. Her explanation was based on the reception of the Pātañjalayogaśāstra since its very beginnings and the role that yogic perception as scientific empiricism has played in the modern historiography of the Indian sciences, with an emphasis on the thought of Vivekananda. Her main argument was that this process has served as the ultimate justification for the defense of ancient Hindu knowledge systems such as alchemy, Hindu theories of intelligent design, and Ayurveda as alternative and superior sciences and how these have been politicized in recent years.
The last keynote lecture was given by Swami Medhananda and was entitled "From Advaitic Inclusivism to Yogic Pluralism: A New Diachronic Interpretation of Swami Vivekananda's View of Religious Diversity". Based on the work done for his book just published this year, the swami presented his theory that Vivekananda's thought went through three evolutionary phases between In the first phase, from September 1893 to March 1894, he advocated the same salvific efficacy of the world's major religions, but asserted that a "universal religion" harmonizing all the world's religions was an "ideal" that did not yet exist. In the second phase, from September 1894 to May 1895, he asserted that universal religion already existed in the form of Vedānta, which he expounded in terms of the "three stages" of Dvaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita and Advaita. However, in late 1895, Vivekananda abandoned his earlier attempt to ground the harmony of religions in the three stages of Vedānta. Instead, he held that each religion corresponds to at least one of the four Yogas, namely: Karma-Yoga, Bhakti-Yoga, Rāja-Yoga, and Jñāna-Yoga, each of which is a direct and independent path to salvation.
We are pleased to inform that Proyecto YoLA ® was also present at this conference. In the panel Yoga en las Américas, Borayin Larios y Adrián Muñoz presented their contributions "Soundscapes of Mexican New Age - Mantras in Yoghism" and "Spiritual vibrations and harmonious elevation: an appraisal of Yogananda's Mexican tour", respectively. The research resulting from these contributions will be part of a volume on Yoga in Latin America of which we will inform you very soon.
1 A detailed report of the workshop can be consulted here.
Adrián Muñoz y Borayin Larios are members of core Proyecto YoLA®.
Alberto Allende
Pedro Urbano
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