Contemplative Studies and Hinduism

Meditation, Devotion, Prayer, and Worship

Rita D. Sherma, Purushottama Bilimoria

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000195064
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Hinduism

This book is one of the first wide-ranging academic surveys of the major types and categories of Hindu contemplative praxis. It explores diverse spiritual and religious practices within the Hindu traditions and Indic hermeneutical perspectives to understand the intricate culture of meditative communion and contemplation, devotion, spiritual formation, prayer, ritual, and worship. The volume extends and expands the conceptual reach of the fields of Contemplative Studies and Hindu Studies.

The chapters in the volume cover themes in Hindu contemplative experience from various texts and traditions including classical S??khya and Patañjali Yoga, the Bh?gavata Pur??a, the role of S?dhana in Advaita Ved?nta, ?r?vidy? and the ?r?cakra, the body in Tantra, the semiotics and illocution of Gau??ya Vai??ava s?dhana, mantra in M?m??s?, Vai??ava liturgy, as well as cross-cultural reflections and interreligious comparative contemplative praxis. The volume presents indigenous vocabulary and frameworks to examine categories and concerns particular to the Hindu contemplative traditions. It traces patterns that cut across Hindu traditions and systems and discusses contrasting methods of different theological/philosophical schools evincing a strong plurality in Hindu religious thought and practice. The volume provides intra -religious comparisons that reveal internal complexity, nuances, and a variety of contemplative states and transformative practices that exist under the rubric of Hindu practices of interiority and reflection.

With key insights on forms and functions of the contemplative experience along with their theologies and philosophies, the volume suggests new hermeneutical directions that will advance the field of contemplative studies. This book will be useful to scholars and researchers of religious and theological studies, contemplative studies, Hindu studies, consciousness studies, yoga studies, Indian philosophy and religion, sociology of religion, philosophy of religion, comparative religion, and South Asian studies, as well as general readers interested in the topic.

1
CONTEMPLATIVE STUDIES AND THE PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICES OF HINDU CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE

An introduction

Rita D. Sherma

This volume marks the first wide-ranging and multi-vocal academic survey of the major types and categories of Hindu contemplative praxis from a breadth of scholarly viewpoints that reflect both (a) the variegation in types of contemplative practices within the Hindu traditions and (b) the use of Hindu internal hermeneutical perspectives for expanding the concept of contemplation beyond definitions that – though incrementally enriched by content from Buddhism – are still normatively constrained by Christian understandings of the concept. Part of the reason that the field remains fairly unrepresentative of the breadth of religious lives across cultures lies in the dearth of academic works, from scholars of diverse religions, on the subject of contemplative studies.

Contemplative Studies, as a discipline,¹ can be approached via several avenues: (a) a rigorous focus on religious practices of contemplation, their history, and function within the context of one or more spiritual traditions; (b) the secular and interdisciplinary field of the study and pedagogical application of contemplative practice and experience which may include methods extracted from religions or developed in engagement with other areas of inquiry; (c) neuroscientific approaches that analyze the effects of contemplation, and (d) its study and therapeutic applications in the health sciences. Finally, there are programs, which call for a transdisciplinary research methodology,² integrating Social Sciences, Psychology, Neurobiology, Organizational Applications, Health Sciences, and the humanities (including, at times, Religious Studies), Social Sciences, Psychology, Neurobiology, Organizational Applications, and Health Sciences. Whichever way Contemplative Studies is approached, it

makes space for direct personal experience with specific forms of practice. In this way it challenges the denial of embodied experience and subjectivity within much of academic discourse and brings the issue of religious adherence in religious studies into high relief.³

The emerging field of applied Contemplative Studies, however, can also seek to use the insights of the field for questionable applications (e.g., military uses, or corporate productivity enhancement) before, or to the exclusion of a deep immersion in the principles, aims, and ethics of religion(s) from which the practices are culled for application. As such, critical analysis of the very real possibility of highly reductionist cultural appropriations of religious contemplative traditions have begun to emerge.⁴ In view of these emerging problems, it is worthwhile to reflect on what contemplative practices mean to the traditions which gave rise to them.

Considering contemplative practice in religions

Let us start with the Christian idea of contemplation. In the Christian context, it can mean a sustained focus on scripture, meaning of a doctrine, a state of awareness of God’s nearness, or silent reflection. The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains Christian prayer in terms of its expressions in the following way:

• 2720 The Church invites the faithful to regular prayer: daily prayers, the Liturgy of the Hours, Sunday Eucharist, the feasts of the liturgical year.
• 2721 The Christian tradition comprises three major expressions of the life of prayer: vocal prayer, meditation, and contemplative prayer. They have in common the recollection of the heart.
• 2722 Vocal prayer, founded on the union of body and soul in human nature, associates the body with the interior prayer of the heart …
• 2723 Meditation is a prayerful quest engaging thought, imagination, emotion, and desire. Its goal is to make our own in faith the subject considered, by confronting it with the reality of our own life.
• 2724 Contemplative prayer is the simple expression of the mystery of prayer. It is a gaze of faith fixed on Jesus, an attentiveness to the Word of God, a silent love. It achieves real union with the prayer of Christ to the extent that it makes us share in his mystery.⁵

Let us look at some of the elements of this important overview: It speaks of daily prayers (personal); liturgy (communal); feasts of the liturgical year (festivals grounded in sacred time); vocal prayer (voice, posture); and meditation (involving thought, imagination, emotion).⁶

The Hindu world of contemplative praxis also offers these elements such as numerous forms and types of personal daily prayers, which I mention in my chapter; Guy L. Beck, in his chapter, points to the importance of communal, liturgical music and hymnody; and, of course, the Hindu calendar is filled with festivals that are meant to evoke sacred time and transcendent space. Vocal prayers (prārthanā) enacted as recitation, chants, or hymns are daily practices. Meditations that elicit thought, imagination, emotion, and desire are not only mental or psychological avenues in Hindu praxis. They are embodied practices involving remembrance of the narratives of sacred literature, aided by the vibrancy of imagination, which evokes the power of emotion directed towards the desire for divine communion. Recitation, sacred art, poetry, sacred dance, drama, liturgical music, hymns, and pilgrimage are all embraced under the rubric of embodied contemplative practices. These comprise “meditation in motion” and are forms of praxis that are understood to lead to communion or union with the Divine.

Finally, the Catechism mentions contemplation. What is meant here by “contemplation”? Pope Francis has explained this is terms of the way to enter into the mystery of redemption which requires a contemplation that “is mind, heart, knees, prayer” and “can only be understood on bended knee, in contemplation, and not with the mind alone.”⁷ Here, contemplation is a prayerful state of interiority that includes an integration of reason and feeling, in an attitude of faithful supplication (“on bended knee”). Such silent prayer-acts, in Hindu contemplative praxis, are not uncommon; they integrate feeling with understanding-knowing and are considered to be a state of surrender to the Divine which opens the doorway to the mystery of liberation. However, there are a number of ways through which one can enter this mystery.

The aim of this volume is to broaden our lenses on the concept of contemplation by introducing the rich culture of meditative communion, devotion, and spiritual formation in the Hindu ethos with its variegation and expansive, millennia-long history of deliberation on what constitutes meditative practices and why. The first question that comes to mind in such a quest is “what makes a religious act a contemplative practice?” Contemplative praxis is a shared category across many religions – though with varying degrees of centrality. The contemplative life may include prayer, worship, ritual, recitation, reading of scripture, meditation, as well as other practices that transform awareness and create a sense of continuity between human life and the supreme reality, however conceived.

The results of contemplative practice may include ethical and moral reorientations, but these did not, historically, represent the ultimate goal – which was a spiritual one. Modern liberation theology and constructive philosophy in Hinduism has moved into a hermeneutics of engagement whereby, through the contemplative praxes – originally aimed at catalyzing spiritual realization – one may also reflect upon and apply these forms of interior awakening towards ethical and moral dimensions of human life.⁸ The aim of religious contemplation varies. However, what appears repeatedly across traditions is an aspiration to know transcendent truth or experience (a) interconnection; (b) communion or (c) union/liberation with/through the Sacred; (d) heighten awareness of what I have termed, elsewhere, the “depth-dimension of reality”; or (e) experience the transformative entrance, through imagination, into a sacred theological history or transcendent narrative – all depending on the aim of practice and specific contemplative system.

Contemplative practices in Hinduism

Within religious traditions that view contemplative practice as central to spiritual knowing/understanding, there often exists an array of methods and approaches. Indeed, as this volume demonstrates – at least in the case of Hinduism, which gives primacy to such practices of interiority – that there exist not only a variety of forms, but a diversity of aims. Yet, I would venture to say that contemplative praxis is one of the sacred threads that weaves through the Hindu world’s rich multiplicity and creates coherence and consistency, forming connective tissue that knits together not only religious practice, as common ground, but also the shared conception of the plane of narrative theology, experienced in transcendent time and imagined space. This collective understanding is expressed aesthetically through the visual and material culture of worship and perceived through sacred sound (śabda, saṃkīrtana, mantra), towards an evocation of intricate intimacy with the Divine. These sanctified expressions invoke the celestial within the terrestrial and can emerge with as much intensity under a village tree as within the carved halls of a temple. This is the reason that contemplative practice, whether liturgical or individual, has a central position in the traditions within and informed by Hinduism.

Sound, in Hindu completive praxis, enjoys primacy, and texts and theologies attest to its capacity to induce a transmutation of consciousness. The forms taken by sacred sound include (a) the recitation of scripture or verses; (b) mantra; (c) chanting the “holy names” of the deity, which express divine nature; the singing of hymns; or (d) the intonation of the praṇava (Oṃ), the sonic pulsation associated with the cosmic creative and dissolutive movements of the Divine. Within each of these categories, there are subclassifications and the methodology for recitation, chant, or song varies according the theological school or yogic system. But in addition to these vocal performances, the very idea of sound holds an ontologically significant place. The recitation of sacred texts, for example, is an oral tradition that predates the composition of even ancient texts. The aurality and orality of the sacred text is still highly significant in spite of its written composition. Therefore, the Vedas, which are the original authoritative, canonical texts are known as śruti (literally, “that which is heard”). Similarly, most other categories of religious compositions are known as smṛti (“that which is recalled/remembered”), which also refers to recitation from memory. All types of sacred texts, that are canonical to a given theological lineage, are referred to as śabda-pramāṇa. Pramāṇa-vāda refers to epistemology, which includes – among other forms of knowing – the testimony of the sages available within the pages of authoritative texts. Śabda, here, points to the expectation that this witness will be borne not by words on a page but by the sacramental sound of its recitation.

Hindu contemplative prayer frequently involves the evocation of Deity and the aesthetics in which such experience is embedded. The iconography that inheres in the representation (icon, mūrti) is what I have referred to elsewhere as “visual theology.” That is, the knowledge of the iconography that renders the theology apparent and, thereby, renders the iconography as a focus of meditation. Such meditations often require the remembrance of narrative theologies from which the iconic elements emerge – and, as such, imagination as transformation comes into play. These are some of the many facets of Hindu contemplative praxis that may contribute additional resources for critical analysis in the broader context of an emerging dialogical Contemplative Studies.

The approach and organization of this volume

Contemplative Studies is a growing field, and a critical examination of its entire literature is beyond the scope and aim of this work volume. It suffices to say that volumes or compendia that include significant intra-religious comparison – which precludes essentialism and reveals internal complexity and diversity – are, at the time of this publication, relatively rare. Research that illuminates the intricacies of different contemplative states in terms of process, psychology, or implications, within a given tradition, is still nascent. In contradistinction, this volume takes, as its starting point, the position that there is no such thing as a single contemplative system within a religious tradition. That is, the volume begins with a level of complexity that Contemplative Studies, as a field, has just begun to engage.

A multifaceted and nuanced understanding of the aims and approaches of a religious tradition becomes more readily avai...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of contributors
• 1 Contemplative studies and the principles and practices of Hindu contemplative life: an introduction
• Part I Contemplative practice: cross-cultural and interreligious considerations
• Part II Contemplation and Yoga praxis
• Part III Sādhana: knowledge, wonder, and love
• Part IV Prayer, worship, and ritual
• Index