Contemplative Studies is a recent field that endorses first person and third person views into academic discourse. It encourages "scholar-practitioners." Thus subjectivity is involved along with objectivity at the level of contemplative experience.. ...more

An Introduction to the Course Modernity, Colonialism and Transcultural Hermeneutics, Fall 2021 ...more

This Advanced PhD seminar facilitates research in a variety of contemplative practices contextualized by the traditions to which they belong, with the aim of enhanced scholarly awareness and understanding of these practices and traditions in themselves and in a comparative frame. Practices considered will include chanting, reading, prayer, meditation on ideas (including paradox, metaphor and metonym), meditation on iconic forms, unfocused meditation, visualization, story (telling and hearing), ritual, entheogenic experience, movement, creative performance and synthetic forms. Traditions will be drawn from different regions of the world. The seminar will include introductions to the practices and their bibliography and invite student participation in researching and presenting research on topics of their choice. ...more

Methodologically, the course inquires into the relation between metaphysics/theoria (darshan) and applied psychology/praxis (yoga) in the integral yoga, both in terms of the academic discipline of psychology and the culturally specific traditions of Indian yoga. In a related way, it investigates the structural psychology and process psychology of integrality; the phenomenology of its experiences; as well as its individual and collective/participative dimensions. It also attempts to put Sri Aurobindo’s discourse of integrality in a comparative frame with other psychological discourses on the whole person ...more

A 2-4 week immersion in the alternative society of Auroville, a growing international town in South India, based on the spiritual vision of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo (1-3 units). Students will undertake an integral inquiry into one aspect of urban practice in Auroville. The trip also includes optional day trips to art sites (1 unit). ...more

This course includes the most influential classic texts of the West, of India, and China. Robert McDermott teaches four classes on Western texts: Psalms and Book of Wisdom; the middle chapters of Plato’s Republic; three chapters of Aristotle’s Ethics; and Gospel of John and first letter to the Corinthians. Debashish Banerji teaches Hindu and Buddhist texts: selected passages from the Taittiriya, Aitareya, Kena and Isha Upanishads; the second chapter of the Bhagavad Gita; the early sermons of the Buddha and selected texts of Mahayana Buddhism. Jun Wang teaches selected chapters of Laozi’s Dao De Jing, Yellow Emperor’s Inner Cannon and Confucian’s The Doctrine of the Mean. ...more

The Upanishads are the earliest proto-philosophical texts of India. Upanishad literally means "to sit near" and refers at once to close circles of initiates and a language use expressive of intimacy to the truth. Part of a vast oral tradition of yoga, these texts thus use language as a means of praxis, as much poetry as philosophy. They are primarily contemplative texts, developing a variety of means for approaching nondual experience. In this course, we will consider passages from the principal Upanishads with view to understanding its transformative devices, their relation to yoga practice and the goals they work towards. ...more

This course contextualizes the religious art of India culturally and historically by theorizing a field of cultural production constituted by the negotiations of complex agents such as tradition and ideology in conjunction with agents such as patron, user and artist/craftsman. ...more