The Central Questions

Indian yogis, monks, and ascetics pursue extraordinary paths that invert the normal aims and values of society.  This course surveys the teachings on spiritual training and self-cultivation developed in India, their conceptual basis, the range of techniques used, and their philosophical development in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism.  What was their purpose?  How are they supposed to work?  For whom were they designed?  What roles do yogis and ascetics play in religious life?  What is their ethical status in the world?

Scholar's website on the largest meeting of ascetics in the world:  The Kumbh Mela

Website (non-academic) photographs of Indian ascetics: Sadhus & Yogis of India

Course Objectives The course aims to help students understand the assumptions, goals, and rationales of the ascetical and meditative traditions of India, by examining the theory and practice of a variety of techniques of mental and physical self-discipline.  This study also lays the groundwork for comparison with other, non-Indian religious movements.    Requirements Students’ grades will be based on: (i) Participation in class discussion, including weekly reflections on the readings (25%); (ii) a midterm exam essay (25%); (iii) a 14-page research paper, including a first draft, a final draft, and a 20-minute oral presentation (50%). [Please click here for advice on paper writing.]

Books for Purchase

Patrick Olivelle, trans., Upaniṣads
Patrick Olivelle, trans., Rules and Regulations of Brahmanical Asceticism
Barbara Stoler Miller, trans., The Bhagavad-Gita
Padmanabh Jaini, Gender and Salvation
Course Reader
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Schedule of Topics and Readings  (tentative, subject to change)

Week 1: The Search for Reality and Self in the Early Upanishads

1-3
Introduction: The Human Predicament and Therapies for Desire

1-5
Wilhelm Halbfass, “Man and Self in Indian Traditional Thought”;
Olivelle, Upaniṣads, pp. xxiii-lviii (see also p. xiv);
    What Really Matters — Brahman and Ātman:
Bṛhadāraṇyaka 3.1-4.2 (pp. 34-58): Yājñavalkya as the model sage;
Chāndogya 6 (pp. 148-156): Uddālaka instructs his son Śvetaketu in Brahman;
Chāndogya 7.1-15 (pp. 156-164) Sanatkumāra instructs Nārada in progressing to wisdom;
Chāndogya 8.7-12 (pp. 171-175): The Gods and Asuras try to learn about the ātman;
Taittirīya 3.1-6 (pp. 190-191);
Kena (pp. 227-230);
    The Nature of the Self:
Bṛhadāraṇyaka 1.4 (pp. 13-17): The world created out of the ātman!
Kauṣītaki 4 (pp. 220-225): Gārgya Bālāki and Ajātaśatru, King of Kāśī;
    The Methods and Aims of Studentship:
Kauṣītaki 1 (pp. 202-206): humility (1.1); the destination of the ātman after death;
Chāndogya 8.4-5 (pp. 169-170): The nature of brahmacarya;
Chāndogya 4.4-15 (pp. 130-135): Parables of two students’ mysterious first lessons;
Review: Kena 4.7-9 (p. 230): tapas, self-control, rites as the foundation of knowledge.

Week 2: The First Principles of Yoga: Self-Control of Body, Breath, and Mind

1-10
Wilhelm Halbfass, “The Therapeutic Paradigm and the Search for Identity in Indian Philosophy”
    The “Breaths” (prāṇas) and the Vital Powers (indriyas):
Bṛhadāraṇyaka 1.5.21-23 (pp. 21-22): “An investigation into rules of discipline” (vrata);
Chāndogya 1.2.1-9 (p. 99): The Gods conquer the Asuras with the “breath within the mouth” (compare 1.3.1-21);
Kauṣītaki 2.11-12 (pp. 212-213): The gods’ “dying-around” and their regeneration from breath;
    The contest of the “breaths”:
Bṛhadāraṇyaka 6.1 (pp. 79-81);
Chāndogya 5.1.1-5.2.3 (pp. 137-139);
Kauṣītaki 13-14 (pp. 213-215), which includes a rite of transfer of powers from father to son;
    The Heart and the Channels (the Yogic “Subtle-Body”):
Bṛhadāraṇyaka 4.2.2-4 (p. 57);
Taittirīya 1.6 (pp. 181-182);
Chāndogya 8.1 and 8.6 (pp. 167, 170-171);
    The Psychology and Physiology of Sleep and Death:
Bṛhadāraṇyaka 1.5.3 (p. 19) and 4.3-4 (pp. 58-68);
Bṛhadāraṇyaka 2.1 (pp. 23-26; compare Kauṣītaki 4, esp. 4.19-20 (pp. 224-225);
    Inner Fire, Interior Sacrifice:
Bṛhadāraṇyaka 5.9 (p. 75): Agni present within everyone;
Chāndogya 5.19-5.24 (pp. 146-148): Eating can be sacrifice;
Kauṣītaki 2.5 (p. 208): Pratardana's ‘Internal Fire Sacrifice’ of restraint (sāṃyamana);
Kaṭha (entire, pp. 232-247): The conquest of death through yoga;
Śvetāśvatara 1-2, 6 (pp. 253-256, 263-265): Identifying the divine person: Rudra as Lord;
Muṇḍaka (entire, pp. 268-277): Credo of an early ascetical sect within Atharva Veda tradition?
    Note the explicit distinction between higher and lower knowledge (MuU 1.4-5), the emphasis on asceticism and meditation in the wilderness, and the “head-vow” (śiro-vrata).

1-12
Māṇḍūkya (a “middle” upaniṣad discussing the syllable OM/AUM and levels of consciousness);
The “Treatise on Tradition” (Āgamaśāstra) of Gauḍapāda, in Th. Wood, The Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad and the Āgama Śāstra, pp. 1–37.

Week 3: Buddhist Discipline

1-17
“The Legend of the Buddha Shakyamuni,” ch. 2 in Buddhist Scriptures, ed. by E. Conze (Penguin, 1959), pp. 34–66.;
Excerpts from the Therīgāthā and the Sutta-Nipāta (from Access to Insight).

1-19
Excerpts from the rules of monastic discipline (Vinaya-Piṭaka).

Week 4: Buddhist Meditation

1-24
Type I: Vipassana (Satipaṭṭhāna): Conze, pp. 62-109.

1-26
Type II: Samatha (Samādhi): Conze, pp. 110-139.

Week 5: Jaina Monkhood: The Attainment of “Isolation” – Can Women Be Liberated?

1-31
“The Fordmakers” and “The Ascetic,” from The Jains, by Paul Dundas (London/New York: Routledge, 1992), pp. 11–39 and 129–160.

2-2
Jaini, Gender and Salvation, Introduction and selections from the translations.
STATEMENT OF PAPER TOPIC & INITIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY DUE IN CLASS

Week 6: One Synthesis of Yoga: Discipline of Action and Discipline of Devotion in the World

2-7
“The Lord’s Song” (Bhagavad-Gītā), books 1–10.

2-9
“The Lord’s Song” (Bhagavad-Gītā), books 11–18.

FRIDAY by 5 pm: MIDTERM ESSAY DUE

        2-14,16: Washington Holiday (No Classes)

Week 7: Another Synthesis of Yoga: Discipline of Body and Mind

2-21
“Rules of Yoga” (Yoga-Sūtra), parts 1 and 2, with excerpts of commentary.

2-23
“Rules of Yoga” (Yoga-Sūtra), parts 3 and 4, with excerpts of commentary.

Week 8: The Holy Deviant: Salvation according to the Pāśupata

2-28
Atharvaśiras-Upaniṣad;
“The Pāśupata Regimen” of the Atharva-Veda-Pariśiṣṭa (trans. by Bisschop and Griffiths).
D. H. H. Ingalls, “Cynics and Pasupatas: The Seeking of Dishonor,” Harvard Theological Review 55.4 (1962), pp. 281–298.

3-2
Minoru Hara, trans., “Nakulīśa-Pāśupata-Darśanam” [a chapter of Mādhava’s “Encyclopedia of All Doctrines” (Sarva-Darśana-Saṃgraha)], in Pāśupata Studies, by Minoru Hara, edited by Jun Takashima (Vienna: de Nobili, 2002), pp. 197–222; originally published in Indo-Iranian Journal (1958), vol. 2: 8–32.
Selections from Kauṇḍinya's commentary on the Pāśupata-Sūtra, translated by Minoru Hara (Harvard doctoral dissertation, 1958).

Week 9: Yādavaprakāśa’s “Summary of the Dharma of Ascetics” (Yati-Dharma-Samuccaya)

3-7
Olivelle, RRBA, pp. 4-26, 29-53, 60-88.

3-9
RRBA, pp. 89-130, 146-160, 176-180.
FIRST DRAFT OF RESEARCH PAPER DUE FRIDAY BY 7 pm

Week 10: The debate on the possibility of “liberation while living” (jīvan-mukti)

3-14
Mādhava’s Jīvan-Mukti-Viveka (“Investigation of Liberation While Living”), translated by Robert Goodding: Introduction, pp. 1–6, 17–25, 29–66; JMV, ch. 1.

3-16
JMV, chs. 2 and 4.

Week 11: The Nath Yogis and Tantric Yoga

3-21
Introduction (pp. 3-53) and “Gopi Chand’s Birth Story” (part of a Rajasthani folk epic), from A Carnival of Parting, by Ann Grodzins Gold (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992): Introduction (pp. 3–53) and “Gopi Chand’s Birth Story” (pp. 161–181).

3-23
Matta-Vilāsa (“The Drunks’ Delights”), a satire on ascetics.

Week 12: Asceticism as Social Action

4/2
Michael Carrithers, The Forest Monks of Sri Lanka (Delhi: Oxford U.P., 1983), pp. 69–136.

4/4
“Mahatma Gandhi: Nationalist India’s ‘Great Soul’,” ch. 6 in Sources of Indian Tradition, 2nd ed., vol. 2, ed. by Stephen Hay (New York: Columbia U. P., 1988), pp. 243–274.
FRIDAY by 7 pm: RESEARCH PAPER DUE