Courses

Yoga and Tantra

Ambitious in scope and interdisciplinary, Yoga and Tantra (Y&T), an introductory course, offers a critical inquiry into the field of yoga and tantra. The programme aims to trace historical antecedents to modern-day practice, exploring the relation between yoga and tantra and offering a broad understanding of the development of yogic and agamic/tantric traditions in the Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain worldviews as well as syncretic interactions with vernacular bhakti traditions, including the Varkaris and the Nath yogis from premodern to modern times.

The course is at once a meditation on life and an encounter between the philosophical and the experiential, situated in the socio-religious order of the historical world even as it adduces the transcendental, esoteric, and mystical dimensions of an array of yogic and tantric traditions.

Emphasizing current research and publishing in the field, Y&T brings national and international scholars leading innovative research projects to deliver lectures and seminars that trace the historical development of yoga and tantra, especially the ways in which their symbiotic relation contributed to the formation of hatha yoga around the end of the 1st millennium CE.  Y&T is sensitive to the increasing popularity of yoga today, its globalised and modernized practices, and seeks to place these contemporary trends in rigorous historical context, from the premodern to the modern periods.

Y&T presents views from Sanskrit studies and philology, philosophy, literature, aesthetics, art history, religion, archaeology, and anthropology.

It aims to foster a dialogue between practitioners and academicians and contribute to the ever-expanding field of yoga and tantra using both academic and praxis-based approaches.

Each Y&T lecture/seminar emphasizes a specific theme within the larger context of the philosophical concepts, meta-theologies, and cosmologies of yogic and tantric traditions as well as the aesthetics of the visual representations of those ideas (i.e., their manifestations in temple art, sculpture, painting, as well as their reflections in the lived practices of nationalists and saints).

Lecture Schedule

01 August 2019 - 5:00 pm to 8:00 pm
1) Orientation
2) Introduction to the Course Structure
- Ms. Gazala Singh
3) Introduction to Indian Epistemology  Situating Yoga in the Indian Intellectual Tradition
- Prof. V.N. Jha

02 August 2019
1) The 25 Principles of Samkhya-Yoga : Patanjalayogashastra with special reference to the understanding of Citta
- Prof. V.N. Jha

03 August 2019
1) Yoga and Samkhya in the Bhagavad Gita
- Prof. V.N. Jha

Public Seminar: Models of the Human in Tantric Hinduism [8 – 10 August]

08 August 2019
1) Shaktism and Kundaliniyoga – A Historical Overview
- Dr. Bjarne Wernicke-Olesen

09 August 2019
1) Tantric Models of the Human in the Netratantra (chapters 6-8)
- Dr. Bjarne Wernicke-Olesen

10 August 2019
1) The Shakta Anthropology of the Hathapradipika
- Dr. Bjarne Wernicke-Olesen

16 August 2019
1) Understanding the Problem of Mind-Body-Consciousness in Buddhism
2) Pancha Skhandha – Problem of No Self/Identity – Two Truths
- Dr. Supriya Rai

17 August 2019
1) An Overview of Buddhist Meditation in the Early Tradition
2) The Importance of Cultivating Jhanas – Meditation and Cosmology
- Dr. Supriya Rai

22 August 2019
1) Mahayana Buddhism and the Bodhisattva Ideal
2) Nagarjuna’s Madhyamaka
- Dr. Supriya Rai

23 August 2019
1) Yogachara and the 8 Consciousnesses
2) Meditation Techniques: Pure Land Visualisation – Zen Method
- Dr. Supriya Rai

29 August 2019
1) Understanding Esoteric Buddhism and its Practices in the Indo-Tibetan Sphere with special reference to Hevajra and Kalachakra Tantras: Sexual and Horrific
- Ms. Swati Chemburkar

30 August 2019
1) The Soul-Body Relationship in Jainism
2) Introduction to Jain Yoga with special reference to Haribhadra Virahanka
3) Introduction to Jain Tantric Practices: Mantra and Yantra
- Ms. Shilpa Chedda       

31 August 2019 - Public Lecture - 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm
1) Karma, Fivefold Yoga, and Puja in the Yogabindu of Haribhadra Virahanka
- Prof. Christopher Chapple

Public Seminar: The Bengal-Vaishnava Body and its Yogic Affects [5 – 6 September]

05 September 2019
1) Bengal-Vaishnavism – A Historical Overview
2) The Yogic Affects of the Mind/Body-as-Place
- Dr. Sukanya Sarbadhikary

06 September 2019
1) The Yogic Affects of the Body-as-Instrument
- Dr. Sukanya Sarbadhikary

Yoga and Tantra | Praxis

13 September 2019
1) The Yoga of Indian Dance
- Ms. Mandakini Trivedi

14 September 2019
1) Poetry of the Body: Yogic Vocabulary in the Nirgun Bhakti Poetry of Kabir & other poets
- Mr. Vipul Rikhi

Public Seminar: An Introduction to the Tradition of Pancharatra [18 – 21 September]

18 September 2019
1) Key Features, Early History, Scriptures
- Dr. Marion Rastelli

19 September 2019
1) Divine Manifestations: Cosmology and Theology
- Dr. Marion Rastelli

20 September 2019
1) Religious Practice
- Dr. Marion Rastelli

21 September 2019
1) Temples as Historical Testimonies
- Dr. Marion Rastelli

26 September 2019
1) History of Modern Globalised Yoga
- Ms. Gazala Singh

27 September 2019
1) The Yoga Institute, Santacruz: ‘The World’s Oldest Yoga School’ Celebrating its Centenary Year: ‘Householder Yoga’ and the ‘Culture of Consciousness’
- Ms. Gazala Singh

Yoga and Tantra | Praxis

03 October 2019
1) The Nath Connection in the Warikari Sampradaya of Maharashtra
- Ms. Shruti Vishwanath

04 October 2019
1) Mind-Body-Spirituality, Wellbeing, Health and Yoga as Therapy in Contemporary Culture
- Ms. Gazala Singh

Classes mainly on Thursdays and Fridays

Timing: 5.30 – 8 PM 

Eligibility: Graduation Degree

Admission Requirements: 

  • A copy of your last degree certificate
  • A passport-sized photograph

Duration

01 Aug - 04 Oct, 2019

Fees

Rs. 18,000
(PG Certificate)
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