Beschreibung:
A wide-ranging analysis of the Mokṣopāya, the Indian literary classic that teaches through storytelling how to enjoy an active, successful, worldly life in a spiritually enlightened way.
In theMokṣopāya (also known as theYogavāsiṣṭha), an eleventh-century Sanskrit poetic text, the great Vedic philosopher Vasiṣṭha counsels his young protégé Lord Rāma about the ways of the world through sixty-four stories designed to bring Rāma from ignorance to wisdom. Much beloved, this work reflects the philosophy of Kashmir Śaivism. Precisely because all worldly pursuits are dreamlike and fiction-like, the human soul must first come to an experience of non-dualistic, mind-only metaphysics, and after attaining this wisdom, promote moral activism.Engaged Emancipation is a wide-ranging consideration of this work and the philosophical and spiritual questions it addresses by philosophers, Sanskritists, and scholars of religion, literature, and science. Contributors allow readers to walk with Rāma as his melancholy and angst transform into connectivity, peace, and spiritual equipoise.
Introduction
Abbreviations
I. Flimsy Fixity: Reality Shifts
1. Radical Transformation in the Yogavāsiṣṭha: A Phenomenological Interpretation
Matthew MacKenzie
2. Ākāśa and Jīva in the Story of Līlā
Bruno Lo Turco
3. The Concept ofĀbhāsa in theYogavāsiṣṭha
Sthaneshwar Timalsina
4. Is This a Dream? A Critique ofMok̉ṣopāya’s Take on Experience, Objecthood, and the “External” World
Arindam Chakrabarti
5. The Existence of an Endless Number of Worlds:Jagadānantya inMok̉ṣopāya and the Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics
Garth Bregman
6. Vasiṣṭha and Borges: In Quest of Postmodern Enlightenment
Sthaneshwar Timalsina
II. Human Agency and World Creation
7. Attitude of theYogavāsiṣṭha toward Human Endeavor
Pranati Ghosal
8. A Fabulous Rationality: Poetry, Reason, and Action in theYogavāsiṣṭha
Roddam Narasimha
9. Ethics and Psychology of theYogavāsiṣṭha in theUpaśama Prakaraṇa
Christopher Key Chapple
10. Dreams, Fictions, and the Quest for Morality in theYogavāsiṣṭha
Menaha Ganesathasan
11. A Horrid Treehouse or a Charming City?Yogavāsiṣṭha (Mok̉ṣopāya) on Spiritual Culture of the Body
Arindam Chakrabarti
III. Engaged Emancipation
12. Embodied Liberation (Jīvanmukti) in theYogavāsiṣṭha
Andrew Fort
13. Liberation into Nature: Vasiṣṭha’s Embrace of the Great Elements
Christopher Key Chapple
Bibliography
Contributors
Index