| ashu |
Posted
on 29-Jan-02 11:57 PM
The Royal Nepal Academy, annd the South Asis Institute of Heidelberg University, (Kathmandu Branch) feel honoured to announce the following talk by
Isabelle Onians of Oxford University on:
Tantric Buddhism, Sexual Initiation and Monasticism:
Are They Compatible?
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When?
Monday, February 4, 2002, 3.30 p.m.
Where?
Royal Nepal Academy,
Kamaladi: Library Hall
Outline of the talk: This lecture will not be about contemporary practices, but asks questions about the situation reported in texts from around one thousand years ago, texts preserved in Sanskrit and Tibetan, including the one by Kuladatta, an ancient Nepalese ritual manual.
The compatibility of the title is three-fold. My three questions are:
1. Is sexual initiation required in Tantric Buddhism?
2. Are monks eligible for sexual initiation? and
3. Is Tantric Buddhism for monks?
The rituals I will discuss are still performed even now, as part of the Nepalese Buddhist tradition in the Kathmandu Valley as well as within Tibetan Buddhism. But although the tradition has certainly survived, it is fundamentally transformed.
I will show how the initiations were controversial right from the beginning, and how they came to be the way they are today.
Isabelle Onians has recently submitted her Ph.D. thesis, of which the subject of this lecture forms a part, at the University of Oxford, UK.
She is now preparing translations of Sanskrit literature for a new publication series of English translations with facing Sanskrit texts, called The Clay Sanskrit Library, which will be launched world-wide later this year.
All interested are cordially invited to attend the presentation Opportunity for questions and discussion will be given – Snacks will be served.
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