Abstract:The academic study of religion emerges, in part at least, from an encounter with the religious Other. This essay traces out a history of this encounter, a history that is dialectical. In each historic moment, the simple dichotomy that was previously thought to ground a hard and facile distinction between self and other comes to be challenged. But in the wake of such challenges, new categories come to be posited, categories on the basis of which the Self can (once again) emerge not simply as different from, but… Show more
“…Thus, religion should never be approached in way that abandons critique, but this critique is not totally reliant on a social scienti fi c discourse 'untainted' by religion and theology (Cabezón 2006 ) . It aims to elucidate an ethos of engagement with theological and faithful sensibilities and, as such, contribute to this budding movement of post-secularism.…”
“…Thus, religion should never be approached in way that abandons critique, but this critique is not totally reliant on a social scienti fi c discourse 'untainted' by religion and theology (Cabezón 2006 ) . It aims to elucidate an ethos of engagement with theological and faithful sensibilities and, as such, contribute to this budding movement of post-secularism.…”
“…Despite what students may think they are going to learn, a course in the study of religion provides an opportunity to dynamically balance an understanding of oneself with an understanding of others, to engage in a “dialectic of alterity” that seeks to “destabilize and denaturalize categories that have previously stood as obstacles to a real and substantive engagement with the Other, to ‘relativize difference’ without eliminating it” (Cabezón 2006, 26). In that vein, the Buddhist tradition is rather uniquely suited to the task of catalyzing conversations about selfhood and otherness.…”
Section: Assembled Selvesmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…[W]e would benefit from thinking about things like criticism and theory comparatively, asking ourselves what notions of theory are operative in the religions we study, and seeking to establish a conversation with religious texts and believers at the level of theory rather than, as has heretofore been the case, being content with grinding the data that is the Other through the mill of our own theoretical apparatuses. (Cabezón 2006, 30)…”
Can one engage in pedagogical reflection from within the worldviews and practices of the religious traditions that one teaches? This essay explores the possibility of generating comparative models for teaching and learning via the Buddhist concepts of no-self (anā tman), skilful means (upā ya-kauśalya), and awakening (bodhi).
“…From the fourteenth century, we will look at the substantial medical history written by the 1 On this methodological standpoint, see José Ignacio Cabezón (2006). medical scholar Brang ti dpal ldan 'tsho byed, the Shes bya rab gsal.…”
This paper addresses the development of scholastic medical traditions in Tibet through an examination of lists of physicians. I consider the debates that such lists and their accompanying narratives engender for Tibetan historians and reflect on the contributions they make to the identity of the medical tradition. By examining the structure and content of classificatory methods in medical histories, I argue that temporally organized lists document the place of medicine across time, geographically organized lists document the reach of medical knowledge across space, and thematically organized lists document the intertwining of medical knowledge and skill with other aspects of intellectual and civil life. In making these lists, medical historians paint a portrait of the Tibetan medical tradition that evokes connections to Buddhism and the strength and cosmopolitanism of the imperial period. Medical histories thus emphasize a picture of Tibet in the broader context of Asia—a Tibet whose empire lives on culturally or intellectually, if not militarily.
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