Tara in Vajrayana Buddhism: A Critical Content Analysis

Tara is both a Buddhist and Hindu deity. She is widely worshipped in the esoteric branch of Buddhism: Vajrayana. Even in the exile, Tibetan refugees follow the practice and rituals associated with Tara. Lamentably, she has been given an auxiliary and secondary role in comparison to male deities. Various feminist scholars have begun to look at aspects of society through the lens of gender. They have been at the forefront of studying gender roles and its psychological consequences for those who try to abide by them. In religious studies, especially in Asian context, many of these discourses are difficult to perceive because they were unconsciously appropriated as truth by the people of the society in which they circulated as an inviolable aspect of the worlds or as nature. This study is an attempt to examine the representation of Goddess in various ancient texts as essential to the study of the divine feminine. This hybrid study merges traditional Indology with feminist studies, and is intended for specialists in the field, for readers with interest in Buddhist, and for scholars of Gender studies, cultural historians, and sociologists.

An Inquiry into the Nature of the Female Mystic and the Divine Feminine in Sufi Experience

This article is an inquiry into the nature of the female mystic and the divine feminine in Sufi experience. It considers this experience in the general sense with regard to the Sufi tradition, but in its analysis, the article primarily draws on examples from the classical period of Sufi history. Based on an analysis of the thought of key Sufi figures from that period, the assertion is made that the ground of the sacred is female and, as such, the basis of mystical experience is feminine.

The Divine Feminine Presence in Ibn ‘Arabi and Moses de Leon

This paper is an investigation of the divine feminine power as depicted in the texts of Hispanic mystics from Sufi, Hebrew, and Christian traditions. This work is intended to investigate the origin and subsequent development of a transcendent reconciliation of polarity, its diverse manifestations, and the attainment of a common goal, the quintessential of the Perfect Human Being. The architect of the encounter that leads to Union is “Sophia.” She is the Secret. Only those who are able to discern Her own immeasurable dimension may contemplate the Lady who dwells in the sacred geometry of the abyss. Sophia is linked to the hermetic Word, She is allusive, clandestine, poetic, and pregnant with symbols, gnostic resonances, and musical murmurs that conduct the “traveler” through dwellings and stations towards an ancient Sophianic knowledge that leads to the “germinal vesicle,” the “inner wine cellar,” to the Initium, to the Motherland. She is the Mater filius sapientae, who through an alchemical transmutation becomes a song to the absent Sophia whose Presence can only be intuited. Present throughout the Creation, Sophia is the axis around which the poetics of the Taryuman al-ashwaq rotates and the kabbalistic Tree of Life is structured.

Mapping the Terrain

The politic construction of archives is central to the argument of this book. Chapter 2 traces the complex relation between the śāstrik vratas, which are the formalistic ‘Hindu’ rituals sanctioned by the scriptures composed in Sanskrit and performed with the aid of the Brahman priests, and the laukika bratas which are the customary rituals performed by men and/or women without the aid of Brahman priests and the Sanskrit texts. It reveals that the number of śāstrik vratas continues to increase through the ages garnished by the substratum of non-Brahmanical laukika rituals with attention to the notions of vrātya (the liminal other). This chapter identifies and analyses the ideological impulse propelling this commerce in terms of the pre-modern Brahmanical politics of the Purāṇas and the modern excavation of the laukika realm to define the nation in colonial context with implications for the divine feminine.

Māyā in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa

The idea of māyā pervades Indian philosophy: it is complex, multivalent, and foundational, with its oldest referents found in the Ṛg -veda. This book explores māyā’s rich conceptual history, and then focuses on the highly developed theology of māyā found in the Sanskrit Bhāgavata Purāṇa, one of the most important Hindu sacred texts. Gopal K. Gupta examines māyā’s role in the Bhāgavata’s narratives, paying special attention to māyā’s relationship with other key concepts in the text, such as human suffering (duḥkha), devotion (bhakti), and divine play (līlā). In the Bhāgavata, māyā is often identified as the divine feminine, and her scope and influence are far-reaching—māyā is the world and the means by which God creates the world, she is the power that deludes living beings and ensorcells them in the phenomenal world, and she is the facilitator of God’s play, paradoxically revealing him to his devotees by concealing his majesty. While Vedānta philosophy typically sees māyā as a negative force, the Bhāgavata affirms that māyā also has a positive role, for in both the conditioned and liberated states, māyā is meant to ultimately draw living beings toward Kṛṣṇa and intensify their love for him.