Embodied Wisdom

This chapter takes up the central theme of early Mahayana Buddhism, the “perfection of wisdom” as a quest to experience the “emptiness” of all things, their impermanence, their contingency, and their lack of essence. This realization of “emptiness” is described as giving rise to a profound sense of fearlessness, and Vimalakirti links this capacity to the openness and selflessness of bodhisattva life. The chapter analyzes the Buddhist teaching of “no-self” as it appears in the sutra and describes what selfless living would be like, a life without interior compulsions, a kind of open receptivity to see the world without self-centered projections.

The quest of finding the self in the Bedhaya: Unravelling the psychological significance of the Javanese sacred dance

The Bedhaya is the avant-garde of Yogyakarta and Surakarta (Java, Indonesia) court dance. This classical dance replete with Javanese symbols, spirituality and cultural values embedded in its aesthetic elements. Furthermore, the Bedhaya was created not for entertainment but rather as a meditative medium that would allow individuals to gain wisdom and higher consciousness. These noble characteristics of the dance suggest that the Bedhaya has psychological purposes for the performers and the spectators. We may gain insight into the process of attaining mental growth through studying the embodied wisdom and aesthetic ideal of the Bedhaya, which reflects the development of the human’s psyche. Therefore, the author proposes an interpretation of Bedhaya’s underlying symbolism, aesthetic experience, and potential as means of psychological growth. The paper’s primary argument is delivered by studying a set of theoretical ideas that present Bedhaya as a distinguished aesthetic with psychological capacities. Further, art as an embodiment of cultural wisdom and ethics is also discussed by connecting Bedhaya and other artistic forms drawn from varied cultures.

A Theory on Caring for Women With Initial Breastfeeding Difficulties: The Breastfeeding Story as a Hub for Caring Practice

In the context of breastfeeding care, models are lacking that can guide caring practice. This article examines the prerequisites for care to be caring, based on research about breastfeeding difficulties. These prerequisites are presented as a theoretical model of caring that demonstrates that a genuine caring relationship, embodied wisdom, and an ability to create a space for dwelling, together with cultural awareness, form the prerequisites for the breastfeeding story to be a hub in caring practice. The model contributes to the development of caring practices that embrace the existentiality of each woman's breastfeeding experiences.

Origen and the Story of the Mother and Her Seven Sons: Reimagining Third-Century Caesarean Horizons

This article employs Galit Hasan-Rokem’s notions of vertical and horizontal axes of transmission for the study of biblical reception history, presenting the reception of the story of the mother and her seven sons in Origen’s writings as a case study. I suggest that Hasan-Rokem’s vertical axis of intergenerational transmission corresponds to reception history: it also involves us and thus demands our critical awareness. The horizontal axis of intergroup transmission, then, calls for our sensitivity toward the diverse interpersonal and intercultural exchanges that reception history presents less frequently as authoritative or even manifest. My analysis scrutinizes Origen’s pronouncedly bookish relation to the story of the mother and her seven sons, and I provide a reading of this relation as entailing both (inter)personal and intercultural encounters. I use both Eusebius’ biography of Origen and recent studies on late antique rabbinic discourse as means by which to broaden our perspective on Origen’s horizon of expectation. In conclusion, I suggest that Origen’s portrayal of the mother indicates some ambivalence toward this figure: her words of wisdom have undisputed authority over Origen, while her embodied wisdom makes him reserved. Thus, the reception of the story of the mother and her seven sons in Origen’s writings could strengthen the prospect that the story was a living reality for Origen as well as for others in third-century Palestine.

Autoethnography: A Potential Method for Sikh Theory to Praxis Research

The application of autoethnographic research as an investigative methodology in Sikh studies may appear relatively novel. Yet the systematic analysis in autoethnography of a person’s experience through reflexivity and connecting the personal story to the social, cultural, and political life has synergy with the Sikh sense-making process. Deliberation (vichhar) of an individual’s experience through the embodied wisdom of the Gurū (gurmat) connecting the lived experience to a greater knowing and awareness of the self is an established practice in Sikhi. This article explores autoethnography as a potential research method to give an academic voice to and capture the depth of the lived experiences of Sikhs: first, by articulating the main spaces of synergy of autoethnography with gurmat vichhar; second, discussing common themes such as inclusivity of disregarded voices, accessibility to knowledge creation, relational responsibility, and integrity in storytelling common to both autoethnography and gurmat vichhar. In conclusion, the autoethnographic approach has the means to illuminate nuances in understanding Sikhi that is transformative and familiar to the ancestral process of how Sikhs have made sense of themselves and the world around them.

Thomas Aquinas on Abstinence and Fasting: Participating in Christ’s Cruciform Wisdom

This article argues that St. Thomas Aquinas’s treatise on temperance in the Summa Theologiae offers what in effect constitutes a series of embodied spiritual exercises whose goal is to facilitate the reader in his progress towards the contemplation of Divine realities. Attention to Thomas’s treatment of Christ’s Passion reveals moreover that the embodied wisdom practices of abstinence and fasting lead to a greater participation in the Cross of Christ and prepare the one who undertakes them for the reception of a cruciform wisdom. Finally, it is argued, these embodied wisdom practices also exert an influence on the pursuit of speculative theological wisdom.

Staging Bodies, Performing Ramps

This paper proposes a cultural, aesthetic disability technoscience that is manifested in the embodied wisdom of disabled people.

The Salt Daemon

Jung’s inquiry into the interconnectivity of psyche and matter and body and soul included alchemical studies and his psychoid theory, which was loosely based on the dynamics of the electromagnetic field. Using Jung’s presentational methodology in which psyche and physis are held evenly, this study presents salt as a liminal, psychophysical substance animating body and soul, world and anima mundi. Salts dissociate in the solutions of the body and sea, creating the electrolytic spark of life, just as alchemical sal in solutio signals a dissociative, incoherent yet psychoactive state, which seeks recrystallization—coagulatio or coherence. The rhythmic movement between incoherence and coherence is self-organized by a fieldlike guiding force of the psychoid that I call the salt daemon, which is entangled with other such salt spirits. The salt daemon’s alternation between uneasiness and calm—the sensate conscience—works toward increasingly differentiated body-soul coherence: the alchemical sal sapientiae, embodied wisdom.