Living Landscapes

Christopher Key Chapple

Description

In Living Landscapes, Christopher Key Chapple looks at the world of ritual as enacted in three faiths of India. He begins with an exploration of the relationship between the body and the world as found in the cosmological cartography of Sāṃkhya philosophy, which highlights the interplay between consciousness (puruṣa) and activity (prakṛti), a process that gives rise to earth, water, fire, air, and space. He then turns to the progressive explication of these five great elements in Buddhism, Jainism, Advaita, Tantra, and Haṭha Yoga, and includes translations from the Vedas and the Purāṇas of Hinduism, the Buddhist and Jain Sūtras, and select animal fables from early Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. Chapple also describes his own pilgrimages to the Great Stupa at Shambhala Mountain Center in Colorado, the five elemental temples (pañcamahābhūta mandir) in south India, and the Jaina cosmology complex in Hastinapur. An appendix with practical instructions that integrate Yoga postures with meditative reflections on the five elements is included.
Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Foreword
John Grim and Mary Evelyn Tucker

Introduction: Yoga and Landscapes

1. The Inner World as Precondition for Experience

2. Earth: Loving the Land

3. Water: Life-giver and Purifier

4. Fire: Locus of Desire

5. Air: Wind and Breath

6. Animal Stories from the Upaniṣads, the Jātaka Tales, the Pañcatantra, Jaina Narratives, and the Yogavāsiṣṭha

7. The Yoga of Space

Appendix: Constructing the Maṇḍala through Yoga Sādhana

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Body
• Mind
• Mindfulness (Buddhism)
• East Asian religions
• Mindfulness

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 avril 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781438477954
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Living Landscapes
Living Landscapes
MEDITATIONS ON THE FIVE ELEMENTS IN HINDU, BUDDHIST, AND JAIN YOGAS
CHRISTOPHER KEY CHAPPLE
Foreword by
John Grim and Mary Evelyn Tucker
Cover art permissions obtained for the use of the John Singer Sargent painting, The Hermit , on the cover and the use of the line drawings created by Gabriela Ayala-Cañizares.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2020 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Chapple, Christopher Key, 1954– author.
Title: Living landscapes : meditations on the five elements in Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain yogas / Christopher Key Chapple.
Description: Albany : State University of New York, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019049140 (print) | LCCN 2019049141 (ebook) | ISBN 9781438477930 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438477947 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438477954 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: India—Religion. | Yoga. | Nature—Religious aspects.
Classification: LCC BL2003 .C55 2020 (print) | LCC BL2003 (ebook) | DDC 294—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019049140
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019049141
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
to Thomas Berry (1914–2009)
Contents
Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Foreword
John Grim and Mary Evelyn Tucker
Introduction: Yoga and Landscapes
1. The Inner World as Precondition for Experience
2. Earth: Loving the Land
3. Water: Life-giver and Purifier
4. Fire: Locus of Desire
5. Air: Wind and Breath
6. Animal Stories from the Upani ṣ ads, the Jātaka Tales, the Pañcatantra, Jaina Narratives, and the Yogavāsi ṣṭ ha
7. The Yoga of Space
Appendix: Constructing the Ma ṇḍ ala through Yoga Sādhana
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Illustrations
1. Goddess in dance and every element is within her body. An arm made of wood, shoulders are mountains, the hair is the night sky and rising sun. Her belly is an ocean wave, one leg is flowers and the trunk of a tree. One leg has wheat growing up her thigh and the trunk of tree with mushrooms. LAM is seen above her body. Title: “Earth” / Artist: Gabriela Ayala-Cañizares / Owner: Individual
2. Goddess leaping with a moon on her head and most of her body is made of ocean waves. Her legs are sea shells. VAM is seen above her body. Title: “Water” / Artist: Gabriela Ayala-Cañizares / Owner: Individual
3. Goddess walking toward the viewer with fire in her hands. Her body is made of crystals and the light reflects off of them. RAM is seen to the left of her body. Title: “Fire” / Artist: Gabriela Ayala-Cañizares / Owner: Individual
4. Goddess in flight; she has the body of a hummingbird and you can see her lungs. Her hair blows behind her and you can see YAM above her body. Title: “Air” / Artist: Gabriela Ayala-Cañizares / Owner: Individual
5. Goddess sitting peacefully looking to the left. Her body is made of plants and a bird’s nest sits in her hair. She is one with the elephant, tiger, eagle, wolf, bear, swan, frog, and rabbit. Title: “As One” / Artist: Gabriela Ayala-Cañizares / Owner: Individual
6. Goddess leaping into the air. The outline of her body is made entirely of dots, showing her in form in space. Title: “Space” / Artist: Gabriela Ayala-Cañizares / Owner: Individual
7. Thirty-seven figures demonstrating a sequence of yoga postures. Title: “Untitled” / Artist: Gabriela Ayala-Cañizares / Owner: Individual
Acknowledgments
Several people helped in the preparation of this book, including Griffin Guez, Jodi Shaw, Wijnanda Jacobi, Natale Ferreira, Amparo Denney, Nadia Pandolfo, Christopher Patrick Miller, Viresh Hughes, Ben Zenk, Daniel Levine, Kija Manhare, Erika Burkhalter, Alexandra Berger, Ulhas Bala, Ralph Craig III, Ana Funes Maderey, Joseph Cadiff, and Jensen Martin, who all participated in the Tuesday afternoon Sanskrit translation seminar that has convened at Loyola Marymount University for more than two decades. Arindam Chakrabarti pointed out the elemental chapters of the Yogavāsi ṣṭ ha during a seminar he convened at the University of Hawaii in 1997, the translation of which occupied the Tuesday group for more than two years.
Francis Clooney sparked the field research project of visiting the five elemental temples in South India when he brought them to my attention nearly thirty years ago. Karthik Dhandapani facilitated an amazing journey for Chris Miller and me to visit each of these temples in 2013, which helped Chris with his MA thesis on Yoga and the Environment and lends field experience to the current work.
Trudy Goodman, during the early years of InsightLA, offered for me to substitute at her weekly sitting group when she taught elsewhere. This provided an opportunity to share the elemental concentration practices in the context of Buddhist Vipassana. Jack Kornfield provided helpful resources included in this study that explain the modern Buddhist diffidence toward this practice and also highlight its historic importance.
The Green Yoga Association, founded by Laura Cornell, convened hundreds of Yoga teachers with an interest in Yoga and ecology from 2004–2013. These teachers learned about Yoga’s foundational meditations upon the elements. My Yoga Teacher Training students on Sunday mornings at the Hill Street Center, including Jasmine Lieb, Edward Moondance, Lisa Leeman, Chris Miller, Devon Fitzgerald, Teri Roseman, Mehdi Mansouri, Charlotte Holtzerman, and Ruth Goodman practiced the elemental meditations over the course of several months in the early 2010s.
In the appendix to the book one finds a Yoga routine that reflects the theme of the book. This practice developed over five decades of daily practice of meditation, prā ṇ āyāma, and āsana . Though the individual Yoga teachers who helped build this sādhana are too numerous to mention, a few were key to the unfolding journey of bodily awareness and purification: Padmini Higgins, Gurā ṇ i Añjali Inti, John Doukas, Carol Rossi, Lisa Walford, Denise Kaufman, Jasmine Lieb, Beth Sternlieb, and Larry Payne.
The faculty, deans, and other administrators at Loyola Marymount University have been consistently supportive of this work, which has been shared with community members through LMU Extension’s Center for Religion and Spirituality, as well as with our undergraduate students from all majors and colleges, and our graduate students in bioethics, education, theology, and Yoga studies. University support, combined with an endowment provided by Navin and Pratima Doshi, have allowed many trips to India and various international and national conferences where these ideas have been tested and explored with others. YogaGlo, an online learning platform founded by Derik Mills, has been amazingly supportive of this work in every way, and many of these practices can be found in the YogaGlo online video archive. A Fulbright Nehru Fellowship has supported the time required here in India for the final editing process.
I want to extend deep gratitude to my wife Maureen and our children Dylan and Emma for their unflagging support and patience. Gabriela Ayala-Cañizares created the beautiful line drawings that accompany each chapter. Her talents became abundantly obvious as she shared her vision of Mother Earth with us during the graduate seminar on Yoga Philosophy and later created a stabilizing Yoga sequence as part of her final Yoga studies MA thesis project, which she now teaches to elder Bhutanese refugees living in the greater Seattle area. Meghan Brown of Art Resource diligently obtained permission from the Metropolitan Museum of Art for use of the cover art, The Hermit (1908) by John Singer Sargent. Profound appreciation goes to Nicolás Arias-Gutiérrez and Alexandra Jones who completed the final copy editing and the indexing of the book.
Finally, I want to share my final conversation over the telephone with Thomas Berry, to whom this book is dedicated. A group of several dozen scholars had gathered at Pendle Hill, the Quaker retreat and education center adjacent to the campus of Swarthmore College, in November 2005. The purpose of our meeting was to inaugurate the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture, founded by Bron Taylor of the University of Florida. John Grim and Mary Evelyn Tucker, who graciously wrote the Foreword of this book, had founded the Berry-inspired Forum on Religion and Ecology at Harvard University’s Center for World Religions in 1997, which is now located in the School of Forestry at Yale University. While at Pendle Hill, they beckoned me to the phone to speak with Thomas Berry. Thomas, who directed the history of religions doctoral program at Fordham University for many years, was a self-proclaimed geologian. He had studied Thomas Aquinas in the Passionist monastery in the 1920s and ’30s, had learned about and experienced Confucianism and Daoism alongside Theodore deBary in China in the 1940s, turned his attention to Buddhism, Hinduism, and the study of Sanskrit in the 1950s and 1960s, and to the study of North American indigenous traditio