Beyond Seeing: Embodied Multisensory Performance, Experience, and Practice in Contemporary Transnational Gaudiya Vaishnavism Öffentlichkeit
Knuppel, Anandi (Spring 2019)
Abstract
Scholarship across disciplines defines darshan as “seeing and being seen” by a deity, most often in Hindu temples. Through ethnographic research of everyday, individual performances of darshan by Gaudiya Vaishnava devotees across the southeastern United States, this dissertation expands this characterization of darshan to explore the practice in its lived expressions within a specific theological context. This dissertation reframes the conversation about everyday practices of darshan across Hindu traditions and proposes that scholars look at context, embodiment, relationships, and performances of what devotees refer to as darshan to understand the role and meaning of this practice in the daily lives of devotees. With this reframing, this dissertation moves away from generalized, static definitions of darshan associated with sight and proposes instead that the practice may be multisensorial and is one of possibilities for relationships created and performed by a devotee. To be meaningful, darshan — a ubiquitous practice across Hindu traditions — must be considered as a theologically and embodied, context-specific practice. When contextualized in the case studies of this dissertation, I show that darshan becomes a part of hearing and speaking the names of the divine, that it is critical to creating specific relationships of intimacy and enjoyment between devotee and deity, and that both are done within theological structures unique to the context of this community. Through this contextualization, I argue that we can abstract thematic elements of darshan, representing an analytical category of practices that are intersensorial, are located at the intersection of relationship and aesthetics, and are learned within distinct theological structures of practice and performance.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents x
A Note on Translation xii
Chapter 1 — Introduction 1
Darshan as “More Than” 2
The Lives of Darshan 8
Darshan as Lived: Religious Practice in Theory and Method 17
Theology and Practice in Gaudiya Vaishnavism 32
Chapter Overview 41
Chapter 2 — Sources of Authority and Darshan 43
In the Texts 47
Beyond the Texts 59
This is Darshan, That is Darshan: Multiple Darshans 78
Chapter 3 — Seeing through Krishna’s Name 81
Instruction in Eight Parts: The Siksastakam 83
The Means and the Ends 87
Finding Krishna in His Names 93
Sound and Sight in the Moment 97
The Process of Seeing Through Hearing and Speaking 103
The Heart of Worship and Darshan 109
Chapter 4 — Seeing for the Pleasure of Krishna 116
Admiring Beauty and Stealing Hugs: Karuna Manna 118
Aesthetics of the Darshanic Moment 124
For His Pleasure: Redefining Relationships 127
Who Enjoys the Aesthetic Experience of Darshan? 132
Rasa Aesthetics: A Framework in Which All Can Enjoy 134
Darshan as Relationship, Darshan as Shared Practice 145
Chapter 5 — Following, Fighting, and Being Freed by Rules 147
Learning to See 150
Training and Retraining Sight – Shastrakrit Das 151
Fighting Sight — Vrinda Seth 160
First Sight — Casey 168
“The rules are here to free me”: Negotiating Structures for Darshan 172
Beyond Bourdieu’s Habitus 177
Chapter 6 — Conclusion 182
Darshan Beyond Caitanya Vaishnavism 186
Darshan as Repertoire 188
Beyond Exchange: Creating Relationships 190
Bibliography 194
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