On April 14, Professor Vasudha Narayanan gave the Center's first Hindu View of Life Annual Lecture.
As previously reported, this lecture evokes the memory of Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan's book of that title—a fitting connection, since Dr. Radhakrishnan was the speaker at the opening of the Center in November 1960. Today, the Lecture aims to address constructively and for our era urgent issues of our time, from a perspective informed by insights and values arising from the Hindu traditions of India and Hinduism globally. As is fitting to the Center as recipient of the gift, the Lecture may also include attention to the Hindu view of pluralism and the religious traditions of the world.
Akhilesh Gupta is the donor who has made the lecture possible. He came to Harvard in the Advanced Leadership Initiative during 2014-15. In making his gift, Mr. Gupta noted that "the value of the Hindu View of Life" is due not simply to the very ancient origins of this wisdom, but to the "universal message it contains for all times and all peoples." The lessons of Hinduism's core tenets are as relevant for the modern world, he affirmed, as they were in ancient times, appealing "to a wide cross section of people, from the very scientifically-oriented to those with a devotional bent of mind." Thus, Mr. Gupta adds, "it is my privilege to support the efforts of the Center in promoting inter-faith dialogue and the opportunity for traditions to be learning from one other."
This year's lecturer, Vasudha Narayanan, was Distinguished Professor, Department of Religion, at the University of Florida. She was educated at the Universities of Madras and Bombay in India, and at Harvard University, where, from 1975-1977 she was a resident at CSWR. She is the founder of Chitra, Center for the Study of Hindu Traditions; she was also the president of the Society for Hindu-Christian Studies from 1996-1998, and president of the American Academy of Religion (2001-2002). Dr. Narayanan was named University of Florida’s "Teacher Scholar of the Year" in 2010.
Her fields of interest are the Hindu traditions in India, Cambodia, and America; visual and expressive cultures in the study of the Hindu traditions; and gender issues. She is the author or editor of numerous books, book chapters, and articles, and encyclopedia entries. In addition, she is also the associate editor of the five-volume Brill's Encyclopedia of Hinduism. Among her many writings are several noted books, including The Way and the Goal: Expressions of Devotion in the Early Srivaisnava Tradition (1987); The Tamil Veda: Pillan's Interpretation of the Tiruvaymoli (co-authored with John Carman, former Center Director, 1989); The Vernacular Veda: Revelation, Recitation, and Ritual (1994); Hinduism (2004); The Life of Hinduism (co-edited with John Stratton Hawley, 2007). She is currently working on Hindu temples and traditions in Cambodia. See CSWR's interview with Professor Narayanan here.
Her April 14 Lecture, Paradoxology: the Art of Praising the Deity, drew on her lifelong learning in the Srivaishnava Hindu tradition of south India, from its medieval poetry to the current life of temple community in south India and beyond. As a devotional tradition with a long history of philosophical and theological inquiry, Srivaisnava Hinduism celebrates both paradox—the unexpected confluence of the divine transcendence and divine immanence and nearness in temple worship—and para-doxology, a dedicated worship in words and deeds of the highest (para) divine couple, Narayana and Sri. This rich and fascinating lecture suggested to us timely possibilities for rethinking religious categories and understandings of practice in today's pluralistic societies. The lecture can be seen here.
The second annual lecture will occur on October 27, 2016, given by Professor Arvind Sharma of McGill University.
—by Francis X. Clooney, S.J., director of the Center for the Study of World Religions, Parkman Professor of Divinity, Professor of Comparative Theology