Papers by Pravina Rodrigues
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Teaching theology & religion, Mar 18, 2024
Hindu sacred scriptures are a rich interweave of cosmological revelation that is embedded in melo... more Hindu sacred scriptures are a rich interweave of cosmological revelation that is embedded in melopoeia (melodic poetry) and sung in designated meters during rituals, liturgical services, festivals, and personal prayers. Revelation is conveyed through enigmatic dialogues, debates, parables, anecdotes, legends, and narratives. These occur between mendicants and saints, kings and mystics, and sometimes fables that include the natural world. These narrative accounts appeal to the young and the old and influence the body-mind-sense complex. A growing body of evidence attests to the positive effects of music and storytelling in the classroom setting. Drawing from these data and Hindu understandings of sacred mantric sound and storytelling, I discuss my experiments with musical frameworks and storytelling in my classes at the Graduate Theological Union, the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University, and Starr King School for the Ministry in California. I contend that the incorporation of parables, tales, legends, and narratives within a musical melodic framework, as is used in Hindu texts, is an effective means of imparting Hindu-Christian theological education.
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Reimagining Theological Education in an Interreligious Setting: A Hindu Perspective, 2024
Hindu sacred scriptures are a rich interweave of cosmological revelation that is embedded in melo... more Hindu sacred scriptures are a rich interweave of cosmological revelation that is embedded in melopoeia (melodic poetry) and sung in designated meters during rituals, liturgical services, festivals, and personal prayers. Revelation is conveyed through enigmatic dialogues, debates, parables, anecdotes, legends, and narratives. These occur between mendicants and saints, kings and mystics, and sometimes fables that include the natural world. These narrative accounts appeal to the young and the old and influence the body-mind-sense complex. A growing body of evidence attests to the positive effects of music and storytelling in the classroom setting. Drawing from these data and Hindu understandings of sacred mantric sound and storytelling, I discuss my experiments with musical frameworks and storytelling in my classes at the Graduate Theological Union, the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University, and Starr King School for the Ministry in California. I contend that the incorporation of parables, tales, legends, and narratives within a musical melodic framework, as is used in Hindu texts, is an effective means of imparting Hindu-Christian theological education.
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Springer International Publishing eBooks, 2022
This volume brings sustainability studies into creative and constructive conversation with action... more This volume brings sustainability studies into creative and constructive conversation with actions, practices, and worldviews from religion and theology supportive of the vision and work of the UN SDGs. It features more than 30 chapters from scholars across diverse disciplines, including economics, ethics, theology, sociology, ritual studies, and visual culture. This interdisciplinary content presents new insights for inhibiting ecospheric devastation, which is inextricably linked to unsustainable financial, societal, racial, geopolitical, and cultural relationships. The chapters show how humanistic elements can enable the establishment of sustainable ways of thinking, feeling, and acting. This includes the aesthetic and emotive dimensions of life. The contributors cover such topics as empowering women and girls to systemically reverse climate change; nurturing interreligious peace; decolonizing landscapes; and promoting horticulture, ecovillages, equity, and animal ethics. Coverage integrates a variety of religious and theological perspectives. These include Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, and other traditions. To enable the restoration and flourishing of the ecosystems of the biosphere, human societies need to be reimagined and reordered in terms of economic, cultural, religious, racial, and social equitability. This volume illustrates transformative paradigms to help foster such change. It introduces new principles, practices, ethics, and insights to the discourse. This work will appeal to students, scholars, and professionals researching the ethical, moral, social, cultural, psychological, developmental, and other social scientific impacts of religion on the key markers of sustainability.
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PRAJNA-DAKSHINAMURTI PUJA, 2022
This book describes the steps required to perform Lord Prajña-Dakṣiṇāmūrti pūjā (worship). It con... more This book describes the steps required to perform Lord Prajña-Dakṣiṇāmūrti pūjā (worship). It contains Lord Prajña-Dakṣiṇāmūrti Nityā Pūjā, Sandhyā Pūjā, Mūlā Mantra, and two articles from Pujya Swami Dayananda Saraswati. "Lord Dakṣiṇāmūrti is Lord Śiva's manifestation as the first teacher. It is said in the Purāṇas that Lord Brahma, the creator, in the beginning of creation created out of his mind four progenies known as the Sanatkumāras: Sanaka, Sanandana, Sanātana, and Sanatkumara and asked them to assist him in the task of creation. However, they were renunciates by nature and, possessed a keen desire to know the truth. So, they set out in the northern direction in search of truth and performed penance. Pleased with them, Lord Śiva appeared before them as a teacher, seated under a banyan tree, facing the south, and imparted the knowledge of Brahman (Brahma-vidyā)...Dakṣiṇā means south and mūrti is form. So Dakṣiṇāmūrti is one who is facing the south. The teacher is facing south while imparting the knowledge and the disciples are facing the north. In the Vedic tradition, the northern direction associated with knowledge, and freedom. The Sanskrit word for north is uttara which literally means “to rise and cross over.” Therefore, the word symbolizes rising above the senses and crossing the cycle of birth and death (saṃsāra)" (Swami Dayananada Saraswati, 1990).
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Purity and Power: Jesus as a Tantric Vīra, 2022
For the past 2000 years, Christians have been using terms such as "Messiah," "Christ," and "Son o... more For the past 2000 years, Christians have been using terms such as "Messiah," "Christ," and "Son of God," to reflect on the nature of the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth, the first-century prophet, healer, and foundational focus of Christianity. However, these terms are ancient and ambiguous for a global context, and it can be argued that, in different cultural contexts, different conceptions of Jesus may be necessary so that the signifier renders Jesus intelligible in various settings without the need for constant explanation and reinterpretation. Can Jesus' divinity be viewed through a cultural lens other than those that arose in the ancient Greco-Roman classical world? I would suggest that it is indeed imperative to do so if we are to confer respect on cultures other than the ones in which ancient Christianity arose. It is all the more urgent for Christians to seek new ways of envisioning Jesus in the face of the emergent new hermeneutics based on the call by decolonial studies scholars to use critical indigenous epistemologies. As an answer to this need, I propose Jesus as a Tantric vīra. By observing Jesus from a Tantric lens, I re-envision the image of Jesus for a South Asian context while perceiving certain aspects of his divinity that a normative Christian reading may have possibly neglected.
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Skylight: News and Notes from the GTU, 2017
“Theologians do not compare to discover which religion is better, but to be illumined by the reli... more “Theologians do not compare to discover which religion is better, but to be illumined by the religious ‘Other,’ while remaining rooted in their own traditions.”
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Book Reviews by Pravina Rodrigues
Teach Theol Relig. 2020;1–3., 2020
Learning Interreligiously: In the Text, in the World is a fascinating series of about one hundred... more Learning Interreligiously: In the Text, in the World is a fascinating series of about one hundred blog posts written from November 2008 to December 2016 by Francis X. Clooney, a global scholar known for his work in the field of Comparative Theology. Clooney was invited to write on interfaith dialogue for “In All Things," a blog hosted by America, a Jesuit journal of opinion (xi). The blog posts include a wide range of topics such as “interreligious happenings in the Catholic Church,” “Vatican documents and related controversies involving theologians,” “reports on occasional travels,” “provocative news items related to religion appearing in the American press,” “items related to teaching and programming at Harvard,” and a “few personal posts” (xi). Such is Clooney's commitment to interfaith learning that, although he is not an expert in Islamic or Mormon studies, he engages the Qur'an and the Book of the Mormon.
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Books by Pravina Rodrigues
Lexington Books:Explorations in Indic Traditions: Theological, Ethical, and Philosophical, 2023
A Śākta Method for Comparative Theology: Upside-Down, Inside-Out offers a Śākta thealogy of relig... more A Śākta Method for Comparative Theology: Upside-Down, Inside-Out offers a Śākta thealogy of religions and a Śākta anti-method, method, and a-method for comparative theology. For Śāktas, the thread of religious diversity is part of the rich tapestry of cosmological, topographical, environmental, and bio-diversity, which is the Goddess’ collective (samaṣṭi) and individuated (vyaṣṭi) forms. Śākta religious diversity is "complex, layered, and paradoxical, allowing ontological similarities, ontological differences, and irreducibility." A Śākta thealogy of religious diversity transcends humans and the borders of religion, politics, society, and speciesism.
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Kinesics, Proxemics, and Haptics A Śākta Method for Comparative Theology, 2023
This chapter presents a Sākta response to the question of method in Comparative Theology by draw... more This chapter presents a Sākta response to the question of method in Comparative Theology by drawing on classical Śākta textual hermeneutics, Śākta ritual studies, and first-person auto-ethnograph́ic understandings of the tradition. This is a work of constructive theology in that I take traditional Sākta categories and apply them to current theological concerns of our day. The references to primary and secondary source literature mentioned in this chapter are orthodox ways in which sákti has been revealed and interpreted in Śākta texts, which are not in opposition to the extension of the ideas presented here.
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Springer, Sustainable Development Goals Series (SDGS), 2022
This volume brings sustainability studies into creative and constructive conversation with action... more This volume brings sustainability studies into creative and constructive conversation with actions, practices, and worldviews from religion and theology supportive of the vision and work of the UN SDGs. It features more than 30 chapters from scholars across diverse disciplines, including economics, ethics, theology, sociology, ritual studies, and visual culture. This interdisciplinary content presents new insights for inhibiting ecospheric devastation, which is inextricably linked to unsustainable financial, societal, racial, geopolitical, and cultural relationships. The chapters show how humanistic elements can enable the establishment of sustainable ways of thinking, feeling, and acting. This includes the aesthetic and emotive dimensions of life. The contributors cover such topics as empowering women and girls to systemically reverse climate change; nurturing interreligious peace; decolonizing landscapes; and promoting horticulture, ecovillages, equity, and animal ethics. Coverage integrates a variety of religious and theological perspectives. These include Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, and other traditions.
To enable the restoration and flourishing of the ecosystems of the biosphere, human societies need to be reimagined and reordered in terms of economic, cultural, religious, racial, and social equitability. This volume illustrates transformative paradigms to help foster such change. It introduces new principles, practices, ethics, and insights to the discourse. This work will appeal to students, scholars, and professionals researching the ethical, moral, social, cultural, psychological, developmental, and other social scientific impacts of religion on the key markers of sustainability.
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TITLE & CONTENTS & INTRODUCTION | Editors: Rita D. Sherma & Purushottama Bilimoria | Associate Editor: Pravina Rodrigues | Springer Publ., 2021
©SPRINGER PUBLISHING | RITA D. SHERMA | OVERVIEW
The devastation of the ecosphere is inextricably... more ©SPRINGER PUBLISHING | RITA D. SHERMA | OVERVIEW
The devastation of the ecosphere is inextricably linked to unsustainable economic, societal, racial, geopolitical, and cultural relationships. To enable the restoration and flourishing of the ecosystems of the biosphere, human societies need to be reimagined and reordered in terms of economic, cultural, religious, racial, and social equitability. The epistemic paradigms that have led to climate change and the ravaging of the earth, are not likely to lead the healing of the same. As such, ways of knowing that are embedded in religion, culture, and tradition are essential resources for the human transformation necessary for environmental regeneration and renewal. Sustainable Nature Requires Sustainable Societies.
The discourse on Sustainability has gained traction globally and in an intersectoral manner. However, the transdisciplinary field of Sustainability Studies has not embraced the principles, practices, ethics, and insights of the religious worlds of humanity. Sustainability Studies has, as its three pillars, equity and justice in Social, Economic, and Environmental spheres. The conversion of current human behaviors and actions into the transformative paradigms, that will alter the currently destructive trajectory, need internal reorientations of heart and mind that are the ultimate concern of religions. This volume brings the discipline of Sustainability Studies into creative and constructive conversation with the multidisciplinary context of Theology & Religious Studies.
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Drafts by Pravina Rodrigues
Contemplative Studies and the Arts of Yoga: Contemporary Approaches
Hindu soteriologies may be broadly categorized as mystical and musical theologies, which elicit v... more Hindu soteriologies may be broadly categorized as mystical and musical theologies, which elicit varying degrees of altered states of consciousness, from the extrovertive to the introvertive to supersense-perception. These contemplative states grant the adept a vision of reality that transcends individuated consciousness to an expanded perception of
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In Beyond Babel: Religions and Linguistic Pluralism | Edited by Andrea Vestrucci | Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, 2023
Using a fractal theory of religious diversity, the Devī Mahātmyam (DM) texts, and forensic scienc... more Using a fractal theory of religious diversity, the Devī Mahātmyam (DM) texts, and forensic science, I construct a Śākta ontological framework for religions in a linguistic pluralism. Śākta pluralism is complex, layered, and paradoxical. From a Śākta lens, diversity may not be conflated, sublated, or flattened into a homogenous indivisible mush. This framework allows ontological similarities, ontological difference, and irreducible entities to concurrently exist. First, I expound the three secrets (rahasyas) revealed in the DM which are the mystery of "primordial matters" (prādhānikam), its "subsequent modifications" (vaikṛtikam), and the mystery of form (mūrti) (Coburn 1991: 109). These mysteries have to do with the Goddess' samaṣṭi (aggregate, consubstantive) and vyaṣṭi (individuated) states that include and transcend the world of form and phenomenon. Second, on the basis of the samaṣṭi-vyaṣṭi paradigm and fractal theory for religious diversity I argue for ontological similarity in the universe. Finally, on the basis of forensic science, facial biometrics, fingerprinting, and voiceprint analysis I argue for ontological difference and irreducible entities. Like the DM, these reflections have a wide applicability and maybe concurrently used for a theory for religions in a linguistic pluralism, theologies of religions, interreligious dialogue, ecojustice, and sustainability.
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Papers by Pravina Rodrigues
Book Reviews by Pravina Rodrigues
Books by Pravina Rodrigues
To enable the restoration and flourishing of the ecosystems of the biosphere, human societies need to be reimagined and reordered in terms of economic, cultural, religious, racial, and social equitability. This volume illustrates transformative paradigms to help foster such change. It introduces new principles, practices, ethics, and insights to the discourse. This work will appeal to students, scholars, and professionals researching the ethical, moral, social, cultural, psychological, developmental, and other social scientific impacts of religion on the key markers of sustainability.
The devastation of the ecosphere is inextricably linked to unsustainable economic, societal, racial, geopolitical, and cultural relationships. To enable the restoration and flourishing of the ecosystems of the biosphere, human societies need to be reimagined and reordered in terms of economic, cultural, religious, racial, and social equitability. The epistemic paradigms that have led to climate change and the ravaging of the earth, are not likely to lead the healing of the same. As such, ways of knowing that are embedded in religion, culture, and tradition are essential resources for the human transformation necessary for environmental regeneration and renewal. Sustainable Nature Requires Sustainable Societies.
The discourse on Sustainability has gained traction globally and in an intersectoral manner. However, the transdisciplinary field of Sustainability Studies has not embraced the principles, practices, ethics, and insights of the religious worlds of humanity. Sustainability Studies has, as its three pillars, equity and justice in Social, Economic, and Environmental spheres. The conversion of current human behaviors and actions into the transformative paradigms, that will alter the currently destructive trajectory, need internal reorientations of heart and mind that are the ultimate concern of religions. This volume brings the discipline of Sustainability Studies into creative and constructive conversation with the multidisciplinary context of Theology & Religious Studies.
Drafts by Pravina Rodrigues
To enable the restoration and flourishing of the ecosystems of the biosphere, human societies need to be reimagined and reordered in terms of economic, cultural, religious, racial, and social equitability. This volume illustrates transformative paradigms to help foster such change. It introduces new principles, practices, ethics, and insights to the discourse. This work will appeal to students, scholars, and professionals researching the ethical, moral, social, cultural, psychological, developmental, and other social scientific impacts of religion on the key markers of sustainability.
The devastation of the ecosphere is inextricably linked to unsustainable economic, societal, racial, geopolitical, and cultural relationships. To enable the restoration and flourishing of the ecosystems of the biosphere, human societies need to be reimagined and reordered in terms of economic, cultural, religious, racial, and social equitability. The epistemic paradigms that have led to climate change and the ravaging of the earth, are not likely to lead the healing of the same. As such, ways of knowing that are embedded in religion, culture, and tradition are essential resources for the human transformation necessary for environmental regeneration and renewal. Sustainable Nature Requires Sustainable Societies.
The discourse on Sustainability has gained traction globally and in an intersectoral manner. However, the transdisciplinary field of Sustainability Studies has not embraced the principles, practices, ethics, and insights of the religious worlds of humanity. Sustainability Studies has, as its three pillars, equity and justice in Social, Economic, and Environmental spheres. The conversion of current human behaviors and actions into the transformative paradigms, that will alter the currently destructive trajectory, need internal reorientations of heart and mind that are the ultimate concern of religions. This volume brings the discipline of Sustainability Studies into creative and constructive conversation with the multidisciplinary context of Theology & Religious Studies.