Education, Just Renewal, and Healing Energies: Tantric Buddhist Approaches Toward Rethinking the Purposes of Schooling

• In Event: Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism in Education SIG Paper Session

Abstract

This paper examines archives within Buddhist philosophy as a thought experiment toward rethinking purposes of schooling. It specifically mines archives within Vajrayana Buddhism (11th century onwards), for ‘holistic’ practices that target problems posed by conceptions of self and allied suffering. Five mechanisms through which an education redefined for Buddhahood has been tied to perception of healing energies are analyzed: subtle energies, channelization, mandalas, deities, and mantras. These practices were used to engineer subjectivities toward self/no-self and Enlightenment in more ‘urgent’ ways that tantra (translated as techniques) sought. Through an analysis of such techniques from the “Six Yogas of Naropa” in some of the great Je Tsongkhapa’s work (1357-1419 C.E.), purposes of schooling, ‘just renewal,’ and pressing global crises are rethought.

Authors

• Bernadette Baker, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Ajita Raghavendra, University of Wisconsin - Madison