Living Mantra: Mantra, Deity, and Visionary Experience Today

by Mani Rao

Overview

Living Mantra is an anthropology of mantra-experience among Hindu-tantric practitioners. In ancient Indian doctrine and legends, mantras perceived by rishis (seers) invoke deities and have transformative powers. Adopting a methodology that combines scholarship and practice, Mani Rao discovers a continuing tradition of visionaries (rishis/seers) and revelations in south India’s Andhra-Telangana. Both deeply researched and replete with fascinating narratives, the book reformulates the poetics of mantra-practice as it probes practical questions. Can one know if a vision is real or imagined? Is vision visual? Are deity-visions mediated by culture? If mantras are effective, what is the role of devotion? Are mantras language? Living Mantra interrogates not only theoretical questions, but also those a practitioner would ask: how does one choose a deity, for example, or what might bind one to a guru? Rao breaks fresh ground in redirecting attention to the moments that precede systematization and canon-formation, showing how authoritative sources are formed.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783319963907
Publisher:	Springer International Publishing
Publication date:	09/16/2018
Series:	Contemporary Anthropology of Religion
Edition description:	1st ed. 2019
Pages:	215
Product dimensions:	5.83(w) x 8.27(h) x (d)

About the Author

Mani Rao, PhD, is a poet and independent scholar. She has nine poetry books and two books in translation from Sanskrit including The Bhagavad Gita and Kalidasa for the 21^st Century Reader. See manirao.com for links and updates.

Table of Contents

Part 1: Preparation.- 1. Introduction.- 2. A Mountain of Scholarship.- 3. Crossing Over.- 4. Are there Revelations Today? - Part 2: Fieldwork.- 5. Body-Yantra: Sahasrakshi Meru Temple, Devipuram.- 6. Self-Made: Svayam Siddha Kali Pitham, Guntur.- 7. "I am in Mantra, Mantra is in me": Nachiketa Tapovan, Kodgal.- Part 3.- 8. Understanding Mantra Again.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Mani Rao moves beyond aesthetic and linguistic interpretations to elaborate mantra as an activating force and transformative embodied experience. Mantras, deities, practitioners, communities of practice, even authoritative texts, emerge as dynamic, evolving assemblages of meaning, knowing and feeling. We are invited to think of mantra as a form of potency dynamized by the agency of its practitioners. An insightful, gripping and accessible scholarly work.” (Lata Mani, Historian, Cultural Critic, Filmmaker)

“Mani Rao shows an extraordinary ability to enter into the lived experiences of her informants. In this ‘anthropology of mantra,’ Rao studies modern situations of visionary and auditory religious experience, with many descriptions of the relationship between image and sound, deity and mantra. This book should be of great interest to scholars of Indian religion and to practitioners of both Hindu devotion and yogic meditation.” (June McDaniel, Professor Emerita of History of Religions, College of Charleston, USA)

Editorial Reviews

This is a valuable book for scholars of Religious Studies, South Asian Studies, and Anthropology— one that should inspire further ethnographic engagement with these vital traditions.” (Finnian M.M. Gerety, Religious Studies Review, Vol. 46 (3), September, 2020)

“Rao dovetails scholarship and practice to grapple with the captivating, eye-opening, mind-blowing narratives of the practitioners … Living Mantra documents the modern-day existence of seers (rishis), thus underscoring the open, ongoing nature of divine revelation in Hindu traditions.” (Raj Balkaran, New Books network, newbooksnetwork.com, February 01, 2019)

From the Publisher