Temenos Academy Newsletter October 2022
Temenos Academy
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TEMENOS ACADEMY
NEWSLETTER
OCTOBER 2022
LECTURES
The Rainbow Body in Tibetan Dzogchen DR DYLAN ESLER Monday 10 October In the chair Professor John Carey Dzogchen is a special doctrinal and contemplative approach found both within the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism and the indigenous Bön tradition of Tibet. One of the unique and very striking features of this approach is the attainment of the rainbow body (Tib. ’ja’ lus), a sign of accomplishment in specific Dzogchen meditative practices, whereby the physical body shrinks and dissolves at the time of death, accompanied by rainbow lights. This lecture will explore the meaning of the rainbow body phenomenon within the context of Dzogchen traditions of contemplative practice and will also look at the phenomenon from the perspective of comparative mysticism. DYLAN ESLER is a scholar and translator of Tibetan Buddhist texts. He holds a PhD in Languages and Literature from the University of Louvain and an MA in Buddhist Studies from SOAS, London. He currently works at the Center for Religious Studies (CERES) of the Ruhr-University Bochum and is also affiliated with the Oriental Institute of Louvain (CIOL). His research interest focuses on early Nyingma expositions of Dzogchen and Tantra. Articles of his have appeared in the Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines, the Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, Temenos Academy Review, the BuddhistRoad Paper series and Sophia: The Journal of Traditional Studies. His annotated translation of Nubchen Sangye Yeshe’s Samten Migdrön, a seminal 10th-century text on Buddhist contemplation, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press. Venue and timing Doors open 6.15pm Admission £8 or £5 Members of the Temenos
Academy/Concessions
Gold in the Crucible: Futuwwa, Dante, and the Alchemy of Soul-Making DR ALISON M. ROBERTS Monday 17 October In the chair Julia Cleave ‘Learn Futuwwa from your wife’, is the unexpected advice given by Bāyazīd al-Bisṭāmī to Aḥmad ibn Khiḍruya, a respected Futuwwa leader in Balkh in the ninth century, especially considering that this ancient chivalric tradition, which honours the prophet Abraham as founder, is usually associated with male courage and valour. Yet around the same time, Fatima of Nishapur was initiating the Egyptian Sufi, Dhū’l-Nūn al-Misrī, into this spiritual art after they met at Mecca. Less well-known, however, is the fusion of Futuwwa with alchemy’s feminine rebirth mysteries, which this talk will explore, including in Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī’s Mathnawī and Muḥyīddīn Ibn ʿArabī’s encounter with the chivalric Youth (fatā) at the Black Stone of the Kaaba in Mecca. Highlighted, too, will be the parallels with Dante Alighieri’s transformative journey to a ‘noble’ life in the Vita Nova, inspired by his love for Beatrice. The talk will be illustrated with alchemical imagery. ALISON M. ROBERTS studied Ancient Egyptian and Akkadian languages at Oxford University where she received her doctorate in 1984 for her thesis on the goddess Hathor. Since then, she has written and published a quartet of books on the Divine Feminine and the roots of Hermetic alchemy in ancient Egypt (1995–2019). Venue and timing Doors open 5.40pm Advance bookings only, please
British Visionary Artists PROFESSOR PAUL HILLS Thursday 27 October In the chair Hilary Davies This lecture will explore how the artist and poet David Jones (1895–1974) transformed personal experience into myth, transfiguring things seen and handled into signs. Close attention will be paid to the great watercolours he made in the 1920s, where imaginative exchanges take place between the subjects he was painting from the motif and the engravings he was making to illustrate poems such as Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner. In these watercolours the ‘visionary’ is realised in the vital rhythm and touch of the artist’s hand – Jones’s unique ‘inscape’. PAUL HILLS, Professor Emeritus of the Courtauld Institute, visited David Jones when an undergraduate and later curated the retrospective exhibitions of Jones at the Tate in 1981 and Pallant House, Chichester, in 2015. His books include Veiled Presence: Body and Drapery from Giotto to Titian (Yale, 2018), and – co-authored with Ariane Bankes – The Art of David Jones: Vision and Memory (Lund Humphries, 2015). Venue and timing Doors open 6.15pm Admission READING ESSENTIAL TEXTS EVENING SEMINARS Porphyry
On the Cave of the Nymphs Porphyry’s commentary on the enigmatic description of the ‘Cave of the Nymphs’ in Odyssey Book XIII, written late in the third century AD, has been called ‘the oldest piece of literary criticism in the European tradition to survive essentially intact to our own time’. Characterised by polymathic erudition and by an esoteric spiritual sensibility, this brief treatise is a subtle and complex specimen of Neoplatonic symbolic thinking, which has inspired such figures as Blake, Shelley, Yeats, and Kathleen Raine. We will engage in a close reading of the text, with reference to the web of traditions and teachings on which it draws. JOHN CAREY is Professor of Early and Medieval Irish at University College Cork. His books include King of Mysteries: Early Irish Religious Writings (1998, 2000), A Single Ray of the Sun: Religious Speculation in Early Ireland (1999, 2011; originally a series of lectures presented to the Temenos Academy), Ireland and the Grail (2007), Ten Basic Principles that Inspire the Work of Temenos (2015), The Ever-New Tongue: The Text in the Book of Lismore (2018), and The Mythological Cycle of Medieval Irish Literature (2018). He is a Fellow of the Temenos Academy, on whose Council and Academic Board he serves, and the general editor of Temenos Academy Review. 31 October – 28 November Mondays, 5
weekly meetings Venue private home in north London, full address on booking. As the meetings will be in a family residence, participants will be asked to take a covid test in advance of each meeting. The text will be supplied. We shall use the translation by Robert D. Lamberton (Barrytown: Station Hill Press, 1983). Cost £50 or £40 Members of the Temenos
Academy / Concessions. Advance bookings only please.
READING
ESSENTIAL TEXTS AFTERNOON SEMINARS William
Shakespeare The Tempest 12 October – 7 December Wednesdays,
9 weekly meetings Note the meeting on 5 October that was previously announced has been cancelled due to the rail strike on that day. Venue The School of Philosophy and Economic Science Course cost
FOUNDATION COURSE STUDY YEAR Dante, Love and the Divine Feminine by Robert Harris is the first Foundation Course Study Year dissertation. The essay may be read via https://www.temenosacademy.org/study-year/
KATRINA
RUTE We draw your attention to ‘Elemental Goddess’, a presentation of Indian dance styles at The Bhavan London on Sunday 2 October. Among the dancers will be Katrina Rute, who earlier this year gave a memorable talk and performance for Temenos about the tradition of Odissi dance.
PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHY CONFERENCE
WEBSITE ARCHIVE The website Archive hosts many audio and video recordings of lectures, digital versions of all thirteen issues of the journal TEMENOS, and the texts of seventy articles from Temenos Academy Review. New material is added regularly. https://temenosacademy.org/main-lecture-archive https://temenosacademy.org/temenos-journal-archive https://temenosacademy.org/temenos-academy-review-archive Many of our audio recordings are available as PODCASTS.
JOB VACANCY We would like to draw your attention to the Administrator's Job Vacancy at the Temenos Academy: https://www.temenosacademy.org/new-on-the-website/ Please contact us at the email below for the Job Description.
PAYPAL GIVING FUND UK
The Temenos Academy is registered with PayPal Giving Fund UK. When using PayPal if you choose you may also make a donation in support of the Temenos Academy. Thank you.
FURTHER INFORMATION & BOOKING
Telephone 01233 813663
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