莲花生大师法会的缘起

在藏传佛教文化中,莲花生大师吉日法会从九世纪一直传承到今天,其内容和形式依据佛语和伏藏源远流长,本文就莲花生大师"初十吉日"法会及"古鲁羌姆"法会的缘起做些探讨.     

Menstrual taboos among havik brahmin women: A study of ritual change

This paper reports on changes in the beliefs and observance of menstrual taboos among Havik Brahmins in South India. Menstrual taboos have decreased in importance over the past 20 years as a woman's primary role has been redefined as a marital partner rather than as a bearer of children. When her function was as a bearer of children for the patrilineage, she was considered subject to biological rhythms and a threat to male ritual status. With increased education, professional opportunities, and increased marriage age for women, ritual status and male dominance have become less significant. Women are ritually less dangerous, less dependent on men, and transcend the biological rhythms that menstrual taboos symbolize.The research on which this paper is based was carried out with the support of grants from the American Institute of Indian Studies (1964–1966, 1974–1975, 1987) and the American Philosophical Society (1985). I gratefully acknowledge the constructive criticism from Joan Bamberger, Kaja Finkler, Shirley Lindenbaum, and the anonymous readers who commented upon earlier drafts of this paper.     

The diminishing marginal value of happy people

Thomas Hurka has recently proposed a utilitarian theory which would effect a compromise between Average and Total utilitarianism, the better to deal with issues in population ethics. This Compromise theory would incorporate the principle that the value which an extra happy person contributes to a possible world is a decreasing function of the total population of that world: that happy people are of diminishing marginal value. In spite of its initial plausibility I argue against this principle. I show that the Compromise theory is actually no improvement over the two original versions of utilitarianism; in particular, it is subject to almost all the objections which are fatal to Average utilitarianism, and more besides. And I attempt to dispell the appearance that intuition supports the Compromise theory as against Total utilitarianism, by arguing that the latter's Repugnant Conclusion, when properly understood, is not intuitively unacceptable. Total utilitarianism remains a plausible ethical theory, while both the Average and the Compromise theories should be definitely rejected.     

The blame of dying young

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -     

Inside the Guru's Gate: ritual uses of texts among the Sikhs in Varanasi

The images and representations of Sikhs in contemporary Mumbai cinema and popular culture, rife with portrayals of eccentricities that the audience loves to disregard eventually, point to a cultural turn that has become a power-laden strategy to regulate Sikh otherness and consequently, re-present it through a predominant, controlling gaze. In tracing such sense of carnivelesque otherness with which Sikhs have been portrayed in most Bollywood films, this paper aims to explore the configuration and re-configurations of Sikh subjectivity as an Other that remains marginalized by their difference and can only be acknowledged through a Hindu-centric lens of approval. Through depictions of what I call as Bolly Sikhs, a dubious space is created which is filled with contextual disjunctures and inconsistencies, a bricolage where Sikh identities and practices are jumbled up or deliberately misrepresented; sometimes the Sikh is presented only through subtractions and absences. The discursive limits of Sikh representation, presence and absence, when examined in context of cultural analyses offered by cultural critics as Edward Said, Stuart Hall, Frantz Fanon, Foucault and Homi Bhabha, among many others, enable us to understand the neo-Orientalist rhetoric whereby Sikhs can be seen as displaced or assimilated, if not betrayed in creative/visual representations. The Sikh thought/mind is nullified and/or absorbed within the hegemonic implications of Hindu thought and the Sikh body is at times, a fashionable icon of vibrant, colorful excess and at others, an object framed in terms of weaker ethos unable to achieve any accomplishment by itself.     

The funeral meal: A significant funerary ritual

Historically, a meal in association with funerary ritual has been a reality in many cultural and religious settings. Our society has experienced a gradual demise of formal funerary ritual, with an accompanying psychological and social impoverishment. Both the immediate bereaved and the larger social community can benefit from a funeral meal which functions as a group experience that focuses on the needs of the living. It can be a shared experience in a familiar structured setting which enables the living to do significant grief work. Practical implications and potential problems will need to be, taken into consideration.