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Instructors: Prof. Dr. Steffen Döll
Event type:
Seminar
Displayed in timetable as:
TiBS Death
Hours per week:
2
Credits:
6,0
Language of instruction:
English
Min. | Max. participants:
- | 20
Comments/contents:
Buddhism observes that the way the world works and what we have come to expect from it are not coextensive. The resulting existential frustration (“suffering”) ends not even in death: Human inability to detach itself from its images of self and world produces supraexistential dispositions, and these effect rebirth, i.e. the cycle of life and death. Just as no existence is exempt from frustration, none seems to be exempt from dying, as well: Not even the Buddha can circumvent, abort, or otherwise avoid death. But while death is a prime source of suffering to sentient beings, it marks the final moment of liberation and non-rebirth to the Buddha. Death’s obviously ambiguous status reflects in many ways in the Buddhist traditions. Accordingly, this seminar sets out to overview, typologize, and analyze some aspects of the many faces of death in the tradition, e.g. in terms of dogmatics (death as concept), religious practices (meditation and visualization, death-bed practices, suicide), social conventions (funerary customs, self-immolation, mummification), as well as imaginations in text and image.
This course is directed primarily towards students of the MA Buddhist Studies. Participants from other fields of study are welcome as long they are equipped with previous academic knowledge of some part of the Buddhist tradition.
Literature:
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