File: News#892

STS NEWS # 8  October, 1992
	
	Enough things have happened in the past few months to war
rent issuing an STS newsletter. As a consequence, here it is.

	Past Perfect: Tantra Occluded, The Third "Annual" STS Con
ference at Menlo Park.

	Tantra Occluded, a very successful meeting co-sponsered by STS and
the Institute of Buddhist Studies was held at the Vallombrosa Conference
Center in Menlo Park, California from Thursday, May 28 to Sunday, May 31,
1992. The weather was wonderful: a long Californian weekend of clear, mild
days and gently-breezed even ings. The location was super too. The
Vallombrosa conference center is located on grounds owned and operated by
the Catholic church. The facilities were pleasant; the rooms were small--
reminiscent of monk's cells and/or college dorm rooms-- but quite clean
and comfortable; the grounds were spacious, well-landscaped and contained
the largest ginko tree I have ever seen. The food was excellent. In
addition the planning and execution of our program was excellent, a
tribute to the long months of serious preparations made by Richard Payne.
An open program Saturday evening allowed the non-California participants
to explore the further reaches of the Bay area, from San Francisco, to
Half-moon Bay, to the college bars of Palo Alto. 

	The program itself, as can be seen in the outline below, was 
quite full, as well as being richly diverse. The considerable 
number of European participants was especaily gratifying to those 
of us North Americans who are generally used to more insular 
constituencies. If one counts not just the presenters, but all 
the participants, the geographic range reached from Japan to 
Italy, with stop-offs in France, Wales, Virginia, and Hawaii 
along  the way. Long lunch breaks also allowed a number of us 
from rather provincial climes to visit the bookstore scene along 
the Menlo Park edge of the Stanford University campus.

	The degree to which we dis-occluded tantra remains, perhaps, 
to be seen, but some interesting efforts in that direction were 
made at the dining hall when STS participants tried to explain 
what "tantra" meant to members of the two other groups meeting at 
Vallombrosa that weekend: "Baptists" and "Dreams" according to 
the plackards on their tables (seating was segregated by confer
ence; we were "Tantra.")

	The final program was as follows:

	Thursday evening:

	Frits Staal, University of California at Berkeley, "Veda and 
Tantra in Kerala: Reflections and a Proposal"    

	Friday morning:

	Gavin D. Flood, St. David's University College, Wales, "Body 
and Cosmology in the Jayakhya Samhita and Related Systems"

                           
	Rebecca J. Manring, University of Washington, "Advaitacarya's
Manjari Sadhana: Tantric Influences on Orthodox Bengali Vaisnavism"

	Paul E. Muller-Ortega, Michigan State University, "On the 
Appropriation of the Hindu Tantra: Reflections on the Tantra in 
Popular Culture"

	Friday afternoon:

	Adelheid Harrmann-Pfandt, Philipps University, Marburg, 
"Dakinis in Indo-Tibetan Tantric Buddhism: Some Results of Recent 
Research"

	Vesna Wallace, University of California, Berkeley, "Karma 
and Associated Issues in the Second Chapter of the Kalacakratantra"

	Joseph Loizzo, Private Psychiatric Practice, "The Poetics of 
Ecstasy: Intimate Transmission Across Culture Boundaries"

	Miranda Shaw, University of Richmond, "Sacred Bodies in 
Sacred Space: Female Dancers and Tantric Buddhism"

	Friday evening:

	Andre Padoux, CNRS, Paris, "What Do We Mean by Tantrism?" 

	Saturday morning:
		
	Elisabeth Benard, University of Hawaii at Manoa, "Heads, 
Lost and Found"

	Patrick A. George, University of Pennsylvania, "Illustrating 
Occluded Realms: Tantric Geometry and the Approximation of Perfection"

	Katherine A. Harper, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, "On
the Socio-Historical Context of the Cult of the Saptmatrika

	Saturday afternoon:

	Mark Tatz, Institute of Buddhist Studies, "The Buddhist 
Technical Term A-manasikara"

	Nathan Cutler, California Institute of Integral  Studies, 
"The Presence of Tantrism in the Preliterate Traditions of Western Tibet"

	Fabio Rambelli, University of Venice, "Signs in Recursive 
Cosmos: On the Esoteric Semiotics of Kogyo Daishi Kakuban (1095-
1143)"

	James H. Sanford, University of North Carolina at Chapel 
Hill, "Jewels in the Lotus: Spiritual Gestation in Japanese Buddhism"

	Sunday morning:

	Mark Unno, Stanford University, "Dreams of Pilgrimage: Myoe 
Koben as Tantric Figure"

	Richard K. Payne, Institute of Buddhist Studies, "Ajikan 
Meditation and Ritual Syntax."

	David Komito, John F. Kennedy University, "Buddhist Tantra 
in Jungian Context"

	Two originally-scheduled presenters were unable to make the
meeting: John Stevens of Tohoku Fukushi University who was to have spoken
on "Aikido as Tantra" and Todd L. Lewis of the College of the Holy Cross,
Worcester, Mass. who though unable to attend did arrange to have his
paper, "A Modern Guide for Mahayana Buddhist Life-Cycle Rites: The Nepal
Jana Jivan Kriya Paddhati," sent to all participants at the conference. 

Future Indicative: Plans for Fall 1993, Call for Proposals

	In our last Newsletter we indicated that we hoped to make a 
connection with the American Academy of Religion and to be on 
their fall 1993 annual meeting program. Subsequent events have 
modified that plan. The sponsors of the annually held -----India 
meeting would like to meet jointly with the STS in the fall of 
1993. After some considerable discussion over the phone and by 
mail, we found this proposal to be too valuable to let go. The 
details of these discussions were slightly complex and need 
spelling out here. 

	1. In spite of the rubric,-----, this meeting will welcome 
panels on tantra in any cultural setting. The organizers of the 
mmmm want to see how tantrism fits into the scheme of things 
cross-culturally. For our part we would particularly like to see 
some papers on tantric aspects of Korean and Chinese religion, as 
well as further work on Japan and on Tibet, both of which have in 
fact received fair representation at STS meetings to date. We, 
would indeed, actively seek at least one panel that widened the 
venue still further (see more, below).

	2. "Stylistically" this meeting will fall in-between the 
free-standing meetings of the previous three STS conferences and 
the three-ring circus pattern of most AAR and AAS national meet
ings. That is, there  will be several panels presented at one 
time and not all paricipants will want to attend any particular 
session-- even those on tantrism.

	Further the meeting will take place in an urban-university 
setting rather than the relatively isolated venures of previous 
STS meetings. This may  reduce somewhat the opportunity for (or 
necessity of) intense after-program discussion sessions. 

	3. There are two or three topics that we would like to raise 
specifically as possible concerns for panel presentations. 

	a) Tantra in China and Korea. (Tun-huang and Vietnam might 
be interesting in this light.)

	b) Tantric or "tantroid" phenomena beyond the borders of 
Hinduism and Buddhism. Are there continuites, borrowings, paral
lels to tantra in other cultures: eg. Islam, Kaballah, Gnosticism
, the English Ranters, Aliester Crowley's Sex Magick, and so 
on. If these are in some way parallel to Tantra, are we talking 
diffusion or some kind of Jungian archetypes? These issues get 
touched on now and then, but usually only in a fairly casual way. 
Some hard thought in this area might be rewarding. Are there 
Iranian (Zoroastrian/Manichean) phenomena that fit here?

	c) Similar in a way to the above would be to take a close 
look at the shamanic aspects of Tantrism. If there is such a 
connection is it a parallel or a historical linkage? Which really 
came first anyway? That is, how old is classical shamanism? Did 
it get up-cultured into Tantrism or is Northeast Asian shamanism 
a down-loading of Indo-Iranian themes and practices? Can we tell 
which, if either? 

	d) Secret encodings. We all know about twilight language. 
But there is a whole issue of secret transmissions that is pretty 
open for investigation. In Japan there are esoteric transmission 
in Zen and Nichiren Buddhism, including some quite tantric koans. 
How do these work? What does it mean to write down oral transmis
sions? Are Tendai kirigami esoteric documents? Are all tantric 
initiatory transmissions (empowerments, kanjo) structured in 
basically the same fashion?

	e) It would also be nice to include in the program some 
performance oriented presentations again. 

	The above are suggestive. We would like to see any and all 
proposals-- either several grouped into potential panels or indi
vidual topics that we might put in context. If you have an idea 
you want to work up, please send a preliminary outline of your 
proposal to Jim Sanford, 101 Saunders Hall, UNC-CH, Chapel Hill, 
N.C. 27599-3225 by December 15, 1992. Again, both individual and 
group proposals are most welcome.  The actual number of 
papers/panals presented at the meeting will depend on the number 
and quality of the proposals received, but we would like the STS 
presence to be substantial as well as wide ranging. In the case 
of group panels you may well want to draw in persons not current
ly on the STS mailing list. This would, of course, be wonderful.
 
	5. At the moment it is still our intention to make  a propo
sal to the American Academy of Religion in hopes of developing a 
stable and cost-effective venue for STS meetings for at least 
several years. We would also hope for rather more irregularly 
scheduled free-standing meetings every fourth or fifth year or 
so. 

Steering Committee Changes:

STS has begun rotation of members of the Steering Committee.  The 
current committee now consists of eight persons: Paul Ortega-
Muller has agreed to replace Agehananda Bharati (now deceased), 
and June McDaniel has replaced Joanne Waghorne (resigned).  The 
remaining members are: Kees Bolle, Glen Hayes, Per Kvaerne, Charles
rles Orzech, James Preston, and James Sanford.   Due to irregular 
meetings, we have seen less of each other than would be ideal.  
Therefore we would like to institute the following changes.

	1. We want to institute three sets of staggered three year 
terms.  This would mean that two people would rotate off of and 
two others onto the eight person steering committee each year.
  
	2. For the first cycle of rotation Bharati and Waghorne have 
been replaced by Ortega-Muller and McDaniel.  The new committee 
will meet formally at the next AAR meeting in San Francisco in 
the fall of 1992.  

	3. We would like to split the Secretariat (Newsletter and 
records) off from the steering committee.  For the nonce we would 
like to keep the Secretariat in the hands of Sanford and Orzech, 
but in principal it too should be movable (at the direction of 
the steering committee).  Glenn Hayes continues to handle updates 
and address changes.

Dues Dispensation. The STS coffers are not bursting at the seams, 
but we will not assess dues for 1992-1993. We will, however, 
begin collecting regular dues ($10/year) on July 1, 1993.

Registry Update: The STS Registry was last issued in 1989. It has 
by now become somewhat out of date. At this point we have a 
number of new names and no few address changes handwritten into 
our mailing list.  Therefore, we want to issue a new edition. For 
this purpose we include an up-date form that we ask you to fill 
out and return. Please include any address or phone changes, a 
listing of recent published works or work in progress, and E-mail 
and fax numbers.

	In addition, we have a number of addresses that are no 
longer valid for some old members. What follows is a list of 
these. If any of you can supply current addresses for these 
folks, we'd like to receive these so we can send them this News
letter and get them back on the mailing list.       

 








MEMBERSHIP QUESTIONNAIRE UPDATE



Numerous members have expressed interest in current bibliography from 
members of STS.  Such bibliography, along with address changes could easily 
be added to the STS NEWSLETTER.  We envision such an update once a year 
with the full registry mailed once every two years.

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In the space below, please insert the name and address of anyone who should 
get this letter but is not now on our list or who is on the list but with an 
incorrect address.







Please return to : Prof. Glen A. Hayes,  Department of Religion, Bloomfield 
College,  467 Franklin St., Bloomfield, NJ 07003