Hermeneutics of Engagement

This chapter recovers the contrasting pedagogical approaches of Ram Dass and Agehananda Bharati during Naropa University's first sessions in 1974 to propose a framework for contemplative education. It argues that Ram Dass's perennialism has pedagogical liabilities, while Agehananda Bharati's call for non-eclectic study and practice of South Asian religious traditions offers a corrective. The authors propose a rapprochement that contextualizes India's religious traditions while remaining open to their embodied practices and ways of knowing, and historicizes contemplative education itself. Such a pedagogy recaptures a sense of lineage in pluralistic settings, enabling students to connect to an intergenerational process beyond individual vocational aspirations.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Recovering the contrariety of the pedagogical approaches of Ram Dass and Agehananda Bharati during the first sessions of Naropa University in 1974, this chapter proposes a framework for contemplative education grounded in a historical awareness and reflexive embrace of the countercultural lineages that were critical to its formation. Assessing the pedagogical liabilities of Ram Dass’s perennialism by counterposing it with Agehananda’s clarion call for non-eclectic study and practice of South Asian religious traditions brings to light a possible rapprochement of their sensibilities. This involves contextualizing India’s religious traditions while remaining open to their embodied practices, aesthetic visions, and ways of knowing, and, in a further step, historicizing the emergence of contemplative education itself. In a pluralistic educational setting, such a contemplative pedagogy recaptures an important element of the structure of traditions whose metaphysical claims are necessarily bracketed, namely, a sense of lineage. Articulating a countercultural lineage that frames students’ own lives and participatory engagement makes it possible for them to connect to an intergenerational process that informs but extends beyond their own individual vocational aspirations.