Gavin Flood
Biographic Data
| ID | 382767 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Gavin Flood |
| GIVEN NAMES | Gavin |
| FAMILY NAME | Flood |
| SIGNATURE | FLOOD G |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Stirling |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5856-6910 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 30 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 49 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1989 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Tantric religion and social change
During the period between the seventh and 11th centuries, several religious innovations occurred in Indic religions (which I refer to anachronistically as ‘Hinduism’). In particular, during this period, we see the rise of tantric traditions based on a new revelation of texts, some of whose followers regarded themselves as transcending the older revelation of the Veda. This article explores a period of rapid religious transformation that significa…
Hindu and Catholic, Priest and Scholar: A Love Story
This is a love story, but an unusual one in that it charts a Jesuit priest's love for a tradition and process of theologizing across the boundaries of his own religion. It is also the story of the love of a man for a God, hidden in darkness, of whom glimpses are caught in disparate sets of sacred texts. The texts are those, on the one hand, of the Sanskrit and Tamil literature of Hinduism, both philosophy and poetry, and, on the other hand, of Ch…
Tight and Loose Asceticism
Asceticism has been integral to human communities for millennia and is an important trait that sets humans apart from other hominins. This introductory survey of "tight" and "loose" asceticism reflects on what is meant by asceticism and on its place in history. A tight or strong sense of asceticism as world- and body-denial entails disavowal of the cultural values of family, material prosperity, and community; but a weak, or loose, sense of ascet…
Śākta-Śaiva Meditation as Expanded Awareness in Medieval Kashmir
Contemplative traditions focused on Śiva and the Goddess developed during the medieval or post-Gupta period in Kashmir, although not limited to that region. In this paper I present textual accounts of a kind of meditation and its accompanying doctrine geared towards liberation conceptualized as an expanded awareness described in Śākta-Śaiva scriptures. This Śākta-Śaiva tradition has scriptural authority in revealed texts and its vision is articul…
Wiley Blackwell Companion to Hinduism
Wiley Blackwell Companion to Hinduism
Early Tantric Vaiṣṇavism: Three Newly Discovered Works of the Pañcarātra, the Svāyambhuvapañcarātra, Devāmṛtapañcarātra and Aṣṭādaśavidhāna, Critically Edited from Their 11th and 12th Century Nepalese…
Early Tantric Vaiṣṇavism: Three Newly Discovered Works of the Pañcarātra, the Svāyambhuvapañcarātra, Devāmṛtapañcarātra and Aṣṭādaśavidhāna, Critically Edited from Their 11th and 12th Century Nepalese Palm Leaf Manuscripts. Edited with an introduction and notes by Diwakar Acharya. Collection Indologie, vol. 129, Early Tantra Series, vol. 2. Pondichéry and Hamburg: Institut Français de Pondichéry, École Française d’Extrême-Orient, Asien-Afrika-Ins…
The Oxford History of Hinduism: Hindu Practice
This history of Hindu religious practices examines traditions of asceticism, yoga, and devotion (bhakti), including dance and music, developed in Hinduism over a long period of time, placing the theme of practice within a broader trajectory of cultural history. Some of these practices, notably those denoted by the term yoga, are orientated towards salvation from the cycle of reincarnation and go back several thousand years, borne witness to in an…
Oxford History of Hinduism: Hindu Practice
Implicit Anthropologies in Pre-philosophical Śaivism with Particular Reference to the Netra-tantra
While there are overt philosophies of the person in both dualistic and non-dualistic Śaivism that developed their doctrines explicitly in relation to each other and to non-Śaiva traditions, especially Buddhism, many Śaiva texts exemplify what might be called a pre-philosophical discourse. Such works contain philosophical ideas but do not present systematic arguments (that is the job of later commentators) and are often regarded as divine revelati…
Politics, Experience, and the Languages of Holiness
During the last half century, the category of holiness fell into disrepair although there are recent signs of its revitalization with the Pope’s apostolic exhortation on holiness, Gaudete et Exultate and attention being paid to the category in political philosophy (the work of Agamben and Esposito) and sociology (the work of Hans Joas). In this context, this article argues for the philosophical justification of linking holiness with prepredicativ…
Religion and the Philosophy of Life
This book considers how religion as the source of civilization transforms the fundamental bio-sociology of humans through language and the somatic exploration of religious ritual and prayer. It offers an integrative account of the nature of the human, based on what contemporary scientists tell us, especially evolutionary science and social neuroscience, as well as through the history of civilizations. Part I contemplates fundamental questions and…
Nisvasatattvasamhita: The Earliest Surviving Saiva Tantra, vol. 1: A Critical and Annotated Translation of the Mulasutra, Uttarasutra and Nayasutra. Edited by Dominic Goodall in collaboration with Ale…
The Niśvāsatattvasaṃhitā: The Earliest Surviving Śaiva Tantra, vol. 1: A Critical and Annotated Translation of the Mūlasūtra, Uttarasūtra and Nayasūtra. Edited by Dominic Goodall in collaboration with Alexis Sanderson and Harunaga Isaacson with contributions of NiraJan Kaflr, Diwakar Acharya, and others. Collection Indologie, no. 128, Early Tantra Series, no. 1. Pondichéry: institut Français de Pondichéry, Paris: École Française d’Extrême-Orient,…
The political sacred and the holiness of life itself
This article reflects on Agamben’s formulation of the sacred within the political order of the West, contrasting this with the Durkheim/Bellah view of the sacred/profane opposition, and then presenting two arguments that reduction of the sacred to the political is insufficient, one a form of biological reductionism that seeks to locate the sacred within the common, biological nature of human life itself, the other an abductive argument for human …
Religion and the Specter of the West: Sikhism, India, Postcoloniality, and the Politics of Translation
Alston, A.J., The Śankara Source Book
Dwelling on the Borders: Self. Text and World
In spite of secularist predictions, religion on a global scale has not gone away and shows little sign of dimnishing. Within the context of the renewal of interest in religion and the assertion of religion in the public realm, I seek in this article to explore the ways in which the self has been (and continues to be) formed in religious traditions. Drawing on substantive examples from my work on textual traditions in India and Europe, the article…
The Phenomenology of Scripture: Patterns of Reception and Discovery Behind Scriptural Reasoning
While there are fundamental problems concerning the scientific or objective aspirations of a descriptive phenomenology of religion, a second level or hermeneutical phenomenology raises theologically and philosophically interesting questions about the nature of scripture across traditions and contributes to a semiotically informed understanding that takes seriously both external, text‐historical scholarship and internal theological concerns. I wis…
Response to Schweiker
Reply to Levene
I FOUND NANCY LEVENE’S response to my paper to be most thought provoking and conducive to deepening consideration about these matters. I am not so sure that the kind of inquiry she advocates is so different from the kind that I would advocate. I am not sure whether to be offended or flattered by her comparison of my paper with Eliade’s essay on the “A New Humanism” (which I have not, I am ashamed to say, yet read). The world has moved on consider…
Reflections on Tradition and Inquiry in the Study of Religions
Journal Article Reflections on Tradition and Inquiry in the Study of Religions Get access Gavin Flood Gavin Flood Gavin Flood can be reached at the department of Religious Studies, University of Stirling, UK. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Volume 74, Issue 1, March 2006, Pages 47-58, https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfj012 Published: 27 January 2006
The Ascetic Self: Subjectivity, Memory and Tradition
Gavin Flood's *The Ascetic Self: Subjectivity, Memory, and Tradition* explores the concept of asceticism within Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism. He argues that ascetic practices can be understood as the internalization of tradition, shaping the narrative of an individual's life in accordance with established narratives. This performance of tradition involves a tension between the desire to eradicate the will or self and the inherent act of w…
Arius: Heresy and Tradition
Arius: Heresy and Tradition RowanWilliams Second Edition London SCM Press 2001 xiii + 378 pp £ 18.82
Chakrabarti, Kisor Kumar, Classical Indian Philosophy of Mind. The Nyāaya Dualist Tradition
No Abstract
The Purification of the Body in Tantric Ritual Representation
No Abstract
The Ascetic Self: Subjectivity, Memory and Tradition
Gavin Flood's *The Ascetic Self: Subjectivity, Memory, and Tradition* explores the concept of asceticism within Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism. He argues that ascetic practices can be understood as the internalization of tradition, shaping the narrative of an individual's life in accordance with established narratives. This performance of tradition involves a tension between the desire to eradicate the will or self and the inherent act of w…
Arius: Heresy and Tradition
Arius: Heresy and Tradition RowanWilliams Second Edition London SCM Press 2001 xiii + 378 pp £ 18.82
The Purification of the Body in Tantric Ritual Representation
No Abstract
Implicit Anthropologies in Pre-philosophical Śaivism with Particular Reference to the Netra-tantra
While there are overt philosophies of the person in both dualistic and non-dualistic Śaivism that developed their doctrines explicitly in relation to each other and to non-Śaiva traditions, especially Buddhism, many Śaiva texts exemplify what might be called a pre-philosophical discourse. Such works contain philosophical ideas but do not present systematic arguments (that is the job of later commentators) and are often regarded as divine revelati…
The political sacred and the holiness of life itself
This article reflects on Agamben’s formulation of the sacred within the political order of the West, contrasting this with the Durkheim/Bellah view of the sacred/profane opposition, and then presenting two arguments that reduction of the sacred to the political is insufficient, one a form of biological reductionism that seeks to locate the sacred within the common, biological nature of human life itself, the other an abductive argument for human …
Religion and the Specter of the West: Sikhism, India, Postcoloniality, and the Politics of Translation
Reflections on Tradition and Inquiry in the Study of Religions
Journal Article Reflections on Tradition and Inquiry in the Study of Religions Get access Gavin Flood Gavin Flood Gavin Flood can be reached at the department of Religious Studies, University of Stirling, UK. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Volume 74, Issue 1, March 2006, Pages 47-58, https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfj012 Published: 27 January 2006
Politics, Experience, and the Languages of Holiness
During the last half century, the category of holiness fell into disrepair although there are recent signs of its revitalization with the Pope’s apostolic exhortation on holiness, Gaudete et Exultate and attention being paid to the category in political philosophy (the work of Agamben and Esposito) and sociology (the work of Hans Joas). In this context, this article argues for the philosophical justification of linking holiness with prepredicativ…
Techniques of body and desire in Kashmir Śaivism
This paper is concerned with the way in which monistic Śaiva ideas about the body relate to religious practices. For the Śaiva monist, the body is both identical with the pure consciousness of Śiva and is a result of the projection of his consciousness as the hierarchical cosmos. This paper examines how these ideas are reflected in Śaiva religious practices focused on the body, which intend to realize the body as divine. In this connection Śaiva …
Shared Realities and Symbolic Forms in Kashmir Saivism
SHARED REALITIES AND SYMBOLIC FORMS IN KASHMIR SAIVISM GAVIN D. FLOOD Inlroduction The expression 'Kashmir Saivism' has come to refer to the vari- ous traditions of non-dualistic Saivism which developed in Kashmir between the 9th and llth centuries C.E.1 By 'non-dualistic' or 'monistic' I mean the Tantric Saiva traditions which revered a scriptural authority other than the orthodox Vedas, namely the Tantras and Agamas, and which propounded a doct…
Shared Realities and Symbolic Forms in Kashmir Saivism
SHARED REALITIES AND SYMBOLIC FORMS IN KASHMIR SAIVISM GAVIN D. FLOOD Inlroduction The expression 'Kashmir Saivism' has come to refer to the vari- ous traditions of non-dualistic Saivism which developed in Kashmir between the 9th and llth centuries C.E.1 By 'non-dualistic' or 'monistic' I mean the Tantric Saiva traditions which revered a scriptural authority other than the orthodox Vedas, namely the Tantras and Agamas, and which propounded a doct…
Techniques of body and desire in Kashmir Śaivism
This paper is concerned with the way in which monistic Śaiva ideas about the body relate to religious practices. For the Śaiva monist, the body is both identical with the pure consciousness of Śiva and is a result of the projection of his consciousness as the hierarchical cosmos. This paper examines how these ideas are reflected in Śaiva religious practices focused on the body, which intend to realize the body as divine. In this connection Śaiva …
Beyond Phenomenology: Rethinking the Study of Religion
The idea of religion reductionism and research strategies phenomenology narrative theory critical theory dialogism reflexivity narrative identity epilogue - towards a critical religious studies
Chakrabarti, Kisor Kumar, Classical Indian Philosophy of Mind. The Nyāaya Dualist Tradition
No Abstract
The Purification of the Body in Tantric Ritual Representation
No Abstract
Dravid, Raja Ram, The Problem of Universals in Indian Philosophy
No Abstract
Bühnemann, Gudrun, The Iconography of Hindu Tantric Deities
No Abstract
Arius: Heresy and Tradition
Arius: Heresy and Tradition RowanWilliams Second Edition London SCM Press 2001 xiii + 378 pp £ 18.82
The Ascetic Self: Subjectivity, Memory and Tradition
Gavin Flood's *The Ascetic Self: Subjectivity, Memory, and Tradition* explores the concept of asceticism within Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism. He argues that ascetic practices can be understood as the internalization of tradition, shaping the narrative of an individual's life in accordance with established narratives. This performance of tradition involves a tension between the desire to eradicate the will or self and the inherent act of w…
The Phenomenology of Scripture: Patterns of Reception and Discovery Behind Scriptural Reasoning
While there are fundamental problems concerning the scientific or objective aspirations of a descriptive phenomenology of religion, a second level or hermeneutical phenomenology raises theologically and philosophically interesting questions about the nature of scripture across traditions and contributes to a semiotically informed understanding that takes seriously both external, text‐historical scholarship and internal theological concerns. I wis…
Response to Schweiker
Reply to Levene
I FOUND NANCY LEVENE’S response to my paper to be most thought provoking and conducive to deepening consideration about these matters. I am not so sure that the kind of inquiry she advocates is so different from the kind that I would advocate. I am not sure whether to be offended or flattered by her comparison of my paper with Eliade’s essay on the “A New Humanism” (which I have not, I am ashamed to say, yet read). The world has moved on consider…
Reflections on Tradition and Inquiry in the Study of Religions
Journal Article Reflections on Tradition and Inquiry in the Study of Religions Get access Gavin Flood Gavin Flood Gavin Flood can be reached at the department of Religious Studies, University of Stirling, UK. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Volume 74, Issue 1, March 2006, Pages 47-58, https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfj012 Published: 27 January 2006
Alston, A.J., The Śankara Source Book
Dwelling on the Borders: Self. Text and World
In spite of secularist predictions, religion on a global scale has not gone away and shows little sign of dimnishing. Within the context of the renewal of interest in religion and the assertion of religion in the public realm, I seek in this article to explore the ways in which the self has been (and continues to be) formed in religious traditions. Drawing on substantive examples from my work on textual traditions in India and Europe, the article…
Religion and the Specter of the West: Sikhism, India, Postcoloniality, and the Politics of Translation
The political sacred and the holiness of life itself
This article reflects on Agamben’s formulation of the sacred within the political order of the West, contrasting this with the Durkheim/Bellah view of the sacred/profane opposition, and then presenting two arguments that reduction of the sacred to the political is insufficient, one a form of biological reductionism that seeks to locate the sacred within the common, biological nature of human life itself, the other an abductive argument for human …
Nisvasatattvasamhita: The Earliest Surviving Saiva Tantra, vol. 1: A Critical and Annotated Translation of the Mulasutra, Uttarasutra and Nayasutra. Edited by Dominic Goodall in collaboration with Ale…
The Niśvāsatattvasaṃhitā: The Earliest Surviving Śaiva Tantra, vol. 1: A Critical and Annotated Translation of the Mūlasūtra, Uttarasūtra and Nayasūtra. Edited by Dominic Goodall in collaboration with Alexis Sanderson and Harunaga Isaacson with contributions of NiraJan Kaflr, Diwakar Acharya, and others. Collection Indologie, no. 128, Early Tantra Series, no. 1. Pondichéry: institut Français de Pondichéry, Paris: École Française d’Extrême-Orient,…
Religion and the Philosophy of Life
This book considers how religion as the source of civilization transforms the fundamental bio-sociology of humans through language and the somatic exploration of religious ritual and prayer. It offers an integrative account of the nature of the human, based on what contemporary scientists tell us, especially evolutionary science and social neuroscience, as well as through the history of civilizations. Part I contemplates fundamental questions and…
The Oxford History of Hinduism: Hindu Practice
This history of Hindu religious practices examines traditions of asceticism, yoga, and devotion (bhakti), including dance and music, developed in Hinduism over a long period of time, placing the theme of practice within a broader trajectory of cultural history. Some of these practices, notably those denoted by the term yoga, are orientated towards salvation from the cycle of reincarnation and go back several thousand years, borne witness to in an…
Oxford History of Hinduism: Hindu Practice
Implicit Anthropologies in Pre-philosophical Śaivism with Particular Reference to the Netra-tantra
While there are overt philosophies of the person in both dualistic and non-dualistic Śaivism that developed their doctrines explicitly in relation to each other and to non-Śaiva traditions, especially Buddhism, many Śaiva texts exemplify what might be called a pre-philosophical discourse. Such works contain philosophical ideas but do not present systematic arguments (that is the job of later commentators) and are often regarded as divine revelati…
Politics, Experience, and the Languages of Holiness
During the last half century, the category of holiness fell into disrepair although there are recent signs of its revitalization with the Pope’s apostolic exhortation on holiness, Gaudete et Exultate and attention being paid to the category in political philosophy (the work of Agamben and Esposito) and sociology (the work of Hans Joas). In this context, this article argues for the philosophical justification of linking holiness with prepredicativ…
Early Tantric Vaiṣṇavism: Three Newly Discovered Works of the Pañcarātra, the Svāyambhuvapañcarātra, Devāmṛtapañcarātra and Aṣṭādaśavidhāna, Critically Edited from Their 11th and 12th Century Nepalese…
Early Tantric Vaiṣṇavism: Three Newly Discovered Works of the Pañcarātra, the Svāyambhuvapañcarātra, Devāmṛtapañcarātra and Aṣṭādaśavidhāna, Critically Edited from Their 11th and 12th Century Nepalese Palm Leaf Manuscripts. Edited with an introduction and notes by Diwakar Acharya. Collection Indologie, vol. 129, Early Tantra Series, vol. 2. Pondichéry and Hamburg: Institut Français de Pondichéry, École Française d’Extrême-Orient, Asien-Afrika-Ins…
Wiley Blackwell Companion to Hinduism
Philosophy (21 works) · Indian and Buddhist Studies (15 works) · Epistemology (10 works) · History (10 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Theology (9 works) · Indian History and Philosophy (8 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · Art (7 works) · Religious studies (7 works)