The Linga as Center
A Study in Religious Phenomenology
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8207451 |
|---|---|
| Authors | HERBERT C WOLF (Wittenberg University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1978 |
| Volume | 46 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 369-388 |
| Publication date | 1978-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of the American Academy of Religion (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0002-7189 • E-ISSN: 1477-4585 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/jaarel/xlvi.3.369 |
| OpenAlex | W2041745805 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
The concept of the center is an appropriate way of speaking about those realitites which provide the power of being and meaning for the world and human existence. In the popular Hindu tradition the center is most apparent in sacred spaces where the transcendent intersects ordinary time, space, casuality and substance. Such a center is usually a geographical place, a holy image, or a sacred organism which functions variously as an ontological center (the ground and power of being), an axiological center (the ground of meaning and value), or an intersectional center (an axis mundi opening up communication between the worlds). The center is also apparent in myths of a sacred time (in illo tempore) when the world was properly ordered. Various rites and practices have developed to give access to the power of the center, to reorganize chaos into cosmos. The 800-year-old Lingāyat tradition perceives itself as a Hindu reform movement with universal possibilities. It rejects popular centers such as temples, pilgrimage places, priests, images of the divine, and calendars. Nevertheless, as this paper seeks to demonstrate, the center is apparent in two forms among Lingāyats. First, the small nonrepresentational linga—worn on the body after initiation and held in the hand in lingapūjā—functions as the center which gives power, meaning and unity to the devotee “you've got the whole world in your hand.” This is possible through the mediation of the guru and jangama who, along with the linga, are themselves centers of power, astavaranas. Secondly, the Lingāyat tradition asserts that ultimately each lingabhakta, devotee, becomes a “moving” center, lingarūpa, in contrast to static images and sacred places. The lingabhakta is divinized. In the language of Lingāyat metaphysics (śatki-vaśista-ādvaita, dynamic qualified nondualism), the original oneness of all reality, which in existence has become a duality by the separation of lunga and anga, God and the soul, is restored by disciplined stages on life's way (satsthāla). The devotee becomes Śiva, the center of all reality, the One Both the linga and lingabhakta function as ontological, axiological, intersectional and temporal centers. The paper suggests further that, despite its reformatory quality, Lingāyatism succumbs to the popular need for more traditional centers to provide the power of being and meaning, to give access to the higher realms, and to order creation. Instead of maintaining the exclusiveness and uniqueness of the istalinga and lingabhakta as centers—and despite assertions to the contrary—Lingāyats perpetuate caste structures, have their own myths, calendars, pilgrimage places, temples, shrines and images. In the AUM āśram in Dharwar, for example, there is a mandala-like underground meditation chamber in the literal center of which is a large Lingāyat-type linga which is the focus for meditation and puja. Śakti-vaśista-ādvatta deteriorates into ordinary dualism, and the God who is apart has centers in the midst—instead of dwelling within as the true self.
Aesthetics · Center (category theory) · Epistemology · Hinduism · Meaning (existential) · Mythology · Pilgrimage · Power (physics) · Sociology · Theology · Indian and Buddhist Studies · Indian History and Philosophy · Philosophy · Religious studies · Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices
| Citations per year | 0.09 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 1983 - 2016 (34) |
| Highly cited | No |