***NEW LOCATION OISE 7-162***
OISE is located at 252 Bloor St West. The seminar room is located on the 7th floor.
Research Talk by Dr. Ralph Craig III, Assistant Professor of Religion at Whitman College
This talk first discusses the South Asian Buddhist notion of pratibhānapratisaṃvid, or “skillful knowledge of inspired eloquence.” I demonstrate that this notion is the foremost skill in the Mahāyāna Buddhist preacher’s rhetorical toolkit. I then turn to a discussion of research that appears in my first monograph on Tina Turner: Dancing in My Dreams: A Spiritual Biography of Tina Turner (Eerdmans Publishing, 2023). Specifically, I show how “inspired eloquence” informs and provides context for Turner’s sermonic stylings when she makes her turn to Buddhist teaching on her last recorded albums. I conclude by considering what the notion of inspired eloquence offers to our understanding of the history of both South Asian Mahāyāna Buddhism and American Buddhism.
Dr. Sinae Kim, Assistant Professor in the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto, will moderate this event.
