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The Barzakh and the Bardo: Challenges to Religious Violence in Sufism and Vajrayana Buddhism

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The Barzakh and the Bardo: Challenges to Religious Violence in Sufism and Vajrayana Buddhism The Barzakh and the Bardo: Challenges to Religious Violence in Sufism and Vajrayana Buddhism JENNIFER GREEN WOODHULL WDHJEN002 SUBMITTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN In fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy Town Faculty of the Humanities UNIVERSITY OFCape CAPE TOWN Octoberof 2019 Supervisor: Associate Professor Sa‘diyya Shaikh Department of Religious Studies, University of Cape Town University The copyright of this thesis vests Townin the author. No quotation from it or information derived from it is to be published without full acknowledgement of the source. The thesis is to be used for private study or non- commercial research purposes Capeonly. of Published by the University of Cape Town (UCT) in terms of the non-exclusive license granted to UCT by the author. University DECLARATION I, Jennifer Green Woodhull, hereby declare that the work on which this dissertation is based is my original work (except where acknowledgements indicate otherwise) and that neither the whole work nor any part of it has been, is being, or is to be submitted for another degree in this or any other university. I empower the university to reproduce for the purpose of research either the whole or any portion of the contents in any manner whatsoever. January 26, 2020 ii Acknowledgements This dissertation owes its existence to an extraordinary group of mentors and friends. Foremost among these is my academic supervisor, the brilliant and heartfelt Associate Professor Sa‘diyya Shaikh. The Mahayana Buddhist texts extol the union of wisdom, compassion, and skillful means; these rare and radiant qualities come together in the person of Dr. Shaikh. My debt to her can never be repaid. For generously stepping in with the requisite funding, my profound gratitude is due to Helen and Rob Douglas, Pat Peret, and David Wild. I also thank the National Research Foundation (South Africa) for scholarship support. University would have remained a pipe dream were it not that Dr. Lyn Davis wouldn’t take no for an answer and Dr. Dhammamegha Leatt went out on a limb to champion me. Helen Douglas volunteered her world-class editing skills, enhancing this work in registers well beyond the merely technical. Dr. Laura Marshall extended unwavering kindness and generosity throughout the project. Charlotte Rotterdam introduced me to Victor W. Turner. Dr. Elaine Nogueira-Godsey shone the light of her considerable experience on my darker passages. Jackie St. Joan, Pam Hicks, and my sister, Janet Frazer, showered me with moral and material support throughout. Dr. Judith Simmer-Brown provided unwavering intellectual and spiritual mentorship, and Dr. Anna Gade guided me expertly through the intricacies of the barzakh. Pat Peret gave me a home so I could keep writing; David Wild gave me a Cadillac to get away in when I just couldn’t. I thank the University of Cape Town’s Religious Studies Department for allowing me to fulfill a lifelong dream, the University of Wisconsin-Madison for a splendid exchange scholarship, and Naropa University and the Frederick P. Lenz Foundation for a truly memorable fellowship semester. I’m also grateful to the kind and competent librarians at the Charles L. Tutt Library at Colorado College, who graciously accommodated me while I worked on the final chapters. And finally: Dad, this one’s for you. iii What is science? It is trying to catch a very small black cat in a very large, entirely dark room. What is philosophy? It is trying to catch a very small black cat in a very large, entirely dark room, when it is not there. — Ernest Gellner, the Times Literary Supplement Writing a doctorate is putting a tiny black cat in a large dark room and then coming back over and over to try to check if it is there. —David Shulman, personal communication to Wendy Doniger iv Table of Contents ABSTRACT 1 CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 2 Methodology 5 Religious Violence 8 Liminality 9 The Barzakh 10 The Bardo 12 Integrations and Resonances 13 Conclusion 13 CHAPTER TWO: RELIGIOUS VIOLENCE 15 What Is Religion? 15 Defining Religion 16 Religion and the Academy 17 Origins of Religion 17 The Western View of Religion: A Brief History 19 Religion and Power 23 What Is Violence? 23 Violence and the Academy 25 Monotheism and Violence 26 Does “Religious Violence” Exist? 27 Secular Violence 29 Strong, Weak, and Pathological Religionists 30 Other Triggers 31 Against Reductionism 32 v The Role of Emotion 34 Emotion and Religion 34 Emotion and Violence 36 Ecstasy 36 Religion, Violence, and Identity 38 Group Identity 40 Religion and Identity 42 Violence and Identity 43 Conclusion 45 CHAPTER THREE: LIMINALITY 47 Liminality: The Experience of Transition 48 Victor Turner 49 Defining Liminality 50 Liminality and the Academy 52 Extending the Scope 53 The Merits of Liminality 54 Permanent Liminality 57 Liminality and Religious Violence 61 Impurity and Pollution 62 Volatility and Resistance 64 Two Hypotheses 65 Liminality and Identity 67 Identity as Boundary 69 Group Identity 72 Liminality and Group Identity 75 Liminality and Religion 79 Conclusion 81 CHAPTER FOUR: THE BARZAKH 85 vi Ibn al-‘Arabī 86 The Barzakh 87 Ibn al-‘Arabī’s Barzakh 87 Meaning and Metaphor 91 Al-Khayāl, “Imagination” 94 Existence and Non-Existence 99 The Divine Names 102 Al-Insān al-Kāmil, “the Complete Human Being” 106 Good and Evil 109 Heaven, Hell, and the Barzakh 112 Paradox and Inclusivity 117 The Waqt 120 Conclusion 121 CHAPTER FIVE: THE BARDO 125 What Is the Bardo? 130 Anātman 131 The Fourth Moment 134 The Bardo Thötröl 138 Relative and Ultimate Truth 141 The Self 146 Conclusion 147 CHAPTER SIX: INTEGRATIONS AND RESONANCES 150 Dualism 150 vii Dualism and Religion 152 Liminality 154 Reflective Interiority 155 Inclusivity as Spiritual Practice 158 A Hermeneutic of Courage 162 Context in Violence 164 Conclusion 169 CHAPTER SEVEN: CONCLUSION 174 Identity and Religious Violence 175 Truth and Its Opposite 176 Liminality 177 Two Hypotheses 179 Experience and Emotion 182 The Manipulation of Experience 185 Language 187 Barzakh and Bardo 190 The Immediate Threshold 191 Attributes of Liminality 193 Paradox and Identity 197 Liminality as Hermeneutic 199 The Value of This Study 204 Where to from Here? 207 WORKS CITED 208 viii Abstract In the twenty-first century, religious violence has become endemic in our world. Scholars are divided on the true motivations for such violence, however. While some perceive inherent incitements to violence embedded in religion itself, others blame other factors—primarily, competition for resources, which then co-opts religious feeling in order to justify and escalate conflict. This dissertation proposes that more fruitful answers to the riddle of religious violence may lie in the relationship between collective identity and religious allegiance. Identity construction is liminal and, as such, experiential. Hence, this study applies the analytical lens of liminality to explore possible understandings of religious violence. Taking the position that liminal passages are natural and unavoidable aspects of lived experience, it argues that the fixation on doctrinal certainties and religious ideals common among perpetrators of religious violence functions largely to oppose the ambivalence and uncertainty characteristic of liminality. It further posits the hypothetical phenomena of reactive projection and autonomic liminality as reactions to liminal experience, leading to eruptions of violence. The Tibetan Buddhist bardo and Sufi barzakh constitute religiously sanctioned instances of liminality. Although these passages are conventionally perceived as postmortem locales, both systems include broader metaphysical understandings, making their transformative potential profoundly relevant to spiritual practice during this lifetime. I argue that a close reading of the bardo and the barzakh demonstrates the capacity of religious tradition to offer compelling alternatives to the fixation on the extreme views typically implicated in religious violence. I further propose that the nondualistic, inclusive worldview implicit in understandings of the bardo and barzakh may prove useful in promoting a practice of “reflective interiority”—not only in disrupting the rigid mindset of those moved to perpetrate religious violence, but also in shifting the moral fixity sometimes associated with the scholarship on religious violence. 1 Chapter One: Introduction This dissertation argues that liminality, as a naturally recurring mode of being in human dynamics, offers a useful analytical lens through which to view the phenomena we have come to call “religious violence”. It uses the Tibetan Buddhist bardo and the Islamic barzakh1 as examples of liminal events embedded in established religious systems. Current scholarship indicates that the jury is out on whether religious allegiance is a proximate cause of violence. As detailed in the following chapter, some scholars make compelling arguments for religion as inherently violent; others argue as convincingly for religion as a secondary, often cynically manipulated, force in violence that is more accurately traced to nationalistic interests and/or competition for scarce resources. Still other researchers seek triggers for religious violence in evolutionary imperatives. This dissertation does not presume to enter that debate. Rather, it drills down into the dynamics of violence, finding and exploring correspondences between religion and violence that hinge on questions of identity. My interest in personal and group identity lies in the liminal events intrinsic
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