Doing Theology Comparatively

01/15/2026 · Tue/Thu 10:30-11:45 AM · Brad Bannon · Boston College

📄 Synopsis

In this class session, Professor Brad Bannon explores the methodological foundations of comparative theology through personal narrative and philosophical metaphor. Bannon details a significant career transition from the financial sector at the World Trade Center to academia following the events of September 11, 2001, using this experience to illustrate the existential necessity of an 'anchor' in a changing world. The lecture distinguishes between Comparative Theology—described as a 'sojourning' process of engaging with a foreign canon before returning to one's home tradition—and the Theology of Religions, which investigates the diversity of religious paths. Bannon introduces the Sanskrit concept of darśana, emphasizing its dual nature as both seeing the divine and being seen by the divine, particularly through the use of a mūrti (sacred image). The session also covers the logistics of the course, including the formation of podcast teams and the structure of 'leadership days' for student participation.

⚡ Key Takeaways

Theology is defined as a philosophical investigation of first principles anchored in a specific canon of sacred texts.
Comparative theology involves a 'sojourning' process where a student temporarily commits to a second tradition to gain insights that allow them to re-read their home tradition differently.
The Theology of Religions is a distinct discipline that seeks to understand why religious diversity exists and how different traditions relate to one another.
Raimon Panikkar’s mountain metaphor suggests that different religions are distinct paths ascending toward the same ultimate peak.
The concept of darśana refers to a 'two-way' vision where the practitioner seeks to see the deity and, more importantly, to be seen by the deity.
A mūrti is transformed from a human artifact into a sacred 'seat' (pīṭha) for the divine through a ritual eye-opening ceremony.
Leadership days are designed to encourage student participation, where designated team members lead discussions anchored in the assigned texts.
The upcoming midterm will be heavily focused on objective vocabulary, particularly Sanskrit terms introduced in the course materials.

🎤 Transcript Tap any timestamp to jump the audio player

Opening Meditation and Breathwork

Brad

Howdy, welcome back.

Brad

Thanks for coming back. Let's take a moment just to calm our minds, calm our bodies.

Brad

Just take a second to sort of, you know, transition.

Brad

If you feel your mind jumping all over the place, you could focus on your breath.

Brad

Try to make your breath the same in and out.

Brad

Let's take one breath together. Go ahead and breathe in.

Brad

And out.

Brad

Word?

Brad

Word.

1:53

Introductory Quiz and Paper Collection

Brad

Nice.

Brad

All right, let's start with the fun stuff. Just have a little quiz.

Student

Way more.

Brad

Yeah, nice.

Brad

I forgot to mention, if you have handwritten notes or if you have notes that are printed that are not on a screen, feel free to use them. Just take another minute to kind of round off your answers. Not looking for essays. A sentence or so about each would be fine.

Brad

Good.

Brad

Good.

Brad

I'm trying to figure out the best way to organize them, right?

Brad

The other class was easy, just put it on. I don't know how to do it in here. Let's try this. You two in the middle, we'll split the class this way.

Brad

And you guys pass them that way.

Brad

You guys pass them that way, right?

Brad

And make sure that you put, put yours on top, right?

Brad

So yours will be on the bottom and yours will be on the bottom, right?

Brad

And then just pass them that way.

Brad

We'll figure it out.

Brad

This is not— this is just improvised for day 1.

Brad

But pass them that way, put yours on top, and then pass them forward.

Brad

That's gonna be perfect.

Brad

I'll get there eventually.

Brad

What I'm trying to avoid is that thing, you know, when you're like a high school teacher and you have to like go through and like sort papers and stuff like that, you know?

Brad

Trying to avoid, trying to simplify.

Brad

My existence on the planet.

Brad

Awesome.

Brad

Thank you.

Brad

Okay, that didn't work, but that's fine.

Brad

I'll come up with a system.

Brad

I do like the way the desks are arranged in here though.

Brad

It's nice.

10:51

Instructor Biography and Personal Religious Journey

Brad

So today I want to kind of restart the class.

Brad

I won't do what I did on Tuesday.

Brad

That was just really intended to scare you all away and to get off to the right kind of start.

Brad

Happy with how it went.

Brad

But today we'll do a more traditional kind of thing, which is, you know, get to know each other and answer any questions about the syllabus, that kind of stuff. But let's start with just telling you— I'm going to tell you a little bit about myself, how I got to be here, and why, why I drive 2.5 hours each way to teach this course. ⚠

Brad

My name's Brad Bannon, we already covered that.

Brad

So I'm from Spartanburg, South Carolina, upstate South Carolina. All my family is still there, pretty much. And I was born and raised there. I went to school at Furman University, which is there in upstate South Carolina. I went to Furman on a music scholarship. And got a music degree, but along the way I added a finance degree. ⚠

Brad

So double majored in music and finance.

Brad

I did take a little bit of religion, no theology, but it wasn't really offered there at the time, but a couple of religion classes. And then after I graduated, that was 1997, graduated and got married. I have a bad habit of that. I'm trying to break that habit. But got married to my accompanist and moved to New York City. Moved to New York City with no prospects of anything, nothing, no friends, no job prospects, no anything really. No, not really even a lead on an apartment. ⚠

Brad

We had like a sublet for 3 months and that was it.

Brad

And, but things went okay. I wound up getting a job at actually the premier retail brokerage branch at Morgan Stanley on the 73rd floor of Tower 2 of the World Trade Center. ⚠

Brad

Foreshadowing.

Brad

And bought an apartment on the Upper West Side and everything's pretty, pretty chill. My ex, my ex-wife, big Broadway star. My dad is super awkward and, you know, when we're like sitting around, you know, just like, oh, it's time to have like, you know, just time to like talk or whatever. ⚠

Brad

I don't know, I could see his wheels turning.

Brad

He's like, what should I ask Brad?

Brad

And it almost always— he almost always lands on asking me about one of my exes. I don't know why. It's like really not— I wish he would come up with a different topic. But yeah, so last Christmas, he was like, you know, how's Mary Mitchell?

Brad

How's your ex-wife?

Brad

And I was like, I don't know, man. I don't, you know, it was like I can Google her. And I Googled her. ⚠

Brad

She just won a Grammy, which is kind of cool, I guess, you know.

Brad

Anyway, it's not about her. Why are you making me talk about her?

Brad

It's awkward.

Brad

Everybody's looking at me.

Brad

And yeah, so got a job at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter retail brokerage. Things went pretty, pretty well.

Brad

By the time I was 25, 26, I was a self-made millionaire, but had a 4-unit apartment building in Manhattan and 50 acres of land upstate, an hour out of the city, a little town called Montgomery, New York, in Hudson Valley, where I was gonna have a farm and that kind of stuff. That was the plan. Mostly I just used it for off-roading, 4-wheel driving. And then 9/11 happened, and climbed up on the roof of my building with some of my tenants and watched my old office building burn and collapse to the ground. And kind of made me just wonder, like, what the fuck am I doing with my life? Like, what does this all mean? Why am I doing— if I were to die today, like a bunch of people did that day, What, you know, would I be happy with how I spent my life and that sort of thing? And I said that the answer was no. It's not so much about finance. A lot of people think, you know, ask me like, did I reject finance or something like that? ⚠

Brad

It wasn't so much about the leaving finance as it was the pull towards just something else. And so I got divorced. I collect ex-wives. I moved to New Jersey and did my first master's degree, a master's of divinity at Drew Theological Seminary in Madison, New Jersey. ⚠

Brad

While I was there, I did a lot of foreign study, a lot of foreign travel and foreign study.

Brad

I studied in Ghana and India and Brazil. I think that's it. Really, I started to study, so my focus there was mostly on Trinitarian theology, Christian Trinitarian theology, and a little bit of interreligious dialogue, what we call theology of religion. Probably could talk a little bit about the difference between comparative theology and theology of religion today. We'll be doing some of both this semester. Let me write that down before I forget. And a lot of ecology.

Brad

Yeah, so I moved to India after I graduated seminary, moved to India, got married again, I really gotta stop that. ⚠

Brad

And yeah, I did my second master's there in comparative philosophy.

Brad

I actually have a license from the Vatican to teach philosophy at the graduate level, which is, you know, not—

Brad

I don't know, I feel like that's a little unusual. And at Tamarum, which Ruby went there, Yeah, folks from BC went to Christ College for part of their work. ⚠

Brad

Anyway, in Bangalore, India, and my ex-wife, by the way, so when we got divorced, we had, you know, I said I was a millionaire by the time I was 25. That was before the divorce.

Brad

But, you know, we had some money to split, basically, and I used my money to finance my education and, you know, that kind of stuff.

Brad

She used her money to start an orphanage. Yeah, and that— she started an orphanage in India, and now the nonprofit that she started started last time I checked, which I won't check again until Dad asks me, I guess. But last time I checked, they had 6 orphanages around the world. And yeah, it's one of the largest— ⚠

Brad

it's the second largest, I think, nonprofit organization in like the Broadway scene, behind Broadway Cares.

Brad

Anyway, enough about her.

Brad

I'll keep asking about her. It's awkward.

Brad

So then after seminary, after my philosophy degree, so I wrote a book, wrote my first book there in India on phenomenology.

Brad

That's where I fell in love with phenomenology, with phenomenology, and especially this kid Martin Heidegger.

Brad

And I wrote my first book, comparative ethics really.

Brad

It's called The Quest for Postmodern Ethics.

Brad

And focused on Martin Heidegger and this kid Aurobindo, who's an Indian philosopher from the same time period around the 1930s, '40s in India, and focused on ecology, ecological ethics, and then graduated there and started my doctoral studies in 2008. ⚠

Brad

And that's what brought me to Massachusetts. So I did my doctoral studies with Fred Francis Clooney, mentioned in the chapter, and at Harvard across the river. ⚠

Brad

And my focus was on comparative theology.

Brad

So I did 3 of my—

Brad

so it was 7 chapters total.

Brad

And 3 of my chapters were on this kid Nicholas of Cusa, a great Christian theologian from the from the 15th century, and Nicholas— I'm sorry, Shankaracharya, who I mentioned the other day. We'll discuss him quite a bit this semester. He's an 8th century Hindu theologian and commentator on the scriptures.

Brad

Had kids.

Brad

So my daughter was born during orientation week during my first year of doctoral studies.

Brad

Perfect timing there. And she was in the NICU, so it was a little bit of a rough start to the semester. And then my son was born 3 weeks before my comprehensive exams, so great timing there on that as well.

Brad

But now my son is 14 and he goes to Minuteman High School in Lexington, Massachusetts.

Brad

Which is a vocational school.

Brad

And my daughter is a senior at Nashoba Regional High School. I got divorced again, obviously, at some point.

Brad

And now I live on a farm. I have a 9-acre farm.

Brad

It's really more of a homestead, so 9-acre homestead in southern New Hampshire.

Brad

And I've got a horse and what most people would call a cow.

Brad

Technically it's a heifer.

Brad

Um, you don't become a cow until you have a baby, and she is, I think, uh, maybe pregnant.

Brad

Well, we'll see. Um, she went in heat the beginning of December and got her knocked up.

Brad

Um, and hopefully got her knocked up. Um, and she hasn't shown any signs of heat since then, so, um, you know, if everything goes well, should have Should be milking a cow again, um, come August. ⚠

Brad

Yeah, um, been milking a cow every day for the past, you know, 8 years or so until, uh, I decided last summer I needed a little bit of break from that, so sold her mom and, um, raising Dandy to be a milk cow.

Brad

Um, yeah, that's it. Uh, basically try to grow my own food, mostly just grow weeds, or with or without the S on the end, but like just try to, you know, live simply, live in harmony with the land, and, you know, just try to keep my footprint either small or even on the positive side of things.

Brad

So that's a little bit about me. I got—

Brad

oh, People always ask why did I choose Hindu and Christian stuff.

Brad

So I was raised in a very fundamentalist Baptist home. And my family's all still pretty fundamentalist Baptist.

Brad

And yeah, when I was a kid, we lived in the neighborhood where my parents lived in.

Brad

There weren't really other kids around. There was one other kid in the neighborhood.

Brad

Well, there were two other kids, but we're not gonna talk about Travis. And so the kid that I really clicked with and spent pretty much all of my time with for a few years was Indian.

Brad

And I kind of knew—

Brad

I mean, I knew he was Indian, but I didn't really think about the fact that he was not Christian or that anybody was not Christian.

Brad

I was, yeah, I don't know. And then I got baptized, which was kind of a big deal.

Brad

And like Baptist, you know, it's a big deal when you're Baptist to get baptized.

Brad

And so when I got baptized, you know, I was pretty eager to talk about it and that kind of stuff. And my friend, Judah was his name, Judah invited me over for dinner.

Brad

You know, had dinner over at their house plenty of times before..

Brad

And but this time was a little bit different. And at the beginning of the meal, or right before the meal, right, his mom said, you know, we're eager to hear about your baptism. ⚠

Brad

It was like the day before, right?

Brad

And like, we want to hear all about it.

Brad

But, you know, let's begin with the— let's begin by saying grace. And so, you know, we bowed our heads and she sang a raga in Sanskrit. And it was during that Sanskrit raga that it dawned on me that, oh, they're not Christian, right? And they're not just not Christian, they're like something else, you know. And so they started asking me all these questions about my baptism, which was really cool because like none of my friends gave a shit, right? ⚠

Brad

My family was kind of like, yeah, okay, great, you've been through that before.

Brad

But Yudit and his family were super interested in asking tons of questions.

Brad

And then that made me start asking lots of questions of him, and he was going through the sacred thread ceremony, which is a process where you become a dvija, a second born, which sounds to me a lot like being born again. ⚠

Brad

So, and there's just so many similarities between what he was going through at the time and what I was going through at the time.

Brad

And plenty of differences as well. But it just kind of put all these questions in my head, and everywhere I turned, at least in my very fundamentalist Southern Baptist church, I was met with no sort of satisfying answers at all. ⚠

Brad

And I just didn't really pay much attention to those questions, honestly, until I went to seminary, and then that's when I really kind of started exploring those more, which brings us to the distinction I have up here between comparative theology and theology of religion. ⚠

26:15

Defining Comparative Theology and Theology of Religions

Brad

So comparative theology, I think, is explained pretty well in the chapter, right?

Brad

So comparative theology, since you already know what that is, I'll just explain it this way. The idea of theology is, right, theology is a philosophical discourse about first principles, right?

Brad

Who am I?

Brad

Where am I? And why am I here?

Brad

It's the first principles, basically.

Brad

But what distinguishes it from regular philosophy is that it's anchored in a canon of texts, right? And so you've got to tie yourself to those texts.

Brad

And the idea is, okay, these texts are important to me, but, and I'm gonna ask these questions of ultimacy to that text and try and find answers about who am I and where am I and why am I here in dialogue with that text. ⚠

Brad

But also maybe as importantly, right, in dialogue with other people.

Brad

So that's basically it.

Brad

Your podcast assignment. Also, I'll take— we'll talk about the syllabus after this. ⚠

Brad

Right, and so the idea is to, you know, everybody should be tying themselves to the text, even, even if it's just temporary, even if it's just methodological, right?

Brad

At least for the purposes of the exercise, really commit to the text, really assume that the text has something to offer.

Brad

Something to say, right?

Brad

So really interrogate the text.

Brad

So that's theology, but comparative theology is sort of like this twice, right?

Brad

So the idea is you can't anchor yourself in more than one canon of texts at a time.

Brad

That's why I have the example of like welding two anchors together.

Brad

Cyrus is in welding week this week at Minuteman.

Brad

It's not like welding two anchors together, but instead, right, let's tie yourself to this anchor and then let's kind of lift anchor, right, and then go and then drop our anchor in another canon of texts, if you will, right?

Brad

And then so you've got to really commit again to that text, even if only temporarily.

Brad

That's why I use the word sojourning, taking that, you know, really from Frank's work.

Brad

And again, being in dialogue with one another, right, about that.

Brad

So then that person has a big head. The idea of comparative theology is really— I mean, all theology I think of as a quest, and all my courses I think about as a quest, like I said in the chapter.

Brad

But comparative theology, even maybe even more so, right?

Brad

So especially the way Clooney So Clooney is sort of regarded as, you know, one of the intellectual fathers, if you will, of comparative theology, at least of this particular method.

Brad

And the idea is, you know, you begin with some sort of commitment.

Brad

He's a Catholic priest, so he has a deep, you know, a deep commitment to the Christian canon. And so he says, you know, that's— he's not going to give that up. That's not You can't suspend your faith in that.

Brad

So begin by asking those questions of ultimacy, right?

Brad

And being in dialogue and discourse with one another.

Brad

But the idea is that you kind of like journey around, right? And then you come over here and then you kind of journey around, right? And try to see—

Brad

try to see the text not just from your own perspective, but from the perspective of others.

Brad

Like the playing die that we did the other day, right? Trying to see it from multiple angles. And the best way to do that is by asking people, you know, what do you think? What do you think?

Brad

Getting differing perspectives.

Brad

But then to journey over to another text, and you're maybe asking not the same questions but similar kind of questions. Presumably you're going to be getting different kinds of answers, and I think when you begin asking those questions of the text, you'll find that you kind of have to rephrase the question at least, right? The questions don't translate exactly.

Brad

You've got to kind of figure out different ways of asking the question or thinking about the question. That's part of the point.

Brad

But then as Clooney says, right, this journey always kind of ends with a return home.

Brad

And so when you return home, the text that you are asking those questions to has not changed.

Brad

That's the whole point of an anchor is it doesn't change.

Brad

If it changes, it's not going to function as an anchor.

Brad

So the point of an anchor is it doesn't change, but the point of an anchor is also that you can lift it up. And you change. So the idea is that through this process, through this journey of anchoring in one tradition and then anchoring in another tradition and then returning to your home tradition, is that you read the text a little bit differently, right? You begin to find new answers or ask different questions and understand yourself in a little bit different way, right? So that's comparative theology.

Brad

Theology of religions, though, which is actually what I studied first in seminary with this kid Wesley Aryarajan, my first guru. He's really, you know, one of the one of the leading scholars within the field of theology of religion. ⚠

Brad

And within the theology of religion is basically saying, okay, so why are there so many religions, right?

Brad

What does it mean?

Brad

Why is—

Brad

I mean, just that, right? Why are there so much diversity within religious traditions?

Brad

Why are there more than one, right?

Brad

So if God has revealed God's self or revealed God's meaning through this particular canon of scripture, then why has God revealed Godself through this other canon of scripture, right? Or is that the case? Is that not the case, right?

Brad

Is it that we're right and they're wrong, or is it that we're seeing, I don't know, just choose a random example, like maybe they're seeing a different side of the same die, right?

Brad

So that could— both of those are different answers, right?

Brad

Another answer It's more of a metaphor, right?

Brad

If we think about religion or scripture or theology as a kind of quest, right?

Brad

A kind of ascent up a mountain, right? And we're trying, like Moses— Moses liked to climb mountains.

Brad

So if Moses went up the mountain, like Mount Sinai, in order to have a vision of God and then, you know, descended to give the law or the Torah to the people of Israel. The idea is that, you know, by following a particular discipline, you get to the top of the mountain, right? And then that's kind of a long-term quest of climbing, ascending to see ultimacy, or ask these questions, right? It's the questions that really kind of drive you up the hill. ⚠

Brad

And this other kid, Raimon Panikkar, describes it this way.

Brad

He's like, you know, all right, so the goal, the objective is to get to the top of the mountain, right? And you don't want to be just like wandering, meandering all over the place.

Brad

You want to kind of follow a path, right?

Brad

And so his perspective is that many religious traditions—

Brad

like, he was also a Catholic priest—

Brad

that, you know, these religious traditions like Catholicism are a kind of path up the mountain, right?

Brad

And so I can follow this path up the mountain, but there's other paths up the mountain, right?

Brad

So same mountain, but multiple paths, and they kind of ultimately lead to the same place, which is the top of the mountain, right? ⚠

Brad

Maybe they lead to different peaks.

Brad

It doesn't have to be—

Brad

could be a mountain range, you know, different ways of thinking of the metaphor.

Brad

But as he points out, right, one wouldn't want to do a little bit of Christianity, a little bit of Hindu, a little bit of Judaism, a little bit of Islam or something like that, right?

Brad

Because then you're just kind of going around the mountain sort of thing, right?

Brad

But instead, as he says, you want to rather, you know, you want to commit to a path, at least for—

Brad

right? So it's more of a discipline, and by committing to that path, um, you know, you get to the top.

Brad

There's tons and tons and tons of other metaphors. Um, I like the, the dye metaphor, uh, but, um, the mountain metaphor resonates as well.

Brad

And there's lots more.

Brad

So you get a little bit of idea between the difference between comparative theology, which is this, and theology of religions, which is more of that.

Brad

And I get a sense— I've been doing a lot of talking, so any questions about literally anything I've been talking about?

Brad

Maybe not so much about my ex-wives though.

Brad

But literally anything else.

Brad

AMA.

Brad

Bennett.

Student

Do you still subscribe to the idea of, like, the Christian idea of walking up the mountain?

Brad

The Christian path?

Brad

I think what—

Brad

great question—

Brad

I think what gives me a little pause about it is I don't think that we're gonna ever get to the top of the mountain.

Brad

I'm not sure that I mean, maybe it's just—

Brad

I mean, you climbed Mount Monadnock.

Brad

Me, not so much.

Brad

I'm not really a hiker or climber, really.

Brad

But I'm also super old now.

Brad

So I don't know if I could get to the top of the mountain.

Brad

Huh?

Brad

Yeah, maybe.

Brad

You can drive pretty far up it, right?

Brad

Yeah, I don't know.

Brad

As far as the metaphor of getting to the top of the mountain, I mean, I like it.

Brad

I taught it, so I think it's good, but I tend to think about life more circular and more, yeah, I just think more circularly.

Brad

So for me, it's more of a journey, and the end destination is death, which is sort of the end of the journey. So I'm not super stoked about that part. I'm just more interested in the journey.

Brad

Journey and how to get there.

Brad

So I like the mountain metaphor and climbing up different paths, but this is a little bit more me now.

Brad

Yeah.

Brad

Do you have animals besides horses and cows?

Brad

I have, well, I had 3 cats at the house.

Brad

I'm pausing there because we have another cat that's kind of taken off, but he's been spotted, you know, in the neighborhood. So we're gonna try and track him down.

Brad

But 3 cats and 2 dogs, a 14-year-old dog named Puppy and a puppy named Renny, German Shepherd.

Brad

Yeah, and bees.

Brad

Last time I checked, they were still alive.

Brad

They haven't really made it through a winter, but I keep, you know, recapturing swarms.

Brad

So bees, dogs, oh yeah, chickens, roosters, too many roosters.

Brad

Syllabus Review: Podcast Teams and Leadership Days

Brad

Yeah.

Brad

So the way I'm gonna do leadership days this semester is is I can't really give you your— I'm not going to give you your leadership days, actually. You're going to pick your own leadership days. But you're going to—

Brad

first, we've got to pick podcast teams.

Brad

It's very team-based learning. All my classes are very team-based learning. So those of you that have my class before, that's definitely not going to change. So very, very team-based learning. And so once we have your teams, then within your teams, I'm gonna have you decide what your leadership days are. ⚠

Brad

So the idea is that your team should be 4 members ideally.

Brad

We got 32 people in the room, so that's nice.

Brad

That's divisible by 8, I think. No, it's divisible by 4, I think. It's also divisible by 8, but 4 is the more relevant number here. See, told you I'm nervous. So the idea is that the 4 of you will kind of decide, you know, which leadership, which class you're taking, right?

Brad

So if you've got a volleyball game or you got a swimming meet or you've got something else, right, and you can't come to class a particular day, then I don't have to really be involved, right? You can just decide amongst yourselves.

Brad

All right, hopefully none of you are missing an entire unit, right? So you can pick which reading within the unit that you're going to focus on. I think the right balance is, you know, I think in general I expect, especially Boston College students, I really expect you to spend 1 hour preparing for every class.

Brad

In reality, it's usually going to be a little bit less than that, but you know, I kind of expect you—

Brad

if you spend 1 hour preparing for class, you're going to be very well prepared for class.

Brad

On days when it's your leadership day, spend a little bit of extra, right?

Brad

Maybe an hour and 15, like not a whole lot extra, you know, but do your normal level of preparation and then do a little bit more preparation just to kind of decide What, you know, like, like I'm expected to talk in class today, right? ⚠

Brad

So some folks are really comfortable talking in class.

Brad

Some folks are really not comfortable talking in class.

Brad

And, you know, I think you have to do a little bit of talking in class. So the idea of leadership days is like, you know, am I— a lot of students are like, am I doing enough participation or whatever? So this is instead of having a regular participation meditation grades, you have your leadership days, right? And so the idea is on those leadership days, you're expected to come prepared to say something, right?

Brad

To lead the discussion in class.

Brad

And the way I usually do is right after the meditation, I'll kind of say, this is my list, these are the people I think are leadership, leaders today. Has any of that changed, right? If you can't make it that day and you need to swap with somebody else, you don't need to let me know ahead of time. Just as long as I know right then, right? ⚠

Brad

That's why I'm asking.

Brad

So these are the people that I think are leading today.

Brad

Any changes to that?

Brad

And then my hope is that those folks will voluntarily at some point during the class chime in and, you know, okay, I was talking about this first, or I want to draw attention here or there. And if not, then, you know, when we get down to the last 20 minutes or so of class, I may be more likely to call on you, like, hey, what do you think? ⚠

Brad

Or do you want to draw our attention somewhere?

Brad

Do you want to take us in a new direction? Right?

Brad

So if it's your leadership day, feel free to take us in new directions.

Brad

But obviously my hope is always that it's anchored in the text in some way, right?

Brad

So we won't have leadership days at all in Unit 1.

Brad

But correct me if I'm wrong, I think unit—

Brad

they began in Unit 2.

Brad

Yeah, beginning with Unit 2, February 3rd. So the idea is that you can't really decide what your leadership days are until we know your teams, and obviously by the time that we get to Unit 2, you'll have teams.

Brad

Good?

Brad

Clear? All right. Questions? Other questions? Yeah?

Brad

What chapters are the midterm?

Brad

So the midterm I'm still kind of crafting, but My, I mean, I'll just be frank.

Brad

One of my goals for the midterm is to make it really easy to grade. So I think it will probably mostly be vocab.

Brad

It's gonna be very vocabulary-centered.

Brad

So I've been a little bit frustrated with the past, and I mean frustrated with myself.

Brad

In my own pedagogy, because students have gotten to the end of the course and they didn't know a lot of really core central vocabulary.

Brad

I was like, I'm gonna change that, right? So the idea of the midterm is really gonna be very vocabulary-centered. It'll be a lot of Sanskrit vocabulary.

Brad

It'll be a lot of the things that are on the sheet that I just handed out. So, and, you know, a bit more than that too.

Brad

And this sheet doesn't have definitions.

Brad

It's just pretty much the words that we're going to be learning.

Brad

So I will give you, you know, we'll go over vocabulary.

Brad

I'll make sure that you have a good starting point, good definitions, good clear understanding of what's expected on the midterm.

Brad

But the midterm is going to be pretty objective, pretty straightforward.

Brad

Probably no, there may be some short answer, but no essays or anything like that. Going to make Brad sit around and read papers all day.

Brad

It's not going to happen.

Brad

So yeah, so mostly vocab-oriented. Other questions?

Student

Right on.

Brad

Cool.

Brad

Any questions about chapter 1? Anselm, Bannon, Clooney.

Brad

Okay, going once, going twice.

Brad

All right, then let's do something different in our last 27 and a half minutes.

47:44

Theology of Vision: Darshana and Murti

Brad

So I want to focus next on the notion of vision. Right? So on Tuesday, we had a great deal of emphasis on vision, seeing, and phenomenology is a way of seeing. ⚠

Brad

All right?

Brad

A lot of seeing, a lot of vision.

Brad

And likewise in this chapter, a lot of vision, a lot of seeing.

Brad

And next, I want to introduce you to this Sanskrit word. It comes from the root drish, but the word is Darsana comes from the root drish, which means to see, and darsana, I mean, yeah, I mean, we could translate it something like seeing or vision. Sight, that sort of stuff. ⚠

Brad

And it's like in English, it carries a lot of layers of meaning, right?

Brad

So when we're talking about some—

Brad

I don't know, let's say if I were to try and learn math or something, right?

Brad

And if somebody's trying to explain a concept to you, it doesn't matter, it doesn't have to be math, but somebody's trying to explain a very difficult concept to you, maybe they try and explain it and then you kinda look at them confused, and then they kind of explain it a different way, and then you kinda look at you confused, then they explain it a different way, and then they get it, right? ⚠

Brad

And when they get it, when it clicks, what do they say? Oh, I see, right? Isn't that a typical way?

Brad

Like, oh, I see, I get it now, right? I see what you're saying.

Brad

So that seeing isn't sort of a visual seeing per se, but more of an intellectual seeing, right? So in phenomenology, we distinguish between the eye which sees the phenomenon Right?

Brad

And then distinguishing that from the thing itself. And so there's sort of this intellectual seeing, right?

Brad

Oh, I see this thing, which is distinct from the way that your eyeballs see, right?

Brad

So there's sort of the eye seeing.

Brad

So there's the E-Y-E that sees, and then there's the I that sees.

Brad

So darshana, well, darshana can mean both of those, right?

Brad

Same as in English, it means both of those.

Brad

And but very much like I wrote in the chapter, it's also a two-way aspect, two-way.

Brad

So there's this Professor Diana Eck, another guru of mine.

Brad

And she wrote a book actually called Darshana, which I've used in this book, in this class before, in different versions of this class. And in her book, Darshana, She, you know, attacks or approaches this word darshana from a number of different angles, right? ⚠

Brad

Trying to see, seeing from various angles.

Brad

And as I wrote in this chapter about Anselm, right? Anselm says that he, you know, theology is an effort to try and see God, get a glimpse of God, right? I want— he longs to see God.

Brad

I want to see you.

Brad

All this kind of stuff.

Brad

Ultimately, he ends up—

Brad

that ends fruitless, right?

Brad

It ends in not being—

Brad

well, not fruitless, but it doesn't end in seeing God.

Brad

It doesn't culminate in seeing the invisible God.

Brad

But instead, through that effort, that longing to see, the desire to see, the effort to see, when one gets to the top of the mountain, if you will, One doesn't see God, but one feels seen, right?

Brad

So that's why I corrected myself when I said it ends fruitlessly. It doesn't end fruitlessly.

Brad

The fruit of the effort of trying to see is the feeling of being seen, right?

Brad

So likewise, darshana means both seeing and seeing.

Brad

Being seen.

Brad

And I was thinking about this on the drive in that I really, really should have brought a murti.

Brad

I'll bring a murti to class next week.

Brad

Murti is basically a little statue, right?

Brad

I mean, it could be lots of different sizes, but a statue, a 3-dimensional sculpture or carving or something like that, 3-dimensional statue, usually of a deity, you know, somebody like shiva. And so shiva is especially important for here. ⚠

Brad

So say I have a little statue of shiva the goal of Hindu practice in terms of practice of going to the temple, that kind of stuff, part of the goal is you're going there to see the murti, right? But at least as important, if not more important, is the feeling of being seen by the murti, right? ⚠

Brad

So even there are lots of rituals that go from taking a, you know, just a carving, a sculpture that's made out of wood or clay or whatever, it's made out of bronze or something, right? Then it's just like a human artifact, something created by humans. It's not yet a murti, but the act of it becoming a murti is this ritual, you know, ritual opening its eyes, basically, right?

Brad

And the idea, as Eck points out, is that in the murti, some vocab that should be on there. So the murti is the, let's say, a three-dimensional image of God. So that three-dimensional image of God becomes a murti, stops being just a simple thing that I've crafted with my hands or sculpted out of clay or wood or whatever it is. It stops being just a human artifact and becomes a murti when it goes through this ritual of eye-opening, right? The ritual eye-opening. ⚠

Brad

And at that ritual eye-opening, it's not that we open its eyes by doing this or saying that, but instead It's an invocation, right?

Brad

A calling to God, a request to God.

Brad

And that invocation is inviting God to take a seat, right?

Brad

Pitha means seat. So the idea is that God is, you know, wherever God is, right?

Brad

Maybe nowhere, maybe in heaven, or maybe everywhere, right?

Brad

But through the act of ritually opening the eyes of the murti, God takes a seat in this murti, right?

Brad

And unlike you and me, God can take a seat in multiple places at one time, right?

Brad

So it's not that God is entirely present in this thing or that thing, But that it's an act of grace because one longs to be seen by God.

Brad

As I wrote in the chapter about my kids. So my kids were like, "Hey, Daddy, did you see that soccer goal?" Or, "Hey, watch me do this or watch me do that." My son is playing Skyrim right now and he's like, "Hey, watch me. ⚠

Brad

I can assassinate this guy or whatever." I don't know.

Brad

It's so violent. You should play a calm game like me, like Assassin's Creed. Anyway, you get that point, right?

Brad

So through invocation and ritual, this murti, this statue, becomes a seat for God.

Brad

God takes a seat in that image, in that idol, so that we can see and be seen by it.

Brad

When I was living in India, on my commute, there was a little temple right by, right at a stoplight.

Brad

And so I was riding my—

Brad

rode a motorcycle and would ride.

Brad

Always when I get near that temple, I would, you know, kind of weave over towards the temple and watch the people, right?

Brad

Just watch the folks that would— the other folks around me at the stoplight.

Brad

And invariably I would see at least one or two folks that would like, you know, stoplight turns red and they like get off of their little scooter or get off of their motorcycle or bike or whatever, take their shoes off. ⚠

Brad

It was sacred ground. You need to remove your shoes, right?

Brad

They're still in the road, still in the, still in the road.

Brad

But all you need to do to sort of make the place sacred is treat it as such, right? So by removing their feet—

Brad

I'm sorry, removing their shoes from their feet— then, um, they could.

Brad

And there was something about this, this particular temple, um, you know, it was very, very small and had a very big door, and you could see the murti in the back of the temple even from the road, right?

Brad

So all you needed to have darshana—

Brad

in fact, um, in, uh, When I was a kid growing up Southern Baptist, we would say, you know, on Sunday mornings, like, we're going to church.

Brad

Church is where you go. Going to church, coming home from church, that kind of stuff, right?

Brad

Some other folks may say we're going to temple, right? Or going to synagogue, or going to worship, something like that.

Brad

But many Hindus will say I'm going for darshana, right?

Brad

So darshana is the point of of the going.

Brad

So you go to see, but also, more importantly, as importantly, is being seen, right?

Brad

So if you can see the murti, then it can see you, right?

Brad

And so the goal of darshana is to see and be seen.

Brad

One of the reasons I could—

Brad

I mean, I could have chosen anybody, but one of the things about shiva is shiva is one of the three main deities within contemporary Hindu religion, and shiva creates the world by all—

Brad

sorry, shiva likes to meditate, right?

Brad

So he just, he sits and he meditates, and he sometimes has his eyes closed, right? Like I usually do.

Brad

And when his eyes are closed, the universe does not exist.

Brad

And when shiva opens his eyes, the universe comes into being, right?

Brad

So shiva creates just by opening his eyes, right? He sees the universe into existence.

Brad

And the universe— he also maintains the existence of the universe simply by seeing it, right?

Brad

So if anything exists, it exists because Shiva sees it into being, right?

Brad

And then eventually Shiva will close his eyes, and when he closes his eyes, then that's the end of the universe, right?

Brad

At least for that epoch, for that period of time.

Brad

But Shiva's not—

Brad

Shiva's not over, right?

Brad

So then the universe will come into being again through Shiva's darshana.

Brad

Make sense?

Brad

So darshana, or seeing super big important term for this semester and within Hindu theology writ large.

Brad

In fact, there's another very important meaning of darshana that I want to give you now, and this is on your handouts. So We will, I think, next week focus more on the shad-darshana.

Brad

You can see like halfway down the page here, shad-darshana, 6 perspectives or views of astika thought. So that could be another translation of darshana as a view.

Brad

And in, In the West, we usually say—

Brad

we just talk about different schools of philosophy, right?

Brad

Like Stoicism is a school of philosophy.

Brad

Phenomenology is a school of philosophy.

Brad

Yeah, you know what I mean, right?

Brad

Different schools of philosophy. So we talk about different perspectives or philosophical schools as schools. But in Hindu theology, they're referred to as darshanas.

Brad

So the Shad-darshana, or the six, I mean, it's usually translated as the six schools of philosophy, or six schools of orthodox Hindu theology, and we translate it that way because that makes sense, because we talk about schools and everybody understands what schools or sects or denominations means within, you know, Western philosophy. ⚠

Brad

But technically the word isn't schools of philosophy or schools of theology, it's darshana, so sort of ways of seeing, right? So it may be another way of thinking about phenomenology, right?

Brad

So then these differing schools are differing ways or different perspectives, different views on the scriptures, you know, from different orientations or different perspectives. And so we're going to talk next week about the, the Shadarsana, or the 6 schools. We'll do that on Thursday, but a little foreshadowing of that now. ⚠

Brad

And some of them are schools that you're familiar with, like yoga.

Brad

Yoga is one of the Shadarsana, one of the 6 schools.

Brad

Let me say another thing about the syllabus.

1:03:35

Introduction to the Veda and Course Roadmap

Brad

Before I forget.

Brad

So if you turn to—

Brad

or you don't have—

Brad

it's fine if you don't have it.

Brad

But the agenda, right?

Brad

So the agenda, I just want to point out one thing, which is that this particular class—

Brad

I don't know if I mentioned, but Francis Clooney was the first to ever teach this class at Boston College, and he designed it way back when.

Brad

And his method of teaching it—

Brad

I mean, he's my teacher, so I tend to follow him in most things.

Brad

And his way of teaching it was not to do a 50/50 split.

Brad

His way of teaching is thinking that most students at Boston College, because Boston College is in Massachusetts and in the United States, that most students are either Christian or have experience with Christian traditions and have some exposure to Christian traditions, that kind of stuff, so that most students already have some ground of understanding of Christian tradition, Christian theology, Christian religion, and that sort of stuff. ⚠

Brad

But that most Boston College students don't have much, maybe any, experience with Hindu theology and Hindu traditions.

Brad

So it's not exactly 50/50.

Brad

The way I've designed the course this semester in particular is that we'll do Unit 1. Unit 1 will definitely lean more, much more towards Hinduisms, but we'll also do some, you know, introduction to Christianity and Christian theology and a little bit more.

Brad

Yeah, but it'll lean way more towards the Hindu side of things, right?

Brad

And then Unit 2 and 3 are just all Hindu stuff, except for February 12th. We've got one little comparative moment in there, an important comparative moment, but we're mostly focusing on Hindu, Hindu theology up until spring break.

Brad

And then after spring break, then we'll very more or less strictly follow the pattern of Hindu texts on Tuesday, Christian text on Thursday. And the Hindu text that we're going to be studying is the Bhagavad Gita. So we'll study a lot of Hindu texts. I mean, it's a sacred text class, right? So we'll study a number of sacred texts in Unit 2 and 3, but then from Units 4 and 5, we're only going to focus on 2 texts. ⚠

Brad

The Gospel of Mark, and we're going to read the entirety of the Gospel of Mark. It's just 16 chapters.

Brad

By the way, I've taught this class, like I said, for, you know, over the last decade.

Brad

I've never used the Gospel of Mark before.

Brad

This is the first time, first dive into it.

Brad

For the first 7 or 8 times, I did the Gospel of Luke, and then last spring I did the Gospel of John.

Brad

And I thought, you know, let's go for the Gospel of Mark. Mark is a super interesting gospel.

Brad

I mean, they're all pretty interesting, but there's a lot of interesting things about Mark's gospel.

Brad

So we'll do a deep dive into Mark's gospel and a deep dive into the Gita.

Brad

So the Gita is 18 chapters, the Gospel of Mark is 16 chapters, but it doesn't quite lend itself to I don't know, I broke it up, I think, in a way that will make sense.

Brad

One other thing, let me say a little bit about Unit 2 and Unit 3. So Unit 2, we're going to go through the 4 parts of the veda. So the veda— delete some stuff here.

Brad

But the—

Brad

this is something I think will be on the quiz for Tuesday. I really want you to know the 4 parts of the veda.

Brad

So veda means what is known or known.

Brad

Yeah.

Brad

But it's the name for the sacred scriptures, and the veda is divided into—

Brad

well, it's really divided into 16.

Brad

So there's the Rigveda and Rigveda is the oldest recension, and I think these are all on Atharvaveda.

Brad

Yeah, right there, it's like the 1, 2, 3, like the 5th line on the handout, right? So the Rig Yajur sama, and atarva. ⚠

Brad

And then within those four, these are usually called recensions, or like, um, there's a lot of overlap between these four. The idea behind these four is, at least traditionally, is that your family is sort of responsible for one of these, right? So depending on who your family is, then, you know, your clan— ⚠

Brad

let's say maybe not your family, but like your clan, your people, right? They're like Rig people, or they're Sama people, or they're Atharvaveda people, or they're Yajurveda people. And if you're in that category of person, it's expected that you, especially as a male, but really you are supposed to memorize the entire recension, right?

Brad

Here's step 1, actually, is to memorize the entire Rigveda, right?

Brad

So if you're a Rig family, you're kind of aware of these other ones, but you're—

Brad

it's like a responsibility, right? A high, big, important responsibility that you're supposed to memorize every single word of the entire Rigveda from memory.

Brad

And actually, you do that even before you learn Sanskrit. So my guru in India, the guy I studied Hindu theology with, he's a very traditional teacher, and he was very intentional, both of his kids, he had a son and a daughter, and his son and his daughter, he expected them to memorize the entire thing, right? ⚠

Brad

Even before they knew any Sanskrit.

Brad

So first step is to memorize the entire text, and then once you have the entire scripture memorized, then you begin—

Brad

or you can kind of do both at the same time— but then you begin to study the language and understand, right? But you don't actually begin to investigate what's the text mean until you've got the entire text memorized. Follow?

Brad

That's a really, really important thing, which means that for us, right, no matter what we do in this class, it's always going to be way deficient, right?

Brad

Because step 1 should be like, hey, by Tuesday I'd like you to memorize the entire Rigveda, right?

Brad

Which is like this long.

Brad

I mean, I don't have it, right?

Brad

Not even close.

Brad

Um, but in a traditional setting, that's what you would do.

Brad

So you would memorize your entire recension, and then Within these, there are 4 parts of the veda, and they're the same for all 4. The first is the samhita. Samhita means collection, but it's really a collection of hymns. So these are, yeah, collection of hymns, and those hymns are among the most ancient human literature, actually some of the oldest human literature that we have is included in the Samhita. ⚠

Brad

And so beginning with Unit 2 on February 3rd, we'll read 3 of these Rigveda Samhita.

Brad

So we're going to read 3 hymns from this collection of hymns. And then next on the list are the brahmas, and the brahmanas are, let's say, ritual manuals or instruction manuals, right? Instruction manuals of how to perform rituals of the To say it that way is not to give you the right idea of what's actually in them. ⚠

Brad

What's actually in them tends to be a lot more stories.

Brad

So a lot of stories, and those stories are about rituals, and those stories are used in the rituals, and the stories are inseparable from the rituals, but it's not just like it says, do this, do this, do this, do this.

Brad

It's not quite.

Brad

So structured as that. So we will, so Unit 2, right, we'll begin by reading one of the hymns, or three of the hymns, and then on February 5th, we'll read one of the brahmanas, the Taittiriya Brahmanam, and then the next group of texts are called the aranyakas. ⚠

Brad

The aranyaka This is usually described as proto-philosophical, or let's call it theological, proto-theological texts, which I think is just code for like not very great theology.

Brad

I don't know, almost no one that I know, and I mean I'm talking about like scholars, like Hindu scholars, like real experts in the field, very few of them have read many of these.

Brad

They aren't widely studied, so we're gonna do what everybody else does and ignore them for some reason, and we will then focus more on the upanishads. So the upanishads are these really let's say if that's proto-theological, these are advanced philosophical or theological texts, and these are mostly, predominantly written in the form of dialogues, so dialogues between teacher and student, and we will focus on one of those, the Katha Upanishad, in Unit 2, and then in Unit 3 we're going to focus on 4 more upanishads. ⚠

Brad

So we're going to do a good survey of those.

Brad

I'm out of time right now. I will give you a list of vocabulary through—

1:15:11

Closing and Weekend Vocabulary Assignment

Brad

I'll post it in the reading and everything.

Brad

I'll give you plenty of advance time, but for between now and Tuesday, nothing to read.

Brad

But I do hope that you'll spend, you know, 45 5 minutes or an hour, really trying to learn and memorize those vocabulary, and I'll make it clear what those are. Peace.

Brad

Have a good weekend.