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Dear list members,
The Australian Centre for Asian Art and Archaeology will hold
its next seminar
on Tuesday 24 October 2006 at 4.00 pm - 6.00 pm at Room 202,
Department of Art History and Theory, Mills Building, University
of Sydney.
The speaker will be
Dr Jackie Menzies, Head
Curator of Asian Art, Art Gallery of New South Wales
Conceiving the Goddess
The concept of the Goddess is central to Hinduism and later
Buddhism, and has inspired the creation of many beautiful
sculptures and paintings, as demonstrated by the exhibition
GODDESS, Divine Energy, currently showing at the Art Gallery of
New South Wales. Goddess worship has a history dating back
millennia BCE when she was venerated for her generative powers,
and her auspicious associations with fertility and abundance. In
Hinduism the Goddess is the personification of shakti (energy),
in Buddhism the embodiment of prajna (wisdom). Followers of the
Hindu Goddess believe in the absolute authority and power of
shakti which is personified as Devi, the Great Goddess; as one
of her many manifestations; or as the power or consort of a god.
The multiplicity of goddesses coalesced into one great goddess (Maha-Devi)
with the appearance of the text, the Devi Mahatmya
(Glorification to the Goddess) dating to c 500s CE. According to
this text, the goddess was created from the shaktis of the gods
with a resultant power that enabled her to overcome all
hindrances. The story of Durga, the buffalo slayer, is a central
incident in the Devi Mahatmya, and an allegory for the power of
the Goddess who can be fearsome as well as benign. The concept
of the benign goddess is most fully articulated in Parvati, the
Shakti of Shiva. Another facet of the Goddess, apart from all
her physical manifestations, is seen it the concept of the
'body-less' goddess, the kundalini shakti, the power that
resides within each one of us and which can be harnessed towards
the attainment of enlightenment.
The goddess appears in the Tantra teaching of Vajrayana Buddhism
in which the goal is to overcome dualistic notions like male and
female, sun and moon, and so forth to realise non-dual truth.
This teaching is embodied in male and female couples in intimate
embrace where the male equates with compassion, the female with
wisdom, the two together symbolising the attainment of
enlightenment.
Some of these varied concepts of the Goddess will be presented
in this talk.
Please contact Gabrielle Ewington, Administrator ACAAA on
0428 130 948 should you require any further information.
Kind regards,
AABS Executive
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