A Conversation With Michelle Tea and Camara Meri Rajabari
A Jungian & Zen Approach to the Untamed Self in the Ten Oxherding Pictures
An In-Person Conversation With Dr. Debashish Banerji and Dr. Sara Granovetter
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The Ten Oxherding Pictures is an image series that visualizes the Buddhist training path to enlightenment. Emerging in China in the 12th century, these pictures depict a young oxherder whose quest leads him to tame, train, and transform his heart and mind, a process that is represented by subduing the ox. The Ten Oxherding Pictures have served as a spiritual teaching tool for centuries, guiding seekers through the steps of awakening. But how are these images relevant today? How do they help us make ecological and psychological sense in a posthuman world?
Join CIIS professors Dr. Debashish Banerji and Dr. Sara Granovetter in a conversation about posthumanism, the Oxherding series, the Jungian individuation process, and the disowned wild self. Together, they explore how the ox may represent a part of the psyche that is habitually pushed to the margins of consciousness. Discover what the Oxherding Pictures teach us about relating to the wild other within ourselves and the work of befriending it for spiritual awakening.
Dr. Banerji and Dr. Granovetter invite you to examine how humanity's way of relating to the more-than-human world is deeply linked to the choices of modernity and the value of the Oxherding Series as a posthuman revelation.
We recommend this journal article, “Wild Otherness Within: A Jungian and Zen Approach to the Untamed Self in the Ten Oxherding Pictures,” by Sara for more information.
Sara Max Granovetter, Ph.D., LMFT, is a core faculty member in California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) graduate department of East-West Psychology. She received her bachelor's degree in philosophy from Harvard University, and her Ph.D. from CIIS in 2021. Her research explores how nonhuman animals serve as traumatic-numinous mirrors for contemporary human psyches. A practicing mindfulness-based psychotherapist, Sara’s clinical practice, pedagogy, and research weave together analytic psychology, Buddhism, ecopsychology, and posthumanism.
Debashish Banerji, Ph.D., is the Haridas Chaudhuri Professor of Indian Philosophies and Cultures and the Doshi Professor of Asian Art at California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), San Francisco. He has authored and edited over ten books on figures of "the Bengal Renaissance,” Critical Posthumanism, Integral Yoga Psychology and on several creative and art-related projects. He has curated over fifteen exhibitions of Indian and Japanese art and has written and produced a documentary film, Darshan: The Living Art of India (2018). An authored book on a theoretical approach to Indian Art, Visual Imagination of India: History, Theory, Method; and one on the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, Time-Steps of the Cosmic Horse: Meditations on the Contemplative Philosophy of the Great Forest Upanishad are now in press.
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