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the power of detachment: disciplines of body and mind in the Ramanandi order
Author(s) -
VEER PETER
Publication year - 1989
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1525/ae.1989.16.3.02a00030
Subject(s) - power (physics) , discipline , order (exchange) , indigenous , sociology , hinduism , monasticism , aesthetics , epistemology , social science , philosophy , religious studies , theology , ecology , physics , finance , quantum mechanics , economics , biology
This article examines the ways in which the disciplines of the Ramanandi monks of North India create the abilities and potentialities of their performers by the use of different kinds of power. I argue that the notion of “power,” best seen as both an indigenous and sociological concept, is crucial to these disciplines of “detachment,” which aim at a total transformation of basic attitudes and emotions. Different groups within the Ramanandi order maintain distinct disciplines that are based on different, though related, cosmologies. All of these disciplines can be interpreted as programs to provide their performers with supernatural power (shakti) and potentialities (siddhi). The differences in disciplinary practices, related to differences in social organization, have social consequences that may be contrary to our conventional expectations about detachment. [power, religious experience, aesthetics, Hindu monasticism]