INTERVIEW WITH ZEENA
Part 2 - "The Breaking of Taboo and Transgression of Social Norms in Religion and Culture"FOR THE SCHOOL OF RELIGION, PHILOSOPHY AND CLASSICS
UNIVERSITY OF KWAZULU NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA
UKZN: Do you think academics understand Tantra or will ever be able to do so?
Zeena: Without a basis in practice you cannot really know what you are talking about because only through practice comes actual realisation of these philosophies and teachings. Academic texts by their very nature are the opposite of Tantra in action. Tantra is an action based practice. So your questions is, “Do you think academics understand Tantra or will ever be able to do so?” My answer would have to be…not completely. I don’t think they ever could fully understand Tantra.
Firstly, because of the very way, in order to be an academic, a person has to be. By being an academic you have claimed and stated (by default of the profession) that you are going to be objective, that you are not going to (get your hands dirty). So as an academic, you cannot relinquish your position and hierarchy within the field of academics…so you cannot possibly understand it fully. Because until you can actually engage in the practices there is no way to fully understand why Tantrics do what they do. So academics will always be from the outside looking in and that is not an accurate reportage. Academics would have to lose their position in whichever university they work for. They would have to relinquish that identity in order to fully understand Tantra.
UKZN: I do know that with some academics, that when they go into a certain field of study, there is acknowledgment (and caution) that they might get influenced.
Zeena: Right. That’s why it is an absurd idea that you should not allow yourself to be influenced. Because how can you adequately speak on what is happening? How can you adequately explain whatever it is that you are reporting on? So that is why I have an issue with academics. Academics are somewhat fearful people; people who are fearful to let go and that’s true not just within religious academics, but in academics of all kinds whether they are scientific academics or research academics, etc.. The reason why they are in that position is because they are more cerebrally oriented and it’s a means of hanging onto their ego, hanging onto to feeling like they are keeping a grip on their rationality and sanity, that they are keeping a grip on their mind. But in fact, what they need to do, to have better understanding, is lose that grip. Because you have to be fully engaged in these practices to understand them, I would say an academic could not fully understand Tantra for that reason.
Now academia is perfectly fine for documentation, and documentation is important. It’s very useful and very necessary. So I am not disregarding it on that level. It’s very important for there to be documented accounts of such things but they can’t entirely be representative from the practitioner's perspective. And so in keeping with the idea that nothing is inherently wrong (again, the question was whether an academic could fully understand these things), I am not saying academics are “bad” or “wrong.” I am saying they serve a good purpose - but it’s limited.
My issue with academics is when they take a kind of position of superiority to these things as if by maintaining their distance they are keeping their sanity and just observing some strange cultural or anthropological phenomena. And in doing so they're being somewhat condescending about it. And that's really hilarious because by maintaining that position, their own limitations show.
[...to be continued...]
The preceding is an excerpt from:
An Interview with Zeena Schreck – September & October 2013
for “The Breaking of Taboo and Transgression of Social Norms in Religion and Culture”
A Research Project by Che Chetty at the
SCHOOL OF RELIGION, PHILOSOPHY AND CLASSICS
UNIVERSITY OF KWAZULU NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA
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