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SUMMARY:Conceptual Metaphors and Soteriology in early Hindu and Buddhist M
 editation Text
DTSTART:20261116T150000Z
DTEND:20261116T163000Z
DTSTAMP:20260915T041403Z
UID:metaphor-talk-16-11-2026-14109@ceres.rub.de
CATEGORIES:
DESCRIPTION:Guest lecture by Karen O'Brien-Kop (King’s College London)T
 his paper examines paths to liberation in early Hindu and Buddhist Sanskri
 t meditation treatises\, such as the Abhidharmakośabhāṣya and Pātañj
 alayogaśāstra\, through the lens of conceptual metaphor theory (e.g. Lak
 off and Johnson 1980\; Fauconnier and Turner 2003\; Gibbs 2017\; Kövecses
  2020\; Rodríguez 2025). It argues that soteriological goals such as mok
 ṣa or nirvāṇa are complex systems of conceptual metaphors that are de
 rived from bodily experiences of the material world. We will analyse prima
 ry metaphors of mind and meditation in early Indic soteriology and then cr
 itically inspect them to show how such metaphors were constructed within r
 eal-world agrarian and urban economies in the early first millennium. The 
 paper explores how these and other basic conceptual metaphors arise from s
 ensory experience in physical environments and from preconceptual structur
 es (e.g. up/down) derived from visceral human practices and embodiment. Dr
 awing on the framework of conceptual metaphor theory\, the paper employs t
 ools such as image-schema (pre-linguistic or pre-verbal)\, domain-mapping\
 , root metaphors\, metaphor networks and blended metaphors to understand s
 imple and complex variations such as ‘seeds of karma’\, ‘clouds of d
 harma’\, or ‘ladders of liberation’\, giving us access to the deep s
 emantic field of these common images. Using metaphor theory to analyse med
 itation texts enriches understanding of both text and embodied world-makin
 g. On the one hand\, we see that meditation was materially determined\, an
 d textual metaphors tell us about the material world in which they were pr
 oduced. On the other hand\, it is only through conceptual metaphors that t
 he abstractions of soteriology can sustain meaning. The resulting structur
 al and functional analysis is to ‘denaturalise’ certain assumptions ab
 out meditation\, including ‘mystical’ foundations.
LOCATION:GB 5/150–152 “Ruhrpott”
URL:https://ceres.rub.de/en/events/metaphor-talk-16-11-2026/
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