Master Disciple Research Articles

"Master Disciple Relationship in the Hindi Poetry of Amir Khusrow: An Analysis" by Tazeem Imran

The Indo-Persian Sufi tradition emphasizes incommunicable, unbound, and unconditioned Divine love, evoking a bridal metaphor as a symbol of divinity. The spiritual path evolves through esoteric contemplation of Fana Fil Shaykh, characterized by complete trust and willingness to discover the miraculous powers of the Holy Guide. The Master emerges as the prime model for the seeker of divine love, and the relationship between the Master and Disciple is characterized by self-subjugation and meditation. Amir Khusrow, a distinguished Sufi poet, transcribed the intimacy and mutual love between Master and Disciple in his Hindi poeticarticulations and musical compositions, contributing significantly to Indian art and literature.

Decoding multimodal resources in the master–disciple interactions of Chinese Zen Buddhism

AbstractOver its long period of development, Zen Buddhism in ancient China has adopted a unique method of enlightenment for the direct individual understanding of the Buddha-nature in the interaction between Zen masters and their disciples, instead of merely depending on written classics or oral teaching, which constitutes so-called “independence-from-words.” Communication between monks in Zen is a process of multimodal interaction, in which many different semiotic modes are included, for example strikes, roars, gestures, foot-poses, body poses, and image drawings. Meditation and understanding in Zen demand an interpretation of these multimodal cues in the interaction. Therefore, multimodal discourse analysis may serve as a novel perspective for analysing Zen modes of enlightenment, since MDA attaches great importance to various semiotic channels besides language. This paper aims to present how Zen masters flexibly utilized multimodal resources in enlightenment, starting from an introduction to the traditional understanding of multimodality in ancient China and how the interpretation of Zen can benefit from its analysis through the lens of MDA.

Devices of future excellence: Detaching excellence recognition from ‘eminent men’

Abstract The global diffusion of the graduate school organizational model has shifted the way future academic excellence is identified from a paternalistic master–disciple relationship to a collective organizational decision. ‘Eminent men’ used to recruit PhD students on the firm belief that they could identify excellence and integrate it in their own scientific endeavor. Graduate schools formalize such judgments and transform them into an organizational decision. They establish admission devices to assure criteria-based collective decisions. To understand this shift, the article draws on the example of two German graduate schools that proclaim to search for outstanding doctoral candidates. As a latecomer in the transformation to graduate schools, the German case allows to observe the shift in statu nascendi. The article highlights the distinct role multi-site admission devices play. In both cases, they redistribute agency and excellence through the construction of competitive social fields. Documents, grades, committee deliberations, interviews, and excel files mobilize a social space in which applicants are qualified as acting holistically and competitively against each other in order to identify those most likely of future excellence. Admission is not predefined but the result of a cascade of socio-material fielding practices that purify a comparative social space, qualify applicants competitively, and infuse them with site-specific agency that increasingly authenticates them as field actors. Building on the work of Michel Callon and colleagues, we understand such formatting of future excellence as field agencements.

ʿAbd al-Mājid Daryābādī and reforming institutional Sufism in Colonial India

Abstract This article examines the reformation of the Sufi tradition in the writings of the Urdu journalist and Qurʾān translator and exegete ʿAbd al-Mājid Daryābādī (1892–1977), especially as articulated in relation to his spiritual connection with the colonial-era Sufi master and Ḥanafī jurist Mawlānā Ashraf ʿAlī Thānavī (1863–1943). Daryābādī’s balanced, pragmatic approach to the meaning and practice of the master–disciple relationship reflected, on the one hand, the South Asian reception of Enlightenment rationalism and epistemic democratization, and, on the other, certain discursive and practical developments internal to Thānavī’s sub-branch of the Chishtī Sufi order. This article contributes to scholarship on religious authority in modern South Asian Islam by underscoring the interplay between affect and reason, arguing that it is not mere feeling that structures Sufi communities but something like rationalized affect, a strategic use of feelings and emotions to construct, transmit, and contest religious authority. Thānavī and Daryābādī re-articulate the master–disciple relationship to affirm both personal freedom and communitarian belonging; in so doing they posit traditionalist Islam as an effective alternative to colonial (and now postcolonial) governmentality.

The relation of master and disciple against the background of Józef M. Bocheński’s logic of authority

The aim of this article is to apply Józef M. Bocheński’s logic of authority to a key interpersonal relation of philosophical interest: the master–disciple relation. The present research addresses the problem of philosophical authority in terms of the assumptions of the logic of authority and its consequences for philosophical historiographical research and verifies the claims of the logic of authority in this respect. The analyses show that, in the field of philosophy, the axiological authority of the master plays a fundamental role and is not limited solely to epistemic or deontic authority.

Hermann Cohen i Ernst Cassirer w relacji mistrz–uczeń

Hermann Cohen and Ernst Cassirer in the Master–Disciple Relationship of AuthorityThe aim of the paper is to analyze the relationship between the authority of the master and the disciple occurring between the two main representatives of the Neo-Kantianism of the Marburg School, Hermann Cohen and Ernst Cassirer. The analysis is based on the pragmatic-logical model of authority developed by Jozef M. Bocheński within the framework of his logic of authority in application to research on the basic relations taking place in the history of philosophy. The purpose of the analysis is to verify the hypothesis of the existence of the master– disciple authority relationship between the mentioned representatives of the school and to explain its logical consequences of the basis of historical-philosophical research of this particular philosophical formation.

The master–disciple relationship between Huisi and Jingwan

ABSTRACTThis paper analyses historical data and stone inscriptions to restructure the ‘master–disciple’ relationship between Venerable Nanyue Huisi 南岳慧思 (515–577) and Venerable Jingwan 敬琬 (?–639), who initiated the stone carving in Fangshan. At the end of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), Venerable Zibai 紫柏, determined to restore Yunju Monastery 雲居寺, was the first to forge such a link between the two. The Dijing jingwu lue 帝京景物略 (Brief Account of the Sights of the Imperial Capital) further elaborated upon this ‘master–disciple’ relationship, demonstrating a kind of wishful thinking and reflecting prevailing social attitudes of the time. In addition, Jingwan was likely the successor of Venerable Lingyu 靈裕. With the passing of time, people saw more clearly a ‘master–disciple’ relationship between the two figures – it was a relationship fabricated by people in later centuries.

Different Resistances: A Comparative View of Indian and Western Classical Music in the Modern Era

If the notion of resistant materials in music has a Western modernist subtext, an alternative perspective is offered by Hindustani classical music. The latter's principal means of cultural transmission, the master–disciple tradition (guru–śiṣya paramparā), would ostensibly find resistance a foreign concept. Yet this precolonial tradition paradoxically played a part in the rise of Indian modernity, bound up as this was with resistance to British colonialist hegemony. Recording technology also played a role in this process, and, in its evolving forms, has been a (modernising) determinant on how Hindustani classical practitioners shape their materials in improvised performance. Analysis of a recorded rāga rendition can reveal just how extensively the formation of materials involves various forms of immanent resistance. Thus, allied to both conservation and emancipation, resistance can ultimately be seen to play a role no less formative on Indian than on Western music, albeit differently so. The text is supported by sound examples which appear as supplementary material accessible online via the article's Supplementary tab on the Taylor & Francis website (http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gcmr).

The Master of the Master: The Twisted Story of an Imperial Master and His Disciple

Abstract The master-disciple relationship requires a mutual recognition and dependency based on mutual passion and devotion, regardless of each member’s social, cultural, political, and ethical background. It is shaped by mystical etiquette as detailed in the Sufi tradition. The relationship between spiritual masters and their disciples has been dealt with at length in many studies, mainly based on the descriptions provided in normative Sufi texts. The present article demonstrates new perspectives in discussing how master-disciple relationships can be more complex than what the Sufi manuals portray. A close reading of the letters from the Ottoman sultan Murād III (r. 982–1003/1574–95) to his spiritual master Şücāʿ Dede provides insight into the struggles of the sultan with the realities of a master-disciple relationship as well as how the dependency is negotiated in real life. By presenting the inner dynamics of such a relationship from a disciple’s perspective, the letters of Murād III vividly exhibit that the master-disciple relationship has not always been as straightforward and pure in actual practice as it is described to be in the theoretical literature.

The practice and meanings of spiritual healing in Nepal

Most of the Nepalese population use various forms of traditional medicine (TM) as their primary form of health care. Biomedical health-care services are currently extremely limited and are largely situated in urban settings. Despite widespread reliance on TM in contemporary Nepal, we know relatively little about the roles and uses of traditional medicine and the sociocultural impacts of a diverse therapeutic landscape. Drawing on a series of in-depth interviews with eight Nepalese spiritual healers, this article explores the character of spiritual healing; processes of training and knowledge transfer and the interplay of biomedicine and spiritual healing. The results illustrate the importance of metaphysical referencing and the master–disciple tradition in securing the socio-medical authority of spiritual healers and the protection of ‘the art’ of healing. Furthermore, their accounts reflect the impact of recent biomedically driven development programmes on the contemporary practice of spiritual healing in Nepal. We use this data to argue for further research to examine interplay of different forms of TM and biomedicine in Nepal, and to illustrate the importance of such an understanding for health development projects in the region.

Marcel Jousse entre Pierre Janet et Joseph Morlaas

Marcel Jousse (1886–1961), professor of linguistic anthropology, was introduced in 1927 by Frederic Lefèvre in Les Nouvelles Littéraires as “one of [the] most famous and [the] most loyal disciples [of Pierre Janet] […] who was able to apply Pierre Janet's basic ideas of psychology on a yet unexplored field with a youthful mastery”. On his part, Joseph Morlaas (1895–1981), author of a thesis in medicine entitled Contribution to the Study of Apraxia, sees in “Marcel Jousse : a master […] a firm support for a better understanding” of what he sees being deconstructed in what is pathological. This paper reviews the master–disciple relationship between these men, in a first step that of Pierre Janet and Marcel Jousse, and then that of Marcel Jousse and Joseph Morlaas. We will explore in this communication, relationships master–disciple between these men, in a first step of Pierre Janet and Marcel Jousse, then of Marcel Jousse and Joseph Morlaas.

Dominance and Anguish: The Teacher—Student Relationship in the Plays of David Mamet

Although at first sight Mamet's urban microcosm — inhabited by rugged, unsophisticated, often inarticulate men — and the school world would seem to be poles apart, relationships of the teacher—student type appear in most of his plays. A Life in the Theatre, Squirrels, and American Buffalo for instance, are built around a master—disciple paradigm; the protagonist of Mr. Happiness is presented as an expert in psychology who dispenses guidance and words of wisdom to his eager listeners. In Lakeboat, young ordinary seaman Dale elicits a "teaching reflex" from several of the older crewmen, who take it upon themselves to teach him his job and initiate him into adult life (see scenes 10 and 21). The importance of the pedagogical relationship is also reflected thematically by the frequent occurrence of words like "learn," "show," "teach," "know," "lesson," or "school." Some details make direct references to institutionalized education: for instance, we learn that Dale is a college student and that he may go on to teach English; Joan in Sexual Perversity in Chicago is a kindergarten teacher.

Dominance and Anguish: The Teacher-Student Relationship in the Plays of David Mamet

Although at first sight Mamet's urban microcosm — inhabited by rugged, unsophisticated, often inarticulate men — and the school world would seem to be poles apart, relationships of the teacher—student type appear in most of his plays. A Life in the Theatre, Squirrels, and American Buffalo for instance, are built around a master—disciple paradigm; the protagonist of Mr. Happiness is presented as an expert in psychology who dispenses guidance and words of wisdom to his eager listeners. In Lakeboat, young ordinary seaman Dale elicits a "teaching reflex" from several of the older crewmen, who take it upon themselves to teach him his job and initiate him into adult life (see scenes 10 and 21). The importance of the pedagogical relationship is also reflected thematically by the frequent occurrence of words like "learn," "show," "teach," "know," "lesson," or "school." Some details make direct references to institutionalized education: for instance, we learn that Dale is a college student and that he may go on to...