Abstract
The psychology of religion and spirituality is a topic of increasing interest in India as well as in the West. An internationally influential framework for defining religion and spirituality has been developed by US psychologist Kenneth Pargament, who conceptualizes spirituality and religion as search processes related to sacred realities. Pargament’s framework has been found to resonate across multiple cultures and has guided and informed empirical research in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim populations. The present paper argues that Pargament’s framework can also coherently resonate with Hinduism and other indigenous Indian religious beliefs and practices. We conclude that future studies of religion and spirituality in Indian contexts may benefit by framing their investigations with reference to Pargament’s approach. Such framing need not be uncritical and would help bring Indian psychology of spirituality/religion in closer contact with psychology of spirituality/religion in other parts of the world, benefiting both India and the worldwide psychology of religion and spirituality.
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Notes
Prabhavananda (1963/1979) noted that passages in the Upaniṣads “give what may appear to be three separate answers” (p. 41) to the question of the relation between Brahman and the universe. First, that Brahman and the universe “are two things, not one, and both possessed of a permanent reality” (p. 41), passages on which “the great commentator Rāmānuja … based his interpretation [and] philosophy” (p. 43). Second, passages that “there is only Brahman” (p. 43) from which “Śaṃkara…drew the philosophy for which he is known” (p. 44). Third, passages that Brahman “escapes all definition, all description” (p. 44), raising the “possibility that [these passages], too, had an important place in later Hindu philosophy …. Who can say whether the apparent agnosticism of the Buddha … his refusal to make any affirmation whatever regarding Brahman, or God, may not have come from his attention to such passages…. For nobody doubts that the Buddha made the most thorough study of the ancient scriptures” (p. 45).
Pargament’s scholarship offers little guidance or restriction on how to interpret “institution.” Dictionaries offer definitions unrestricted to formal organizations. For example, an influential US dictionary offers nine definitions including “1. an instituting or being instituted; establishment. 2. an established law, custom, practice, system, etc. 3. an organization having a social, educational, or religious purpose…. 8. a system of the elements or rules of any art or science [Obsolete],” and derives the word from Latin institutio, “a disposition, arrangement, establishment” (Webster & McKechnie, 1983, p. 951).
Emmons and Crumpler (1999) advocated use of the term “sacralization” rather than “sanctification,” but the latter has become standard in the psychology literature.
Mahatma Gandhi stated that “Spinning has become a part and parcel of the Ashram prayer. The conception of spinning as sacrifice has been linked with the idea of God, the reason being that we believe that in the Charkha and what it stands for lies the only hope of salvation of the poor” (Gandhi, 1999, vol. 91, p. 420, also in Harijan 18 August 1946, p. 263).
Navayana Buddhism is followed by millions in India today. Its founder, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, expressed his distinctive view of religion in his book Buddha and his Dhamma, which states that “Buddha preached that Dhamma is morality, and as Dhamma is sacred, so is morality” (Ambedkar, 1957, Book Four, Part I, Sect. 6, last sentence). As expressed in this passage, Dr. Ambedkar’s views of sacredness positively resonate with the Pargament framework’s emphasis on the sacred as corresponding with central religious goals and concerns.
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Oman, D., Paranjpe, A.C. Indian Spirituality: How Relevant is Pargament’s Framework?. Psychol Stud 63, 140–152 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12646-017-0412-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12646-017-0412-z