One Day Tantra Conference: MELA Interfaith Association

The MELA Interfaith Association in conjunction with Janssen Spirituality Centre invite you to:

One Day Tantra Conference

Date: Saturday 16 April 2016       Time: 8:30am to 5pm
Location: Janssen Spirituality Centre, 22 Woodvale Road Boronia Vic, 3155

The aim of Tantra is to reach the freedom that arises from the union of opposites, light and darkness, male and female, beauty and horror, strength and weakness. This paradoxical path leads most effectively to the highest state.

Due to many requests after a very successful Tantra Conference last November 2015, we are conducting a couple of one-day conferences leading up to a full Conference on 3-4 December 2016. Two themes:

1. “Well-being of the woman, well-being of the cosmos.”
2. “Ageing, spirituality and sexuality – an oxymoron?”

Guest Speakers:

• Merav Carmeli was born is Israel. She has a BA and MA in Bible and Jewish Studies from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She is now working on her Phd which focuses on the Zohar (the most important work of the classical Kabbalah from the 13th century) and specifically on the centrality of the Divine Feminine in this composition. She has taught Jewish Studies and Jewish Mysticism at the adult education program of Monash University through the ACJC, at universities in Israel and at other institutions. For the last 12 years she has analysed the available Zohar manuscripts (from the 14th-16th centuries) as part of the Pritzker Zohar Project (a critical translation into English of the Zohar, Stanford University Press). She is now an Adjunct Research Associate at Monash University. Merav has published a few academic articles and she is the co-editor of two volumes on the Zohar. She lives in Melbourne with her husband and three children.
• Rev. Dr. John Dupuche is a Catholic Priest of the Archdiocese of Melbourne. He has a doctorate in Sanskrit, specialising in Kashmir Shaivism and is particularly interested in its interface with Christianity. He is Honorary Fellow in the Faculty of Theology and Philosophy at the Australian Catholic University with special involvement in interfaith relations, and senior-lecturer and co-ordinator of the Graduate Certificate in Guiding Meditation at MCD University of Divinity. He is chair of the Catholic Interfaith Committee of the Archdiocese, and member of the executive of the School of Prayer within the Archbishop’s Office for Evangelisation. He travels to India each year, and lives in an interfaith ashram. His book: Abhinavagupta: the Kula Ritual as elaborated in chapter 29 of the Tantraloka was published in 2003; Jesus, the Mantra of God, in 2005; and Vers un Tantra Chrétien in 2009 (translated as Towards a Christian Tantra). He has written many articles in these fields.

Cost: $45.
Enrolments: by 31 March 2016  | jeandupuche@gmail.com | 0417 560 0870

Program:
8.30am registration
09.00am presentation by Merav Carmeli.

• “I will explore the idea that attending to the sexual and emotional wellbeing of the human woman and the Goddess is the key to personal and cosmic salvation. We will read texts from the Kabbalah of the Zohar and compare them to texts from Kashmir Shaivism and Hildegard from Bingen.”

10.00am morning tea.
10.30am workshop on material provided by Merav.
11.30am general discussion on outcome of workshop and further investigation of the topic.
12.15pm pause
12.30pm lunch (vegetarian)
1.30pm presentation by John Dupuche on ‘Tantra in the third age of life’

• The paradoxical topic of ageing, spirituality and sexuality will be broached from a tantric perspective, drawing on themes from Christianity and Kashmir Shaivism.

2.30pm elaboration on the tantric dimension of the Mass.
3.15pm afternoon tea
3.45pm workshop on material supplied by John
4.30pm general discussion and resumé
5.00pm close.