Disgusting bodies, disgusting religion: the biology of Tantra.

@article{Ellis2011DisgustingBD,
  title={Disgusting bodies, disgusting religion: the biology of Tantra.},
  author={Thomas B. Ellis},
  journal={Journal of the American Academy of Religion. American Academy of Religion},
  year={2011},
  volume={79 4},
  pages={
          879-927
        }
}
  • Thomas B. Ellis
  • Published 1 December 2011
  • Psychology
  • Journal of the American Academy of Religion. American Academy of Religion
Hard-core Tantric practice is disgusting, a point several scholars make. Scholarly interpretations of Tantric disgustingness, however, tend to follow the lead of Mary Douglas in suggesting that what disgusts is ultimately a reflection of social–historical concerns with borders and boundaries. Such interpretations fail to take seriously the Tantric consumption of feces, menstrual blood, urine, semen, and phlegm. Likewise, they fail to take seriously the particular sexual act involved, that is… 
View on PubMed
libres.uncg.edu
11 Citations
Background Citations
5

11 Citations

Disgust and the Sacred: Do People React to Violations of the Sacred With the Same Emotion They React to Something Putrid?
TLDR
Whether the same emotion—core disgust—occurs when witnessing both types of violation, sacred or nonsacred violations, is examined, and a specific method for doing so is proposed.
PERSONALITY PROCESSES AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES Sublimation , Culture , and Creativity
Combining insights from Freud and Weber, this article explores whether Protestants (vs. Catholics and Jews) are more likely to sublimate their taboo feelings and desires toward productive ends. In…
Growing Up Amid The Religion And Science Affair: A Perspective From Indology
Abstract. This article identifies the tropes of “maturity” and “immaturity” in the dialogue between religion and science. On both sides of the aisle, authors charge, either directly or indirectly,…
The Perception of Menstruation and Treatment Of Menstrual Ailments among Tibetan Women in Mcleod Ganj, Himachal Pradesh
TLDR
A large-scale study of the impact of menstruation on women in Tibet and its role in traditional medicine and religious practice concludes that traditional medicine should be considered as a causative factor in women's menstrual cycles.
Place and Defilement
Following Douglas and Kristeva, Sibley theorizes in Geographies of Exclusion that socio-spatial boundaries necessarily activate discourses of purity and impurity. Yet there is also a second, more…
Looking for Mr Wednesday : towards an Odian philosophical framework
The thesis explores the theory and praxis of Odianism in order to articulate the fundamentals of a possible philosophical framework underpinning the Odian paradigm of reality. It is argued that…
Touch in contemporary Tantra: transgression, healing, and ecstasy in women's constructions of selfhood
....................................................................................................................... 4 Lay Summary…
Gag reflex and disgust sensitivity in selective eaters
Evoked Pūjā : The Behavioral Ecology of an Equatorial Ritual
Sublimation, culture, and creativity.
TLDR
Two laboratory experiments found that Protestants produced more creative artwork when they were primed with damnation-related words, induced to feel unacceptable sexual desires, or forced to suppress their anger.
...
...

References

SHOWING 1-10 OF 118 REFERENCES
Dirt, Disgust, and Disease: Is Hygiene in Our Genes?
TLDR
Anthropologists have long puzzled over why certain objects and activities are avoided, reviled, or proscribed in many cultures, but as Reinhart (1990) suggests, a full explanation remains elusive.
Body, Psyche, and Culture: The Relationship between Disgust and Morality
"Core disgust" is a food related emotion that is rooted in evolution but is also a cultural product. Seven categories of disgust elicitors have been observed in an American sample. These include…
Dirt, disgust and disease: a natural history of hygiene
  • V. Curtis
  • Biology
    Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health
  • 2007
TLDR
It is argued that hygiene behaviour and disgust predate culture and so cannot fully be explained as its product, and the history of ideas about disease thus is neither entirely socially constructed nor an “heroic progress” of scientists leading the ignorant into the light.
Domain-specific variation in disgust sensitivity across the menstrual cycle
Evidence that disgust evolved to protect from risk of disease
TLDR
Evidence is provided that the human disgust emotion may be an evolved response to objects in the environment that represent threats of infectious disease.
A perspective on disgust.
TLDR
The ontogeny of disgust, which the author believes develops during the first 8 years of life, is considered and the idea that feces, the universal disgust object, is also the first is explored, and the mechanisms for the acquisition of disgust are examined.
Yuck!: The Nature and Moral Significance of Disgust
People can be disgusted by the concrete and by the abstract -- by an object they find physically repellent or by an ideology or value system they find morally abhorrent. Different things will disgust…
Disgust and its disorders: Theory, assessment, and treatment implications.
Disgust and Its Disorders: Theory, Assessment, and Treatment Implications thoughtfully examines the role of disgust in psychopathology by highlighting important theoretical and methodological…
Individual differences in sensitivity to disgust: A scale sampling seven domains of disgust elicitors
The Anatomy of Disgust
Prologue 1. Darwin's Disgust 2. Disgust and Its Neighbors 3. Thick, Greasy Life 4. The Senses 5. Orifices and Bodily Wastes 6. Fair Is Foul, and Foul Is Fair 7. Warriors, Saints, and Delicacy 8. The…
...
...