Eco-Humanities Research Group Public Lecture from Dawn Collins

This lecture will explore the value that understandings and practices of Tibetan ritual healing traditions may have for planetary healing. It will focus on deity yoga practices, with a particular focus on those relating to the Indo-Tibetan deities Avalokiteśvara, Parṇaśavarī and Tārā. Some innovations and continuities between contemporary developments of these practices and their more ancient counterparts, rooted in ancient Tibetan religious traditions, will be examined through the lens of their use for healing. How these practices are embodied in waking life, dream, and death processes will be examined in relation to their intended effect beyond ordinary understandings of the individual to influence at planetary levels. In this regard, some ways in which they were employed by contemporary Tibetan Buddhist practitioners in response to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic will be discussed. The value of such traditional practices in answering the urgent global call for planetary healing will be explored.

Dawn Collins holds a PhD from Cardiff University focusing on Tibetan landscapes and ritual healing. She is a tutor on the MA Ecology and Spirituality and the MA Cultural Astronomy and Astrology at the Sophia Centre for Cosmology in Culture, the University of Wales Trinity Saint David. She is a Research Fellow of the Foro di Studi Avanzati Gaetano Massa (FSA), Rome, Italy (Gaetano Massa Research Institute for Advanced Study of the Humanities) and works as a freelance editor, most notably, on the editorial team of 84,000: Translating the Words of the Buddha. Her research is informed by her practice as a dance artist and as a practitioner of traditional massage therapies.