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View all search resultsOn God and the universe: A call to see religions in different ways
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Table talk: Holding a media briefing for the Borobudur Writers and Cultural Festival 2019 are (from left) curator Imam Muhtarom, committee chairman Seno Joko Suyono, advisor Oman Fahturrahman, Buddhist priest Acarya Lianhie, curator Murti Bunanta, cultural observer Mudji Sutrisno and advisor Toeti Heraty Noerhadi Roosseno. (JP/Tertiani ZB Simanjuntak)
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n its eighth installment this year, the Borobudur Writers and Cultural Festival (BWCF 2019) will gather writers and cultural enthusiasts to revisit the ancient beliefs that existed in the archipelago.
Themed “God and the Universe: Re-read Pantheism-Tantrayana in Kakawin and the Ancient Manuscripts of the Archipelago”, the festival will invite the public to retrace the works of Dutch pastor Petrus Josephus Zoetmulder, who was an expert in Old Javanese language.
“Pantheism, as a doctrine in philosophy and theology, sees that God and the universe are inseparable. It is the subject often appearing in Romo Zoetmulder's works,” said organizing committee chairman Seno Joko Suyono at the event’s media briefing in Cemara 6 Galeri Museum in Menteng, Central Jakarta, on Nov. 7.
Zoetmulder, who spent most of his life in Yogyakarta and died there in 1995, wrote a dissertation on an aspect of traditional Javanese belief Kejawen and analyzed old Javanese literature.
As for the festival’s theme, Tantrayana or the transformation path in Buddhism, entails a deep understanding of the interconnectedness between the body and mind. Its practitioners use this philosophy to access their innate wisdom and to come closer to their true nature.
According to Seno, the festival chose the theme to raise discourse that such beliefs not only existed in the school of thoughts of Hindu-Buddhism practitioners in ancient Java but also appeared in tasawwuf or Sufism teachings in Islam that are rooted in the archipelago.
Also a speaker at the media briefing, poet and cultural expert Toety Heraty Noerhadi Roosseno said that pantheism could be an effective school of thought to fight radicalization in religions as opposed to anthropomorphic thinking that projected an image of a person onto God.
