My Students' Papers: The Vaishnava Sahajiya Tradition
3. "The Vaishnava Sahajiya Tradition within the Tantric Paradigm" by SS. SS was the youngest student of the three and the only undergraduate. She had also taken the fewest courses in religious studies and so was much less familiar with many of the basic heuristic concepts or comparative methodology. She was also, as I learned, a little overstretched with greater than average course load. As such, I expected less from her than I did from the others. Nevertheless, I was quite pleased with her paper. I am measuring these things on what I get from it. It seems to me that there is so much knowledge out there that anyone who is even reasonable perceptive and makes a modicum of effort should be able to find an original and interesting viewpoint to present. What I liked best about this paper was SS’s decision to follow S.C. Banerji’s schema of the eight characteristic features of Tantrism and to examine to what extent they were valid for Vaishnava Sahajiyaism. These eight are: (1) A...