Professor David Robert Kinsley (1939-2000)

Studies in Religion / Sciences Religieuses

29: 2, 2000

© Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion / Corporation canadienne des Sciences Religieuses

Professor David Robert Kinsley (1939-2000)

Alan Mendelson
Religious Studies, McMaster University

David Kinsley was born in Holyoke, Massachusetts, on April 25, 1939. He received his BA from Drew University in 1961, his BD from Union Theological Seminary in 1964 and his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1970. From his early days as a graduate student, David was captivated by the wondrous diversity of human religious experience. Hinduism, in particular, fascinated him, and over his lifetime he made many research trips to India to study Hindu gods and goddesses, rituals and festivals. At McMaster University, where he taught for more than 30 years, he developed thematic, cross-cultural courses as well as courses devoted to contemporary issues spanning a variety of religious traditions. There usually were no textbooks where David ventured, no well-defined boundaries. So, with the editorial help of his wife, Cary, he wrote seven major books which are now being used by colleagues far and wide. The bibliography which is attached below gives a very good idea of the full extent of his interests.

But this tribute is not about books on a shelf; it is about the spirit which gave them life. For David was a teacher, first and foremost. He helped his students to develop a respect and sensitivity for other cultures -- cultures with beliefs and practices profoundly different from their own. At a recent event honouring David at a local Hindu temple, an Indian-Canadian student stood up and acknowledged that it was David who made her own tradition alive to her. A teacher can expect no greater tribute.

In December 1999, David and Cary returned from their last trip to India. David had had a very productive time on his research; he was brimming with ideas and enthusiasm for a new book on traditional Indian religious healers. Today the manuscript of this work lies incomplete on his desk. It was one of his deepest regrets that he was not given the strength to complete his manuscript on Hindu healers.

In January of this year, David was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. Instead of trying to hide his condition, he began to tell his innumerable friends. What ensued was a remarkable outpouring of affection and love which, David acknowledged, buoyed him up. He talked with remarkable candour about his disease and its prognosis. He admitted that he was afraid. He also admitted that when he could not sleep at night, he would sometimes weep. We understood that he cried not because he felt sorry for himself, but because he so loved life in all its infinite variety.

Visiting David in his last illness was a strangely exhilarating experience. One would leave him filled with awe for the drama of human courage unfolding before one's eyes. David disliked complaining, and even in his terrible illness he found much for which to be grateful, especially the gift of time: time to remember his wonderful life, time to express his love for family and friends, time to write a poem inspired by the Navaho Beautyway Chant.

On a beautiful trail
I have wandered
With beauty behind me,
Beside me, below me,
Above me, and before me--
Beauty all around me.
At the end of my life,
Filled with gratitude,
I wander in beauty.

In his last weeks, David seems to have set certain dates which he hoped to reach. First, he aimed for the mid-winter break so that he would not leave his students in the lurch. Then, that achieved, he aimed for the end of the semester. This too he managed. Ironically his last class was in one of the courses he had pioneered -- Health, Healing and Religion. Ever the teacher, David prepared a final lecture on the patient as learner. The last date David set was his 61st birthday, April 25. At 2:00 a.m. on that very day, he passed away; he had always loved to celebrate his birthday.

David's family and his close friend Gérard Vallée undertook all the preparations for his funeral with virtually no aid from the establishment which Jessica Mitford excoriated. David wished that this prayer from the Rig Veda be read at his funeral: ``From the unreal lead me to the real, / from darkness lead me to light, / from death lead me to immortality.'' This was done. There was no need for a formal eulogy, for a life of virtue creates its own eulogy.

David's life intersected with the lives of many people of different faiths. When he died, I looked to my own tradition for some consoling thoughts. What I found seemed so fitting that I reproduce it here:

Birth and death are like ships: why do we rejoice over a ship setting out on a journey when we know not what she may encounter on the seas? We should rejoice when the ship returns safely to port (adapted from Midrash Tanhuma by L. Rosten).

One thing was certain to everyone who saw David in the last months of his life: he had weathered the storms and had returned safely to port. Happiness, Aristotle said, is an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue in a complete life. In this sense, David achieved happiness.

David Kinsley is survived by his wife, Carolyn, and by literally a myriad of friends and former students.

Select Bibliography

Books1975The Sword and the Flute -- Krsna and Kali: Dark Visions of the Terrible and the Sublime in Hindu Mythology. Berkeley: University of California Press; paperback edition, 1977; German translation, Flöte und Schwert. Berne: Scherz Verlag, 1979; Indian edition, Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1975.1979The Divine Player: A Study of Krsna Lila. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.1982Hinduism: A Cultural Perspective. Prentice-Hall Series in World Religions. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall; second edition, 1993.1986Hindu Goddesses: Visions of the Divine Feminine in the Hindu Religious Tradition. Berkeley: University of California Press; paperback edition 1988; German translation, Indische Göttinnen. Frankfurt: Insel Verlag, 1990.1989The Goddesses' Mirror: Visions of the Divine from East and West. Albany: State University of New York Press.1995Ecology and Religion: Ecological Spirituality in Cross-Cultural Perspective. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.1996Health, Healing and Religion: A Cross-Cultural Perspective. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.1997Tantric Visions of the Divine Feminine: The Ten Mahavidyas. Berkeley: University of California Press.Articles1972```The taming of the shrew': On the history of the Goddess Kali.'' Studies in Religion / Sciences Religieuses 1: 328-38.1972```Without Krsna there is no song.''' History of Religions 2: 149-80.1974``Through the looking glass: Divine madness in the Hindu religious tradition.'' History of Religions 4: 270-305.1974-75``Creation as play in Hindu spirituality.'' Studies in Religion / Sciences Religieuses 4: 108-19.1975``Freedom from death in the worship of Kali.'' Numen 22: 183-207.1977```The death that conquers death': Dying to the world in medieval Hinduism.'' In Frank Reynolds and Earle Waugh (eds.), Religious Encounters with Death, 97-108. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.1978``The portrait of the Goddess in the Devi-mahatmya.'' Journal of the American Academy of Religion 46: 489-506.1980``Devotion as an alternative to marriage in the lives of some Hindu women devotees.'' Journal of Asian and African Studies 14: 83-93.1981``Devotion as an alternative to marriage in the lives of some Hindu women devotees.'' In Jayant Lele (ed.), Tradition and Modernity in Bhakti Movements, 83-93. Leiden: E. J. Brill.1982``Blood and death out of place: Reflections on the Goddess Kali.'' In John Stratton Hawley and Donna Marie Wulff (eds.), The Divine Consort: Radha and the Goddesses in India, 144-52. Berkeley Religious Studies Series, 3. Berkeley: Graduate Theological Union. Series in Comparative Religion.1982``The image of the divine and the status of women in the Devi-bhagavata-purana.'' Anima 9: 50-56.1982``The motherhood of God as expressed in the Goddess Kali.'' Anima 9: 131-42.1991``Reflections on ecological themes in Hinduism.'' Journal of Dharma 16: 229-45.1993``Mother Goddesses and culture Goddesses.'' In V. Subramaniam (ed.), Mother Goddess and Other Goddesses, 65-74. New Delhi: Ajanta Publications.1998``Learning the story of the land: Reflections on the liberating power of geography and pilgrimage in the Hindu tradition.'' In Lance E. Nelson (ed.), Purifying the Earthly Body of God: Religion and Ecology in Hindu India, 225-46. Albany: State University of New York Press.

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