2021 Larry Morris Scholarship Award recipient

This year we were able to award a full $2,500 scholarship to an outstanding UNM doctoral student in the Philosophy department to support his research and writing.

NILS SEILER is a PhD student specializing in South Asian Philosophy in UNM’s Department of Philosophy. Nils’ current research, which is in its early stages, focuses on 5th century Hindu poet and mystic Bhartṛhari’s masterpiece On the Sentence and the Word (Vākyapadīya). An accomplished literary translator, Seiler plans to closely examine the first chapter of Bhartṛhari’s work in its original Sanskrit. Bhartṛhari’s theory of language considered words and what they referred to as being one and the same. This is very different from the approach, for example, of Deconstructionist philosophers of the 20th century who felt that there is no natural link between a word and its meaning. Opposite from this devaluing of language, Bhartṛhari held language to be the essence of brahman (“the Absolute”). Most scholarly work has focused on On the Sentence and the Word from an almost purely historical perspective. Nils seeks to fill a large gap in critical engagement with this work by looking at Bhartṛhari’s philosophy from a contemporary perspective and seeing how it can inform our lives in a very different culture today.

Nils’ research meets the goals of the Larry Morris Memorial Scholarship because it synthesizes the study of literature with an exploration of spirituality (in a way, like words and the spiritual are indistinguishable from one another in Bhartṛhari’s worldview). Seiler’s scholarship is deeply rooted in mysticism, as Bhartṛhari’s theory of language appears to offer (both then and now) a pathway for union with the absolute through language, since language to him was the absolute. By freeing On the Sentence and the Word from just being viewed as a historical text, Seiler’s innovative work offers many points of comparison between the poet’s 5th century perspective in the Hindu tradition with contemporary Western religion and philosophy. A person might wonder, for example, how it relates to Christian texts with similar-seeming sentiments, such as John 1:1 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Or a person might ask how On the Sentence and the Word applies to mainstream contemporary practices like yoga or mindfulness meditation. Seiler’s research, which will also delve into Bhartṛhari’s distinctive approach to yogic meditation with language, can show us how we might apply the poet’s belief about the sacred nature of language to our present-day lives.

Seiler was selected as the recipient of the 3rd annual Scholarship on the basis of his outstanding academic record (which also includes Master’s degrees from Cornell University and the University of Iowa’s prestigious Literary Translation program) and the scope and depth of his project. We feel that Nils’ work on Bhartṛhari has the potential to further knowledge of mystical experience and the unity of life, as well as impact concepts and practices of 21st century spirituality through new ways of understanding the relationship between language, translation, and perception. This is particularly relevant for times of greater exchange between Eastern and Western spiritual traditions, and the increased availability of cross-cultural literature. We recognize that it takes courage and vision to explore ancient texts with fresh spirit, and great intellect to find their correlates in other philosophical and spiritual traditions that address the human struggle across time.