Harry Oldmeadow

Harry Oldmeadow is an Australian author, editor and educator whose works focus on Eastern religion and philosophy.

Biography

Born in Melbourne in 1947 to Christian missionaries in India, he spent the first nine years of his childhood there and developed an early interest in the civilizations of the East.

He studied history, politics and literature at the Australian National University and the University of Sydney, as well as working as a history tutor at La Trobe University in Melbourne. In 1971 a Commonwealth Overseas Research Scholarship allowed him to study at Oxford University, followed by extensive travel in Europe and North Africa.

In 1980 he achieved a Masters degree in Religious Studies at the University of Sydney where he completed a dissertation on the work of Frithjof Schuon and the other principal traditionalist writers. This study was awarded the University of Sydney Medal for excellence in research, and was eventually published by the Sri Lanka Institute of Traditional Studies under the title "Traditionalism: Religion in the Light of the Perennial Philosophy" (Colombo, 2000). [World Wisdom, [http://www.worldwisdom.com/Public/Authors/Detail.asp?AuthorID=47&WhatType=1] ] Under the auspices of this Institute, Harry delivered the Inaugural Ananda Coomaraswamy Memorial Lecture, in Colombo, on "The Religious Tradition of the Australian Aborigines".

He is currently the Coordinator of Philosophy and Religious Studies at La Trobe University, Bendigo. Over the last decade he has published extensively in such journals as "Sacred Web" (Vancouver), "Sophia" (Washington DC), and "Asian Philosophy" (Nottingham,UK). In late 2001, he was a key speaker at a large inter-faith gathering in Sydney, organized by the Australian Centre for Sufism; the theme of the meeting was the need for inter-religious understanding in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Bibliography

*"Luther's Affirmation", St Mark's Review, No. 52, May 1968
*"Petrarch and Dr. Leavis: A Perspective on Literature and Society", ANU Historical Journal, No 6, Nov 1969
*"Traditional and Modern Attitudes to Religious Biography", Religious Traditions, VII-IX 1986
*”"The Religious Tradition of the Australian Aborigines", Sri Lanka Institute of Traditional Studies, 1990
*"The Religious Tradition of the Australian Aborigines" in A. Sharma (ed) Fragments of Infinity: Essays in Philosophy and Religion, Prism Press, 1991
*"Disowning the Past: the Political and Postmodernist Assault on the Humanities", Quadrant, March 1992
*"Sankara's Doctrine of Maya", Asian Philosophy 2:2, 1992
*"The Life and Work of René Guénon" introduction to R. Guénon's Reign of Quantity, Sophia Perennis et Universalis, 1995
*"Modern Science and the Destruction of Traditional Understandings", Australian Orthodontic Journal 14:3, October 1996
*"Tracking The Searchers: A survey of its critical reception", Continuum, 11:2 1997
*"Delivering the last blade of grass': Aspects of the Bodhisattva Ideal in the Mahayana", Asian Philosophy, 1997 *"Metaphysics, Theology and Philosophy", Sacred Web I, 1998
*"A Sage for the Times: the Role and Oeuvre of Frithjof Schuon", Sophia, 1998
*"The Translucence of the Eternal': Religious Understandings of the Natural Order", Sacred Web 2, 1998
*"To a Buddhist Beat: Allen Ginsberg on Poetics, Politics and Spirituality", Beyond the Divide 3, 1999
*"Traditionalism: religion in the light of perennial philosophy", Sri Lanka Institute of Traditional Studies, 2000
*"The Role of Mystical Traditions in the Contemporary World", The Treasure: Australia's Sufi Magazine, Issue No. 8, 2000
*"Formal Diversity, Inner Unity", Sacred Web, 2000
*"The Not-so-Close Encounters of Western Psychology & Eastern Spirituality" (The Animist, 2000)
*"Melodies from the Beyond: Aboriginal Religion in Schuonian Perspective" (Connaissance des religions, 2001)
*"’Signs of the Supra-Sensible': Frithjof Schuon on the Natural Order" (Sacred Web, 2001)
*"Seeing God Everywhere: Essays on Nature and the Sacred" (Bloomington: World Wisdom, 2003)
*"The Betrayal of Tradition" (Bloomington: World Wisdom, 2003)
*"Journeys East: Western Encounters with Eastern Religious Traditions" (Bloomington: World Wisdom, 2004)
*(edited), "The Betrayal of Tradition: Essays on the Spiritual Crisis of Modernity" (Bloomington: World Wisdom, 2005)
*"Light from the East: Eastern Wisdom for the Modern West" (Bloomington: World Wisdom 2007)
*"A Christian Pilgrim in India: The Spiritual Journey of Swami Abhishiktananda (Henri Le Saux)" (Bloomington: World Wisdom, 2008)

ee also

*René Guénon
*Ananda Coomaraswamy
*Frithjof Schuon

External links

* [http://www.latrobe.edu.au/comace/staff/oldmeadow.html Staff Page at La Trobe University:]
* [http://www.worldwisdom.com/Public/Authors/Detail.asp?AuthorID=47&WhatType=1 Author Page at World Wisdom]
* [http://www.esoteric.msu.edu/VolumeIII/HTML/Oldmeadow.html “The Western Quest for Secret Tibet” – an essay by Harry Oldmeadow]

References