NiTRO + Creative Matters

Perspectives on creative arts in higher education

RECALIBRATION OF THE PĀLI JĀTAKAS THROUGH SPECTER AND SAMSARĀ

  • MESH TENNAKOON
This paper reflects on a methodology within a Creative Writing PhD that recalibrates selected Buddhist Pāli Jātakas through a parallel reading of Derrida’s Specters of Marx and Buddhist texts on samsarā (rebirth). This cross-cultural dialogue provides a nuanced context for rearticulating the Jātakas. The project’s ‘middle-way methodology’ avoids privileging either Western or Buddhist frameworks and adapts Smith and Dean’s (2009) ‘iterative cyclic web’ through oscillations across creative writing, cross-cultural reading, and critical inquiry.

It engages spectral perspectives – absences, gaps, what could have been – to reimagine the Jātakas in philosophically astute ways for contemporary audiences. The recalibration of Jātaka 196 from a spectral perspective exemplifies how cross-traditional dialogue generates imaginative narrative possibilities while maintaining fidelity to Buddhist teachings. The implications for creative research lie in foregrounding obscured voices and demonstrating how the Jātakas’ transmission and reception, when read alongside Derrida’s ‘oeuvre’ and Buddhist texts, can evoke narratives previously unrealised.

Keywords Creative writing methodology, Buddhist Pāli Jātakas, Specters of Marx, middle-way methodology, creative practice research

DOI 10.65289/creativematters.2025.10.2

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Mesh Tennakoon is a writer of short fiction and a PhD candidate at Deakin University. Mesh’s research focuses on the cross-cultural dialogue between Theravādin Buddhism and Jacques Derrida’s work. Her creative writing has been published in Meanjin, GDS, Island, Scratchthat and Devour, Deakin’s 2024 Anthology for the Postgraduate Prize in Writing.

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