Flavio Alessio Geisshuesler is a Swiss-Italian academic and writer. As historian of religions, he specializes in the study of meditation and other contemplative practices in
Indo-Tibetan Buddhism.
His 2018 doctoral dissertation, defended at the University of Bern, is titled Crisis and Critique in the History of Religions: Ernesto de Martino (1908-1965) in Italy and Beyond.[5] In 2019, he also defended a second doctoral disseration, Prisons of Freedom: An Interdisciplinary Study of Contemplative Practices in Great Perfection Buddhism, at the
University of Virginia.[6] As part of his research, he also spent several years living and studying in various parts of Asia, particularly in the Himalayan regions of India and Nepal.[7]
Bilingual in German and Italian, he has mastered English, French, Spanish, Hebrew, Tibetan, Nepali, Hindi, Urdu, and Persian. He also reads Sanskrit, Tibetan, Pali, Biblical Hebrew, and Russian.[12][23]
Geisshuesler's primary research centers on the contemplative traditions of India, Tibet, and the wider Himalayas, particularly the
Dzogchen or Great Perfection tradition. His most recent publication offers the first comprehensive English-speaking introduction to the
Tibetan sky-gazing practice. The book's most important argument is that the Great Perfection was originally a pre-Buddhist indigenous Tibetan tradition that emerged in close contact with the early
Bön tradition. He argues that Dzogchen once belonged to a
shamanic cult centered on the quest for vitality, which involved the worship of the sky as primordial source of life and endorsed the hunting of animals, as they were believed to be endowed with the ability to move in between the divine realm of the heavens and the world of humans. The book also traces the historical development of the Great Perfection, delineating a process of buddhicization that started with the introduction of Buddhism during the time of the
Tibetan Empire, intensified with the rise of
new schools in the 11th century, and reached its climax in the systematization of the teachings by the great scholar-yogi
Longchenpa in the 14th century.[7]
Geisshuesler, Flavio (2024). Tibetan Sky-Gazing Meditation and the Pre-History of Great Perfection Buddhism. London: Bloomsbury.
ISBN978-1-350-42881-2.
Articles
Selected articles by Geisshuesler include:[16][30]
Geisshuesler, Flavio A. (2019). "The 7E Model of the Human Mind: Articulating a Plastic Self for the Cognitive Science of Religion". Journal of Cognition and Culture. 19 (5). Brill: 450–476.
doi:
10.1163/15685373-12340069.
ISSN1567-7095.
S2CID210557247.
Geisshuesler, Flavio A. (2020). "From Grounded Identity to Receptive Creativity The Mythical-Historical Formation of the Nyingma School and the Potential of Collective Trauma". International Journal of Buddhist Thought and Culture. 30 (1). International Association for Buddhist Thought and Culture: 233–270.
doi:
10.16893/ijbtc.2020.06.30.1.233.
ISSN1598-7914.
S2CID225752308.
Geisshuesler, Flavio A. (2022). "Meditation between Open Skies and Deep Ravines". Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies. 45. Peeters online journals: 39–71.
doi:
10.2143/JIABS.45.0.3291576.
^
abcGeisshuesler, Flavio (2024-02-08). Tibetan Sky-Gazing Meditation and the Pre-History of Great Perfection Buddhism. London: Bloomsbury.
ISBN978-1-350-42881-2.
^Geisshuesler, Flavio A. (July 29, 2021). "The Life and Work of Ernesto de Martino: Italian Perspectives on Apocalypse and Rebirth in the Modern Study of Religion".
The Life and Work of Ernesto De Martino. Brill.
ISBN9789004457720. Retrieved 2 October 2023 – via brill.com.