Why Has the Rhinoceros Come from the West? An Excursus into the Religious, Literary, and Environmental History of the Tang Dynasty (original) (raw)
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Buddhist-Christian Studies, 2017
My article provides a new understanding of a Chinese Zen ("Chan") Buddhist literary genre called “encounter dialogue,” arguing that this genre implicitly and explicitly invites its readers to visualize Zen Buddhist patriarchs. I do this through a reading of the Record of Linji. Though encounter dialogues, which typically describe interactions between masters and students in the Zen tradition, have enjoyed some significant attention in Buddhist studies recently, what has remained underdeveloped is the study of these texts as literature. Through a comparative approach focused on the literary features of encounter dialogue (their brevity, focus on action, and lack of descriptive indexes), we can understand (1) how and why encounter dialogues classify as a type of text Erich Auerbach calls “history” and (2) why encounter dialogue collections consistently comment on encounter dialogues as allowing practitioners to meet their ancestors. A comparative analysis of encounter dialogues can help us understand the importance of encounter dialogues in what has been called the "sinification" of Buddhism during the Song.
Mad but not Chan: Tu Long (1543-1605) and the Tiantai School of Buddhism_Vol.5 No.2 2019
This article focuses on the relationship between the controversial late-Ming playwright Tu Long and the contemporaneous Tiantai school of Buddhism represented by Youxi Chuandeng. It aims to contribute on the one hand to studies of Tu Long, which have paid little attention to Tu's connection with Tiantai, and on the other hand to studies of Chuandeng and the late Ming Tiantai revival, which have not yet explored the nexus between Chuandeng's philosophical teachings and his social network. I argue that it is most likely through Tiantai Buddhism, rather than "mad Chan" or Yangming philosophy, that Tu justified his antinomian deeds. This case study of Tu Long indicates that the success of the Tiantai school in the late Ming may be attributed to its fulfillment of the literati appetite for reading and writing, as well as to its tolerance of their unconventional lifestyle and syncretic spirituality. Unveiling some disagreements between Tu and Yunqi Zhuhong, whom many regard as Tu's guru, this paper highlights the agency of a lay Buddhist amid the tensions between rival schools and teachers.
Studies in Chinese Religions, 2024
In contrast with Chinese literary tradition and Confucianism, there was a multitude of animals and birds in the Jātaka stories, which had yet to be researched as a reference point of Confucianism. Because of Buddhism’s opposition to the use of animals as a sacrifice, its rejection of consuming animal meat, and because animals were considered as a state of the former existence of Śākyamuni Buddha, Buddhist literature gives ample room to animal images as full-fledged main characters and moral agents. A careful analysis of the use of herbivores such as deer, turtles, wild geese, and monkeys as a narrative device in the Jātaka stories demonstrates that personified animals served as a source of inspiration for humans. Turning animals into articulate moral agents render them no longer the object of human sympathy as in Confucianism nor metaphors in philosophical Daoism, but intellectually equal and ethically superior to humans. The Buddhist idea of cherishing all sentient beings was not merely based on compassion but also an egalitarian perspective that acknowledges animals’ subjectivity as autonomous emotional-moral agents. This unique dimension of Buddhism complemented the Confucian anthropocentric worldview and enriched Chinese literature and art.
Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies, Vol. 11. Oxford: Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies, 2016.
This 11,437-word review article of A Distant Mirror is concerned not only to review the work but to place it within the broader context of the study of Buddhist philosophy. As such, I discuss the book’s relationship to relevant other recently published work on Buddhist philosophy, and argue that the preponderant body of literature in this field sidelines, if not altogether ignores, Chinese, and more broadly East Asian, Buddhist philosophy. The prevalence (largely unacknowledged let alone questioned) of Indian and Indo-Tibetan philosophy over Sino-Japanese Buddhist varieties has, I then point out, historical reasons to do with the derivation of the study of Buddhist thought in the West from the philological study of Indo-European languages and texts. I then criticize arguments to the effect that scholars are justified in focusing on Indo-Tibetan thinkers because 1) they pursue philosophical argument in a manner more akin to that of Western philosophers, and/or 2) the Tibetans preserve more ‘accurate’ and/or ‘sophisticated’ versions of Indian Buddhist texts and ideas. Furthermore, I show that scholars routinely draw on sources vastly removed temporally, spatially, and culturally from Buddhist contexts, and acknowledge that this approach has led, and continues to lead, to some of the most philosophically interesting discussions and applications of Buddhist philosophy published in recent decades. However, if any doubts remain as to the validity of using Chinese Buddhist sources to illuminate Indian Buddhist philosophical arguments, then surely such doubts should invalidate all the more the common (and, again, philosophically highly fruitful) practice of using non-Buddhist sources from the Christianate Western philosophical traditions to illuminate Buddhist philosophy, whether its geographical provenance is South- or East-Asian. Conversely, if it is fine to read Dharmakīrti via Berkeley or Zhiyi via Derrida, then surely it is at least as fine to read Dignāga via Huiyuan or Vasubandhu via Xuanzang.
Introduction: Fourth-Wave Studies of Chan/Zen Buddhist Discourse
Frontiers of History in China, 2013
This special issue of the Frontiers of History in China features four essays that examine various historical materials and perspectives regarding heretofore little or misleadingly tracked aspects of the theory and practice of Chan Buddhist gongan, which are pithy, paradoxical dialogues used to create a transformational spiritual experience. The main themes involve clarifying the development of the huatou approach in Chan meditation that concentrates on a critical phrase extracted from gongan dialogues that were first created during the twelfth century at the dawn of the Southern Song dynasty, as well as the theme of renewal and reform in this method of meditation in the early seventeenth century near the end of the Ming dynasty. The twelfth as well as the early seventeenth centuries represented two crucial turning points, over four hundred years apart, when Chan discourse intensively interacted with other intellectual and cultural trends, both Buddhist and non-Buddhist. One such trend was the emphasis on elaborate rhetoric used within the Chan monastic community and which was based on interactions with the literary elite, in addition to engaging the Pure Land school's promotion of the practice of nianfo or recitation of the Buddha's name, a technique aimed at lay followers who did not have the time or mentality required for meditation. The foremost Chan Buddhist teachers from the two eras, Dahui Zonggao (1089-1163) and Yunqi Zhuhong (1535-1615), both of the Linji school, sought in their respective ways to establish the identity and integrity of their lineage's teachings either through criticism of or syncretism with-or, more likely, some combination, whether unconscious or not-of competing viewpoints functioning both within and outside of the Chan tradition. The rivalries among Chan factions, as well as between the Chan and Pure Land schools, initially took place in a highly competitive religious environment Copyright of Frontiers of History in China is the property of Brill Academic Publishers and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.
Buddhist Historiography: A Tale Of Deception in A Seminal Late Ming Buddhist Letter
This article offers an historical repositioning of an unusually rich early seventeenth-century autobiographical letter written by the Donglin 東林 partisan Wang Yuanhan 王元翰 (1565–1633). The letter is religiously complex, yet historians have pre- viously focused only on a single short excerpt listing the names of eighteen monks and officials to argue that Buddhist activity flourished in Beijing circa 1600. To the contrary, the greater historical value of this letter resides in its depictions of reli- gious desire, vision of self-cultivation, and critical judgments imparted by an impas- sioned Buddhist and unremitting Donglin remonstrator. Through examination of Wang’s political and spiritual biography and actual evidence that the network he conjures was more aspirational than real, this article concludes that we need to rethink earlier scholarly depictions of the Donglin as anti-Buddhist, distinguish between being critical and being anti-Buddhist, and reflect on the use of lists in an age of scholarly attention to networks.