Genealogies of Mahāyāna Buddhism: Emptiness, Power and the question of Origin (original) (raw)

Genealogies of Mahāyāna Buddhism offers a solution to a problem that some have called the holy grail of Buddhist studies: the problem of the “origins” of Mahāyāna Buddhism. In a work that contributes both to a general theory of religion and power for religious studies as well as to the problem of the origin of a Buddhist movement, Walser argues that that it is the neglect of political and social power in the scholarly imagination of the history of Buddhism that has made the origins of Mahāyāna an intractable problem. Walser challenges commonly-held assumptions about Mahāyāna Buddhism, offering a fascinating new take on its genealogy that traces its doctrines of emptiness and mind-only from the present day back to the time before Mahāyāna was “Mahāyāna.” In situating such concepts in their political and social contexts across diverse regimes of power in Tibet, China and India, the book shows that what was at stake in the Mahāyāna championing of the doctrine of emptiness was the articulation and dissemination of court authority across the rural landscapes of Asia.

This text will be will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students and scholars of Buddhism, religious studies, history and philosophy.

Acknowledgements

Part I: Genealogies of Mahāyāna

1. Introduction: On Origins and Genealogies 2. Mahāyāna in Retrospect: From My House to the Dalai Lama (looking back from 2017 – 1930)

  1. Assessing the Essence
  2. Tibet as Buddhist: Tracing the Lines of Power
  3. Emptiness and the Analytic of Power
  4. Inculcating Dispositions to Authority: the Kālacakra 3. Mahāyāna in the Republic, Mahāyāna in the Empire: Tracing “Religion” from Republican China to the Early Qing Dynasty (1920’s – 1723)
  5. Religion vs. Superstition in 20th Century East Asia
  6. The Fin de Siècle Turning Point
  7. The Qing Imperium and the Usefulness of Mahāyāna
  8. The Yonghegong Temple in Beijing and the Political Work of Monuments
  9. Emperor Qianlong: the Tantric Initiate and the Tantric State
  10. Tantra, Emptiness and the Reincarnate Emperor/Lama, or why it’s never too late to have a venerable past.
  11. Yongzheng Emperor and the Great Ming Debate 4. The Image of Emptiness across the Landscape of Power (China: 11th Cent. B.C.E – 15th Cent. C.E.)
  12. The Ancestor Image
  13. The Image of Emptiness: Di, Space and the Celestial Pole
  14. The Image of the Earth and control of the cults
  15. Exorcism and the State: When possession is nine-tenths
  16. Religion in the Service of Taxation
  17. Buddhist Exorcism and the Heart of Mahāyāna
  18. Conclusion 5. Buddha Veda: an Indian Genealogy of Emptiness (20th century – 6th century CE.)
  19. Emptiness and Power in Orissa: From Mahima Dharma Sampradāya to Jagannātha of Puri
  20. Buddhism and Brahmanism in Maitrīpa (ca. 1010-1097 CE)
  21. Bhāviveka’s 6th Century Mahāyāna
  22. Bhāviveka, Mahāyāna and Yogācāra
  23. Bhāviveka, Mahāyāna and Brahmanism
  24. Preliminary Conclusion

Part II: The Genealogy of the Perfection of Wisdom

6. What did the text of the Perfection of Wisdom look like?

  1. The Versions
  2. The Quest for the Ur-Sūtra
  3. The Core Pericope
  4. The Ending
  5. Subhūti’s Non-Apprehension
  6. The Mindlessness Section
  7. The Message of the Original Perfection of Wisdom
    1. Mahāyāna
    2. Bodhisattvas
    3. What’s missing? 7. Mahāyāna Sūtra as Palimpsest: Discerning Traces of the Tripiṭaka
  8. Beyond "origin" as mere event
  9. Heteroglossia and Textual Rationale
  10. Intertextuality and Adaptation in Buddhist Literature
  11. The Non-Apprehension section and its Intertexts
    1. Sermon on Selflessness?
    2. Nominalism?
    3. Cessation of Cognition
    4. Selflessness… but differently
    5. The Perfected as Untraceable
    6. Fearlessness
    7. Abhidharma echoes
    8. Conclusion: The Perfection of Wisdom 8. Palimpsest Part Two: Brahmanical Writings on the Tripiṭaka
  12. The Importance of Incoherence
  13. The Context of Abhidharma Literature?
  14. The Context of Other Schools?
  15. The Context of Luminous Thought and Varieties of Unaware Thought
  16. The Context of Acitta Neither Existing nor Not Existing as Anti-Brahmanical Dependent Origination
  17. The Context of Absence of Mental Construction (avikalpa) 7. Nirvikapla
  18. Brahmanical Intertexts and their Implications 9. Placing Early Mahāyāna
  19. Placing the Perfection of Wisdom in the Early Mahāyāna Suite 2. Mañjuśrī’s Inquiry Concerning the Office of the Bodhisattva
  20. Placing the Early Perfection of Wisdom
  21. Mistaken Sounds
  22. Subhūti’s Araṇavihāra: Preaching or Penetration?
  23. Emptiness, Brahmin Nuns, Tulkus and the Power of Possession
  24. Putting it together
  25. Conclusion 10. On Sites and Stakes: Meditation on Emptiness and Imperial Aspirations
  26. Shifting Contexts, Shifting Interpretations
  27. The Uṇṇābhabrāhmaṇasutta and the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upanișad on cosmic foundations
  28. The Horse Sacrifice
  29. Piling the Fire Altar and Legitimation Regress
  30. Buddhist Brahmins
  31. On Power and Reproduction
  32. Sovereign Echoes: on Manhood and Celibacy; On thrones and Crowns
  33. Buddhist Brahmodya ascourtdebates
  34. The Mahāyāna Genealogy from The Vedas to the Sutras to Tantra to Zen

Index

Biography

Joseph Walser is Associate Professor of Religion at Tufts University, USA.

"This book is a compelling argument to rethink the origins of Mahayana Buddhism. Approaching this perennial puzzle within Buddhist Studies from a different angle, tracing it from the present toward its genesis, Walser masterfully draws together material from a broad and complex cultural context to rethink the approach to understanding the earliest expressions of the idea of emptiness". Matthew Sayers, Lebanon Valley College Annville, USA.

"A bold new theory of what the Mahāyāna is and how it "began," Genealogies of Mahāyāna Buddhism is a paradigm shift in our understanding of one of the most important traditions of Buddhism. Written in clear and accessible prose, Walser's work is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of Buddhist thought." José Ignacio Cabezón, Dalai Lama Professor of Tibetan Buddhism and Cultural Studies, UC Santa Barbara, USA.