Buddhist Studies Commons^™

From Nothing To No-Thing-Ness To Emptiness: The Buddhist Recycling Of An Old Jain Saying, Dhivan Thomas Jones

The Indian International Journal of Buddhist Studies

In this article I investigate a difficult saying of the Buddha, preserved in three places in Pāli canonical discourses: n’ āhaṃ kvacani kassaci kiñcanatasmiṃ, na ca mama kvacani kismiñci kiñcanat’ atthi (‘There is no I anywhere in anyone’s property, and neither is there anywhere in anything property which is mine’). At A 3: 70, this saying is attributed to the Jains, while at A 4: 185, the Buddha teaches it as a ‘brahman truth’ acceptable to paribbājakas, and at M 106, the Buddha teaches it as a means of attaining the experiential dimension of no-thing-ness (ākiñcaññāyatana). I …

A Century Of Critical Buddhism In Japan, James Mark Shields

Faculty Contributions to Books

This chapter introduces the central arguments of Critical Buddhism as a lens by which to view the course of “modern” Buddhism in Japan, particularly as it relates to politics. It traces philosophical and political precedents for Critical Buddhism in the context of Japanese modernity, by focusing on several progressive Buddhist figures movements from mid-Meiji through early Shōwa, including the New Buddhist Fellowship and the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism. I argue that previous attempts to centralize criticism as a basic Buddhist precept were unsuccessful in part do to an inability to distinguish the Buddhistic components of their thought and practice, …

Chanting The Medicine Buddha Sutra: A Musical Transcription And English Translation Of The Medicine Buddha Service Of The Liberation Rite Of Water And Land At Fo Guang Shan Monastery, Jeffrey W. Cupchik

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

A book review is presented for Reed Criddle, ed., Chanting the Medicine Buddha Sutra: A Musical Transcription and English Translation of the Medicine Buddha Service of the Liberation Rite of Water and Land at Fo Guang Shan Monastery. Recent Researches in the Oral Traditions of Music 13. Philip V. Bohlman, general editor. Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, 2020. 77 pages.

Prolegomena To A Buddhist(Ic) Critique Of Capitalism, James Mark Shields

Faculty Contributions to Books

Not even three decades removed from Francis Fukuyama’s post-Cold War proclamation of the “End of History,” the Western world is now undergoing a crisis of conscience – at the very least – with respect to both capitalism as an economic system and neoliberalism as its less-recognized but ever-present ideological foundation. The financial crisis of 2008, the subsequent Great Recession, the Occupy movement(s) of 2011, the 2016 challenge of self-styled Democratic Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders for the Democratic nomination, and growing anxiety about the fate of the planet, particularly among the young, have opened up new avenues of critique, and brought …

Zen Internationalism, Zen Revolution: Inoue Shūten, Uchiyama Gudō And The Crisis Of (Zen) Buddhist Modernity In Late Meiji Japan, James Mark Shields

Faculty Contributions to Books

In addition to the birth and development of “Imperial Way Zen,” late Meiji Japan witnessed the emergence of a number of young lay Buddhist scholars, priests and activists who attempted, with varying success, to reframe Buddhism along progressive and occasionally radical political lines. While it is true that groups such as the New Buddhist Fellowship (Shin Bukkyō Dōshikai, 1899–1915) were made up mainly of young men associated with the two branches of the Shin (True Pure Land) sect, several of its members did affiliate themselves with Zen, such as Suzuki Daisetsu (1870–1966) and Inoue Shūten (1880–1945). While the former’s work …

Buddhist Socialism In China, 1900–1930: A History And Appraisal, James Mark Shields

Faculty Contributions to Books

Although it is only in recent decades that scholars have begun to reconsider and problematize Buddhist conceptions of “freedom” and “agency,” the various thought traditions of Asian Buddhism have for some centuries struggled with questions related to the issue of “liberation,” along with its fundamental ontological, epistemological and ethical—if not economic and political—implications. With the development of Marxist thought in the mid to late nineteenth century, a new paradigm for thinking about freedom in relation to economics, history, identity and socio-political transformation found its way to Asia, where it soon confronted traditional religious interpretations of freedom as well as competing …

The Rise Of An Eco-Spiritual Imaginary: Ecology And Spirituality As Decolonial Protest In Contemporary Multi-Ethnic American Literature, Andrew Michael Spencer

English Theses and Dissertations

The Rise of an Eco-Spiritual Imaginary reveals a shared ecological aesthetic among contemporary U.S. ethnic writers whose novels communicate a decolonial spiritual reverence for the earth. This shared narrative focus challenges white settler colonial mythologies of manifest destiny and American exceptionalism to instantiate new ways of imagining community across socially constructed boundaries of time, space, nation, race, and species. The eco-spiritual imaginary—by which I mean a shared reverence for the ecological interconnection between all living beings—articulates a common biological origin and sacredness of all life that transcends racial difference while remaining grounded in local ethnicities and bioregions. The novelists representing …

Zen And The Art Of Resistance: Some Preliminary Notes, James Mark Shields

Faculty Contributions to Books

In the Western and oftentimes Asian imagination, Buddhism generally—and Zen more specifically—is understood as being resolutely disengaged, attaching itself to a form of awakening that is not only, as the classical phrase has it “beyond words and letters,” but in the modern summation by D. T. Suzuki, perfectly compatible with any and all forms of political and economic “dogmatism,” whether capitalist, communist, socialist, or fascist. Of course, as numerous scholars have shown over the past century, on the level of historical actuality, Buddhist and Zen teachers and institutions have long participated in (usually hegemonic) economic and political structures. The …

"Trading Western Suits For Monastic Robes" : Remaking Tibetan Buddhism In The Chinese Religious Revival, Jue Liang

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Tsongkhapa As Dzokchenpa: Nyingma Discourses And Geluk Sources, Roger R. Jackson

The Indian International Journal of Buddhist Studies

Tsongkhapa as Dzokchenpa: Nyingma Discourses and Geluk Sources

Despite their frequent depiction as polar opposites, the Nyingma and Geluk tradiitons of Tibetan Buddhism have important and sometimes surprising points of connection. The focus of this article is the Geluk founder Tsongkhapa’s (1357–1419) relation to Nyingma teachers, doctrines, and practices. My more specific concern is to examine a particular, relatively long-standing Nyingma discourse suggesting that Tsongkhapa was a crypto-Dzokchenpa. The main “proof-text” for this claim is The Garland of Supreme Medicinal Nectar, which records questions about Dzokchen posed by Tsongkhapa to the buddha/bodhisattva Vajrapāṇi through the medium of his Nyingma …

Placing God: Defining “Post-Christianity” For Contemporary Japanese Christians, Leryan Anthony Burrey

Master's Projects and Capstones

This work suggests that we consider a new, working definition of post-Christianity. This new paradigm is in response to Western Christian thought being too dominant a force that fails to take into enough account other global experiences— like those of Japanese Christians. These reflections are based on scholarly opinions claiming that Christianity is a “global culture,” and ultimately argues for more international inclusivity in Western Christian thought and institutions, especially regarding the Asia-Pacific. Moreover, this paper illuminates how iitoko dori allows Christian thought to peacefully coexist in Japan’s greater society. The research also explores specific Japanese cultural practices that make …

Reflections On “To Study The Self Is To Forget The Self’: Zen Lessons On Ego And Leadership In Higher Education”, Jody Condit Fagan

Libraries

Stuart Lachs kindly wrote a response to my conference paper, “To study the self is to forget the self’: Zen lessons on ego and leadership in higher education” (Fagan, 2020), which led to a highly fruitful correspondence and an expansion on my thinking related to Zen, ego, and Zen practice in America today. Conversations with fellow practitioners and follow-up readings have also continued to shape my thinking. This response paper summarizes my reflections.

ポスト汎神論から超物質主義へ―鈴木大拙と新仏教―, James Mark Shields

Faculty Contributions to Books

In modern Western thought, pantheism remains a powerful if controversial undercurrent. Recent re-evaluations of the work of Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) point to pantheism’s radical implications for metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and politics. Pantheism (Jp. hanshinron 汎神論) also has significant valence within Japanese Buddhist modernism, particularly in the work of scholars and lay activists who articulated the outlines of a New Buddhism (shin bukkyō 新仏教) from the 1880s through the 1940s. For these thinkers, pantheism provided a “middle way” between materialism and idealism, as well as between theism and atheism. In the postwar period, lapsed radical turned Buddhist Sano Manabu …

Review: The Future Of Social Work: Seven Pillars Of Practice By Brij Mohan. 2018: Sage Publications, 184 Pp. (Hardcover), Isbn: 9789352806256., Qusai A. Ibrahim

International Journal of Indic Religions

No abstract provided.

New Perspectives On Jain Architecture And Sculpture At Sravana Belagola, Nalini Rao

International Journal of Indic Religions

No abstract provided.

From Vaiṣṇavas To Hindus: The Redefinition Of The Vallabha Sampraday In The Late Nineteenth And Early Twentieth Centuries, Shandip Saha

International Journal of Indic Religions

No abstract provided.

“In Their Lord’S Great Need”: A Succession Myth In The Rāmāyaṇa And Beowulf, Karl E.H Seigfried

International Journal of Indic Religions

No abstract provided.

Savoring The Moon: Japanese Prints Of The Floating World, Madison B. Dalton

Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current

Guided by the Director of the Madison Art Collection and Lisanby Museum, Virginia Soenksen,I served as the Curatorial Assistant for the Lisanby Museum’s forthcoming exhibition Savoring the Moon: Japanese Prints of the Floating World. The exhibition will highlight the Madison ArtCollection’s impressive Japanese woodblock prints in the ukiyo-e style. Ukiyo-e translates to“pictures of the floating world.” This style proliferated in Japan during the Edo period (1603 - 1868) and Meiji period (1868 - 1912), with visual themes that ranged from flora and fauna, Japanese ceremonies, kabuki actors, mythology, courtesans, and cultural pastimes. The estate of Charles Alvin Lisanby gifted over …

Gomyō And Kūkai In Early-Heian Intra-Buddhist Conversations, Ronald S. Green

Philosophy and Religious Studies

This paper is about the relationship between the famous Japanese esoteric Buddhist Kūkai and the less-famous Gomyō, who you've probably never heard of but maybe should have. My paper responds to the work of two recent scholars, Fujii Jun, who says that Kūkai was a Sanron (Japanese Mādhyamika) priest, and Matsumoto Gyoyu, who speculates about the origins of and thinking behind certain passages in Kūkai's Jūjūshinron. The paper points to the intellectual significance for Kūkai of his close relationship with Gomyō and other Yogācāra scholars of his day, and how this is reflected in the Jūjūshinron and Kūkai's thought broadly. …

Zen Terror In Prewar Japan: Portrait Of An Assassin, Brian Victoria, James Shields

Faculty Contributions to Books

No abstract provided.

Chang (Beer): A Social Marker, Ritual Tool, And Multivalent Symbol In Tibetan Buddhism, Kayla J. Jenkins

MSU Graduate Theses

In this thesis, I analyze the use of beer (Tib. chang) in Tibetan tantric Buddhism and emphasize its importance for studying themes of purity and pollution, meaning, and power in this context. In doing so, I argue that beer functions as a social marker and influences gender dynamics in Tibet. Beer also functions as a religious ritual tool for transactions of power. Lastly, beer is present as a multivalent symbol in Tibetan tantric songs and stories, useful as both a negative and positive metaphor for qualities or states of mind. As something that informs social, religious, and literary worlds within …

Islam And Buddhism: The Arabian Prequel?, Anna Akasoy

Publications and Research

Conventionally, the first Muslim-Buddhist encounters are thought to have taken place in the context of the Arab-Muslim expansions into eastern Iran in the mid-seventh century, the conquest of Sind in 711 and the rise of the Islamic empire. However, several theories promoted in academic and popular circles claim that Buddhists or other Indians were present in western Arabia at the eve of Islam and thus shaped the religious environment in which Muhammad’s movement emerged. This article offers a critical survey of the most prominent arguments adduced to support this view and discusses the underlying attitudes to the Islamic tradition, understood …

Review: Melissa Anne-Marie Curley, Pure Land, Real World: Modern Buddhism, Japanese Leftists, And The Utopian Imagination, James Shields

Other Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Recapture, Transparency, Negation And A Logic For The Catuṣkoṭi, Adrian Kreutz

Comparative Philosophy

The recent literature on Nāgārjuna’s catuṣkoṭi centres around Jay Garfield’s (2009) and Graham Priest’s (2010) interpretation. It is an open discussion to what extent their interpretation is an adequate model of the logic for the catuskoti, and the Mūla-madhyamaka-kārikā. Priest and Garfield try to make sense of the contradictions within the catuskoti by appeal to a series of lattices – orderings of truth-values, supposed to model the path to enlightenment. They use Anderson & Belnaps's (1975) framework of First Degree Entailment. Cotnoir (2015) has argued that the lattices of Priest and Garfield …

The Blind Arhat And The Old Baby: Liberation By Wisdom, The Dry-Insight Practitioner, And The Pairing Of Calm And Insight, David V. Fiordalis

Faculty Publications

The distinction between “calm” (Pāli: samatha; Sanskrit: śamatha) and “insight” (P: vipassanā; Skt: vipaśyanā) is one of several ostensibly related dichotomies that have exerted a significant influence on classical and contemporary understandings of Buddhist practices, institutions, and history, as well as of the Buddhist path(s) to and conception(s) of awakening. However, scholars continue to debate whether Buddhists ever conceptualized two (or more) different paths or conceptions of this goal. Much of the debate has been based on the interpretation of doctrinal and theoretical materials. This essay takes as its starting point the concept of “liberation by …

“There Are No Dharmas Apart From The Dharma-Sphere”: Shakya Chokden’S Interpretation Of The Dharma-Sphere, Yaroslav Komarovski

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

As is well known to contemporary scholarship and demonstrated by the works contained in the present volume, the Tibetan term zhentong (gzhan stong, being empty of other) refers not to any one unanimous view or system of thought but to a wide variety of philosophical theories formed primarily in India and Tibet. Those theories are often contrasted with rival rangtong (rang stong, being empty of self)¹ theories in their interpretations of reality, buddhahood, path, and other elements of the Buddhist worldiew. While many of those elements are equally open to the zhentong and rangtong interpretations, …

Reaching Thai Buddhists And Those With A Background In Thai Buddhist Beliefs, Warren A. Shipton, Jared Wright, Tonya Wright, Nilubon Srisai

Journal of Adventist Mission Studies

"One of the greatest challenges for those working across cultures is to understand the unique features of the host culture and the dominant religious beliefs and practices found in the society represented. If this is to be done acceptably, the written and spoken language must be mastered and personal friendships formed with community members. Much damage has been done by Western missionaries arriving with preconceived ideas on evangelism taken from their home country and with an attitude of being holders of superior knowledge in many areas of thought beyond that held by the host culture. Catholic missionary activity has been …

Medieval Japanese Zen: Catalyst For Symbol System Formation, Kendall Ann Roper

Dissertations, Masters Theses, Capstones, and Culminating Projects

Post-modernism asserts that the world as we know it does not exist independently from the symbolic interpretations we formulate about it. This symbolic and ever unfolding interpretation of reality applies to our understanding of science as well as philosophy, to religion as well as art. In striving to describe religious experiences, various cultures have developed complex symbolic languages whose purpose is to reference a culturally understood version of sacred reality as presented through religion. Religions contribute to shaping these cultural perceptions of reality by utilizing symbolic acts, objects, events, qualities, or concepts to express otherwise inexpressible elements of a culture’s …

Sikh Self-Sacrifice And Religious Representation During World War I, John Soboslai

Department of Religion Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This paper analyzes the ways Sikh constructions of sacrifice were created and employed to engender social change in the early twentieth century. Through an examination of letters written by Sikh soldiers serving in the British Indian Army during World War I and contemporary documents from within their global religious, legislative, and economic context, I argue that Sikhs mobilized conceptions of self-sacrifice in two distinct directions, both aiming at procuring greater political recognition and representation. Sikhs living outside the Indian subcontinent encouraged their fellows to rise up and throw off their colonial oppressors by recalling mythic moments of the past and …

Sikh Self-Sacrifice And Religious Representation During World War I, John Soboslai

Department of Religion Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This paper analyzes the ways Sikh constructions of sacrifice were created and employed to engender social change in the early twentieth century. Through an examination of letters written by Sikh soldiers serving in the British Indian Army during World War I and contemporary documents from within their global religious, legislative, and economic context, I argue that Sikhs mobilized conceptions of self-sacrifice in two distinct directions, both aiming at procuring greater political recognition and representation. Sikhs living outside the Indian subcontinent encouraged their fellows to rise up and throw off their colonial oppressors by recalling mythic moments of the past and …