Buddhist Studies Commons^™

The Pāḷi Text Of The Nīvaraṇasutta From The Aṅguttara Nikāya, Maksim Astashinskiy

Faculty Papers and Publications

The Pāḷi text of the Nīvaraṇasutta from the Aṅguttara Nikāya (AN 9.64) is anthologized in The Buddhist Era 2500 Great International Council Nīvaraṇasutta Pāḷi Tipiṭaka: 40 Volume Edition in Roman Script B.E. 2548 (M.L. Maniratana Bunnag Dhamma Society Fund, 2005), https://suttacentral.net/ms. English translations by Thānissaro Bhikkhu from 1998 (or 2002) together with Bhikkhu Sujato from 2016–2018 are housed in SuttaCentral. The historically significant English translation of AN 9.64 is part of the multivolume, The Book of Gradual Sayings (Anguttara-Nikaya), or More Numbered Suttas, Vol. IV (The Book of the Sevens, Eights and Nines), Pali …

Selections From The Milindapañha (Section On The Simile Of Fire), Maksim Astashinskiy

Faculty Papers and Publications

The Pāḷi text of 3. Tejaṅgapañha from the Milindapañha is anthologized in The Buddhist Era 2500 Great International Council Pāḷi Tipiṭaka: 40 Volume Edition in Roman Script B.E. 2548 (M.L. Maniratana Bunnag Dhamma Society Fund, 2005), https://suttacentral.net/ms. An English translation is available under Section 7.4.3: Fire in SuttaCentral; the translation is adapted from “The Questions of King Milinda,” trans. T.W. Rhys Davids in The Sacred Books of the East Vol. XXXVI ed. Max Müller (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1894), 311–312, https://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/sbe36/sbe3611.htm.

Investigating The Relationship Between Noun Classes And Plant Folk Taxonomy In Chasu Language Of Kilimanjaro Region In Tanzania, Peter Rabson Mziray

Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

The current study investigates the relationship between noun classes and plant folk taxonomy in Chasu (G 22). The study focuses on two objectives: the first objective is to describe the plant folk taxonomy in Chasu and the second objective is to determine the relationship between noun classes and plant folk taxonomy in Chasu. Data were collected from rural villages in Same and Mwanga districts by using free listing, field interviews (jungle-walk-and-identify), and written texts containing Chasu plant names. The findings reveal that Chasu folk taxonomy reflects different ethnobotanical categories; including a unique beginner which is mmea/mimea ‘plant(s)’, and three life …

A Buddhist Critique Of Harmony, James Mark Shields

Faculty Contributions to Books

No abstract provided.

Cultural And Religious Perspectives On Suicide And Healing, Arielle Friedman

be Still

This essay is built off of a paper I wrote in a college global health course on culture and mental illness. I have always been fascinated by cultural interpretations of illness & believe that as a future physician, it is my responsibility to educate myself and others on the complex interplay between religious ideologies & recognition/management of biological disease in order to provide appropriate patient-centered care.

Transformation Of Buddhist Musical Practices From The 7th-13th Centuries As A Response To Political And Social Disorder In Medieval India, Stephan Duran

Monsoon: South Asian Studies Association Journal

This article gives an account of the development of Buddhist musical practices on the Indian subcontinent from their earliest, datable instances, to the disappearance of Buddhist institutions from India proper, demonstrating the persistence of descendant traditions of Sanskrit Buddhist chant and song in contemporary Japanese, Tibetan, and Newar esoteric Buddhist communities. It is argued that the Buddhist musical theory and praxis of these three cultural spheres both preserve features of ancient and medieval Indian Buddhist music and sonically illustrate the transition from political and social order to de-centralized social organization, a shift that took place between the 7^th and …

Houses Built For Gods: Articulations Of Urban Hokora In Kyoto, Steele Engelmann

Anthropology Undergraduate Honors Theses

Amidst the urban landscape of Kyoto, Japan, there are thousands of hokora, small neighborhood shrines. This study uses social theories of pilgrimage and space to examine the articulation of hokora, community, and personal desire. As sites of local pilgrimage, hokora form networks of communal, but also individual, aspirations across the urban spiritual landscape of the city. This thesis argues that communities are connected to the larger social structures of Kyoto through hokora. As such, neighborhoods are reproduced and displayed through their hokora’s entanglements with the urban, social, and religious landscapes of Kyoto. Therefore, this study deploys an ethnographic approach to …

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 …

Review: André Van Der Braak, Reimagining Zen In A Secular Age: Charles Taylor And Zen Buddhism In The West., James Mark Shields

Other Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

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 …

“Publishing Goals Of Hanseikai Zasshi” (1887) And “Living The Pure Life” (1887). Translations With Introduction And Commentary, James Mark Shields

Other Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

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 …

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 …

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

Faculty Contributions to Books

No abstract provided.

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. …

Flower Unfurling: Buddhist Modernism And The Early Writing Of James Joyce, Erin Garrow

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation traces the history of the references to Buddhism in Stephen Hero, James Joyce’s first and unpublished novel, through the author’s previous writing, his sources, and his context, in order to determine how—if at all—the tradition bore upon his earliest depiction of consciousness. Acknowledging that Joyce habitually revisited and refined earlier ideas and prose, it attends to previous essays, notebooks, book reviews, conversations, letters, epiphanies, poems, and autobiographical prose; to available material, bibliographical, and biographical evidence about the specific volumes and performances to which Joyce had access; to language and paratext—including advertisements, introductions, and appended essays—in those volumes; …

Carrying Buddha Into The Streets: Buddhist Socialist Thought In Meiji Japan, James Mark Shields

Faculty Contributions to Books

No abstract provided.

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

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

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 …

Osvobození Jako Revoluční Praxe: Opĕtovné Promyšlení Buddhistického Materialism, James Mark Shields

Faculty Journal Articles

In this article, first published in English in the Journal of Buddhist Ethics 20 (2013), pp. 461–99, James Mark Shields analyzes the possibilities and problems of a “Buddhist materialism” constructed along Marxian lines, by focusing in particular on Buddhist and Marxist conceptions of “liberation.” Although it is only in recent decades that scholars have begun to reconsider and problematize Buddhist conceptions of “free- dom” and “agency,” the thought traditions of Asian Buddhism have for many centuries struggled with questions related to the issue of “liberation”—along with its fundamental ontological, epistemological and ethical implications. With the development of Marxist thought in …

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 …