
Title:
How to Traumatize Your Opponent: Mockery in Chinese Buddhist Scholastic Debate
Abstract:
The legendary Samye debate is widely regarded as a landmark in the history of Sino-Tibetan transcultural exchange. Since the publication of Paul Demiéville’s Le Concile de Lhasa, the Dunwu dasheng zhengli jue 頓悟大乘正理決 (The Ratification of Sudden Awakening as the True Principles of Mahāyāna) has been recognized as a key Chinese source for understanding both the historical episode and the doctrinal contours of the debate it records. This talk draws attention to a seemingly minor rhetorical feature of the text and proposes to use it as a lens through which to explore the broader culture of scholastic debate in medieval China. Drawing on a range of sources, it examines mockery as a distinctive rhetorical strategy in Chinese religious disputation, deployed in both intra-Buddhist debates and inter-religious encounters with other Chinese traditions. By foregrounding this strategy, the talk reconsiders the nature of Dunwu dasheng zhengli jue as a polemical document and invites further reflection on the disparate scholastic frameworks shaping what counts as a “winnable argument” in Chinese versus Indian and Tibetan traditions.
Bio:
Xiaoming Hou is currently a Glorisun Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley. She is a scholar of Chinese Buddhism specializing in Chinese Buddhist scholasticism and cross-cultural transmission. She received her Ph.D. from EPHE/PSL (École Pratique des Hautes Études/Université Paris Sciences et Lettres) in Paris, Department of Religions et Système de pensées in 2022. Her doctoral thesis, entitled Pratiquer le bouddhisme en chinois: traduction et reconstruction des enseignements sur la méditation bouddhique du IIe au VIe siècles en Chine, focuses on the interdependent dynamics between meditation and exegesis in early medieval China.