Category: Publications

New Book Announcement: Buddhakṣetrapariśodhana: A Festschrift for Paul Harrison, edited by GCBS professor Charles DiSimone and Nicholas Witkowski.

From the publisher:

Buddhakṣetrapariśodhana is a volume in honor of the Buddhologist and Philologist, Paul M. Harrison, George Edwin Burnell Professor of Religious Studies at Stanford University. The contributions of twenty-nine of his colleagues, students, and friends from across the globe are dedicated to his academic interests and represent a cross-section of the disciplines that have been so heavily influenced by Paul Harrison’s scholarship in the past decades: Buddhist Studies, Indology, Sinology, Tibetology, and Art History.

Prof. DiSimone’s contribution “An Illuminated Palm-leaf Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Manuscript Folio Circa 1130–60 CE” is available online.

Articles from two GCBS researchers have just been published in the Journal of Chinese Buddhist Studies, Volume 37,  Special issue “Chinese Buddhist Monastic Institutional Life and Buddhist Women’s Experience and Practice” (August 2024). One is by the Head of the GCBS, Prof. Dr. Ann Heriman, and the other by FWO postdoctoral fellow Dr. Mariia Lepneva. For details, see below.

• “Buddhist Monasteries and (Their) Oxen: Daoxuan’s Vinaya Commentaries” by Ann Heirman

Abstract. Buddhist texts generally prohibit the killing and harming of all sentient beings. This is certainly the case in vinaya (disciplinary) texts, which contain strict guidelines on the preservation of all human and animal life. When these texts were translated into Chinese, they formed the core of Buddhist behavioral codes, influencing both monastic and lay followers. Chinese masters, such as the highly influential Daoxuan 道宣 (596–667), wrote extensive commentaries on and accounts of the vinayas to ease the introduction of Buddhist concepts into the Chinese environment. These texts comprise rich sources of information on material culture in Buddhist monasteries and beyond.

The subject of this paper is oxen and their complex relations with human beings, as discussed in the disciplinary texts. Oxen were commonplace in both India and imperial China, where they were bred and reared for agricultural purposes, and as draft animals. Depending on the context, they could be perceived as annoying, filthy, or useful. They were associated with improper behavior, seen as helpful or even indispensable, or viewed as the innocent victims of human misbehavior.

Yet, all these considerations were overshadowed by the Buddhist proscription against harming or killing any sentient being. Hence, the focus of this paper is Daoxuan’s interpretation of this principle in relation to the treatment of oxen, informed by his reading of Indian normative texts and his own Chinese context. As we will see, his guidance was complex, but he always attempted to remain true to what was—and remains—a central tenet of Buddhism.

• “Institutional Adaptation of Chinese Buddhism to the Ming-Qing Transition: Two-Lineage Model of Guangji Monastery in Beijing” by Mariia Lepneva

Abstract. The late Ming and early Qing periods witnessed a massive revitalization of Chinese Buddhism, particularly the booming rise of Chan lineages in the southern Jiangnan region throughout the seventeenth century. To date, scholarship has emphasized the continuity of this trend, largely uninterrupted by the dynasty transition. This paper supplements this picture by shifting the focus towards Beijing in the north and inquiring into the unusual two-lineage model that emerged at Guangji Monastery, which is nowadays well-known as the seat of the Buddhist Association of China, shortly after the establishment of Manchu rule. Quite different from the main institutional innovation of the late Ming—the dharma transmission monastery with a single Chan lineage at the head—this temple developed a power structure with the division of labor between an indigenous tonsure lineage and an invited ordination lineage. Based on a close reading of the gazetteer of Guangji Monastery, supplemented by other relevant sources, this paper traces the origins and evolution of this diarchic system. The findings show the members of the two lineages assumed three key roles in the monastery leadership. The tonsure lineage controlled the position of the prior, who was responsible for the general operation of the monastery. Moreover, it supplied informal leaders, who did not assume any administrative positions but became influential due to their asceticism, Chan lineage affiliation, and literary talent. This allowed them to significantly improve the wellbeing of the monastery through their ability to attract the patronage of scholar-officials. The ordination lineage controlled the abbotship, represented the monastery in the face of the emperors, carried out ordination ceremonies, and provided Vinaya instruction to monks. The continuous existence of this “two lineages with three roles” system despite suffering several major breaks testifies to its effectiveness and offers an example of an institutional model that allowed a Buddhist monastery to simultaneously house several prominent leaders with diverse expertise.

The Long Discourses, or Dīrghāgama, is a collection of the Buddha’s most well-known sermons that has circulated widely in the Buddhist world. Parallel collections in Pali and Chinese have long been known to scholars and practitioners, but it was not until the 1990s that a Mūlasarvāstivāda manuscript transmitted in Sanskrit was discovered, a major find with the potential to reshape our understanding of Buddhism in India and Central Asia. The present volume is the first in a three-volume series to present this rare manuscript, with a study, translation, and critical edition of two of the sūtras in the collection.

Around thirty years ago, a rare bookseller in London parceled out birchbark leaves of a manuscript bundle representing an ancient scripture that had likely been unearthed in the Gilgit region of Pakistan. Even as the fragile folios entered collections in Japan, Norway, and the United States, they were identified by a scholar as belonging to the previously lost Sanskrit Dīrghāgama, the Collection of Long Discourses of the Buddha, of the Mūlasarvāstivādins. Although the forty-seven separate sūtras in this āgama have parallel transmissions extant in the Pali Digha-nikāya and the Chinese Chang ahan jing, this Sanskrit witness, copied in the eighth century, was previously known only from partial quotations and from translations in Tibetan and Chinese. The discovery was thus one of major significance in the study of Buddhist literature.

Charles DiSimone‘s book, one of the first presentations of this manuscript in English, provides a translation, critical reconstruction, and study of two of the sūtras in the Dīrghāgama: the Prāsādika-sūtra and the Prasādanīya-sūtra. Both sūtras offer what appears to have been late teachings of the Buddha on the nature of faith and the preeminence of the Buddha over all other teachers. The Buddhist community was evidently concerned about the coming passing of the Buddha and, in these scriptures, laid the foundation for the tradition to continue with the Buddha at the center. The Prasādanīya-sūtra, in particular, is the locus classicus for the doctrine that only one Buddha and his teachings can exist in a world system at a time, ensuring that the Buddhist community would not be tempted to follow any other teacher who had not realized perfect awakening but would hold true to the Dharma of the Buddha.

These sūtras from the Mūlasarvāstivāda tradition are made available to the public for the first time in over a thousand years with philological reconstructions and translations. They are accompanied by synoptic parallels from the corresponding Pali Long Discourses of the Theravāda tradition and the Chinese Long Discourses of the Dharmaguptaka tradition along with citations and related passages from elsewhere in Buddhist literature. In addition, the work contains a full transliteration of the birchbark folios, an introduction to the two sūtras with a study providing paleographic and textual analysis of the manuscript, and notes providing insight and explanation throughout.

Book information

• Hardcover
• 504 pages, 6 x 9 inches
• ISBN 9781614296539
• This book will be available in August 2024 from Wisdom Publications

Much philosophical thinking about religion in the Anglophone world has been hampered by the constraints of Eurocentrism, colonialism and orientalism. Addressing such limitations head-on, this exciting collection develops models for exploring global diversity in order to bring philosophical studies of religion into the globalized 21st century.

Drawing on a wide range of critical theories and methodologies, and incorporating ethnographic, feminist, computational, New Animist and cognitive science approaches, an international team of contributors outline the methods and aims of global philosophy of religion. From considering the importance of orality in African worldviews to interacting with Native American perspectives on the cosmos and investigating contemplative studies in Hinduism, each chapter demonstrates how expertise in different methods can be applied to various geographical regions, building constructive options for philosophical reflections on religion.

Diversifying Philosophy of Religion raises important questions regarding who speaks for and represents religious traditions, setting the agenda for a truly inclusive philosophy of religion that facilitates multiple standpoints.

Publication details

Edited by Nathan R. B. Loewen and Agnieszka Rostalska

Published: June 29, 2023

ISBN: 9781350264007

Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Series: Expanding Philosophy of Religion

Table of Contents

List of Figures
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgements

Introduction, Nathan Loewen and Agnieszka Rostalska

Part I. Critique and Methods
1. Deprovincializing Philosophy of Religion: from “Faith and Reason” to the Postcolonial Revaluation of Religious Epistemologies, Jacob Sherman
2. Postcolonialism and the Question of Global-Critical Philosophy of Religion, Andrew Irvine and Purushottama Bilimoria
3. Why Philosophers of Religion Don’t Need “Religion”- At Least Not for Now, Tim Knepper
4. Re-envisioning Philosophy of Religion from a Feminist Perspective, Morny Joy
5. Is Philosophy of Religion Racist?, Sonia Sikka
6. Philosophy of Religion beyond Belief: Thinking with Anthropology’s New Animists, Lisa Landoe-Hedrick
7. Theory and Method in the Philosophy of Religion in China’s Song-Dynasty, Leah Kalmanson
8. The Theory and Practice of the Multi-Entry Approach, Gereon Kopf
9. Comparison of Religious Ideas in Philosophy of Religion, Robert Neville
10. The Relevance of Scriptures, Steve Smith

Part II. Case Studies
11. Ethnographically Informed Philosophy of Religion in a Study of Assamese Goddess Worship, Mikel Burley
12. Praxis, Louis Komjathy
13. Nishida Kitaro’s ‘I and Thou’ through the Work of Jessica Benjamin: Toward the Issue of Equality, Mayuko Uehara
14. The Nguni traditional ‘religious’ thoughts: The Isintu philosophy of the Zulu/Ndebele, Herbert Moyo
15. Approaching a Lakota Philosophy of Religion, Fritz Detwiler
16. Yasukuni, Okinawa and Fukushima: Philosophy of Sacrifice in the Nuclear Age, Ching-Yuen Cheung
17. Technology and the Spiritual: From Prayer Bots to the Singularity, Yvonne Förster
18. Can you see the seer? Approaching Consciousness from an Advaita Vedanta Perspective , Varun Khanna
19. The Danger in Diversifying Philosophy of Religion, Kevin Schilbrack

Index

Sam van Schaik, Daniela De Simone (UGent) , Gergely Hidas and Michael Willis, eds.  Precious treasures from the diamond throne: finds from the site of the Buddha’s enlightenment. In British Museum Research Publications 228. British Museum, 2021.

The Mahābodhi temple at Bodhgayā in eastern India has long been recognised as the place where the Buddha sat in meditation and attained enlightenment. The site, soon identified as the ‘Diamond Throne’ or vajrāsana, became a destination for pilgrims and a focus of religious attention for more than two thousand years. This volume presents new research on Bodhgayā and assesses the important archaeological, artistic and literary evidence that bears witness to the Buddha’s enlightenment and to the enduring significance of Bodhgayā in the history of Buddhism. The book brings together a team of international scholars to look at the history and perception of the site across the Buddhist world and its position in the networks of patronage and complex religious landscape of northern India. The volume assesses the site’s decline in the thirteenth century, as well as its subsequent revival as a result of archaeological excavations in the nineteenth century. Using the British Museum’s collections as a base, the authors discuss the rich material culture excavated from the site that highlights Bodhgayā’s importance in the field of Buddhist studies.

 

 

Book details:

ISSN: 1747-3640

ISBN: 9780861592289

Pages: 224 pages

This volume is dedicated to the memory of the eminent Chán scholar John McRae and investigates the spread of early Chán in a historical, multi-lingual, and interreligious context. Combining the expertise of scholars of Chinese, Tibetan, Uighur, and Tangut Buddhism, the edited volume is based on a thorough study of manuscripts from Dūnhuáng, Turfan, and Karakhoto, tracing the particular features of Chán in the Northwestern and Northern regions of late medieval China.

Book details:

Christoph Anderl and Christian Wittern, eds. Chán Buddhism in Dūnhuáng and beyond: a study of manuscripts, texts, and contexts in memory of John R. McRae. Numen Book Series, Volume: 165. Brill, 2020.

E-Book (PDF)
ISBN: 978-90-04-43924-5
Publication: 04 Nov 2020

Hardback
ISBN: 978-90-04-43191-1
Publication: 05 Nov 2020

 

Encounters, networks, identities and diversity are at the core of the history of Buddhism. They are also the focus of Buddhist Encounters and Identities across East Asia, edited by Ann Heirman, Carmen Meinert and Christoph Anderl. While long-distance networks allowed Buddhist ideas to travel to all parts of East Asia, it was through local and trans-local networks and encounters, and a diversity of people and societies, that identities were made and negotiated. This book undertakes a detailed examination of discrete Buddhist identities rooted in unique cultural practices, beliefs and indigenous socio-political conditions. Moreover, it presents a fascinating picture of the intricacies of the regional and cross-regional networks that connected South and East Asia.

Book details:

Ann Heirman, Carmen Meinert, and Christoph Anderl, eds. Buddhist Encounters and Identities across East Asia. Leiden: Brill, 2018.

E-Book (PDF)
ISBN: 978-90-04-36615-2
Publication: 07 May 2018

Hardback
ISBN: 978-90-04-36600-8
Publication: 17 May 2018