H-Buddhism.

Table of Contents

1. PUBLICATION> Buddhism and Medicine in Japan: A Topical Survey (500-1600 CE) of a Complex Relationship
2. NEW BOOK> Hugon/Stoltz: The Roar of a Tibetan Lion
3. RESOURCE> Revised and expanded online guide to research in Buddhist studies
4. CALL FOR PAPERS> Historical Mirror for the Contemporary World: International Conference on the Sinification of Buddhism through the Perspective of World History and Globalization

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PUBLICATION> Buddhism and Medicine in Japan: A Topical Survey (500-1600 CE) of a Complex Relationship

by Katja Triplett

Dear colleagues,

I am pleased to announce the publication of my new book:

Katja Triplett:

Buddhism and Medicine in Japan: A Topical Survey (500-1600 CE) of a Complex Relationship (Religion and Society 81),

Berlin: De Gruyter 2019, 259 p., 8 images, EUR 86,95 / USD 99.99 / GBP 79.00

ISBN 978-3-11-057621-4.

About the book:

The book demonstrates the close link between medicine and Buddhism in early and medieval Japan. It may seem difficult to think of Japanese Buddhism as being linked to the realm of medical practices since religious healing is usually thought to be restricted to prayers for divine intervention. There is a surprising lack of scholarship regarding medicinal practices in Japanese Buddhism although an overwhelming amount of primary sources proves otherwise. 

A careful re-reading of well-known materials from a study-of-religions perspective, together with in some cases a first-time exploration of manuscripts and prints, opens new views on an understudied field. The book presents a topical survey and comprises chapters on treating sight-related diseases, women’s health, plant-based materica medica and medicinal gardens, and finally horse medicine to include veterinary knowledge. 

Terminological problems faced in working on this material – such as ‘religious’ or ‘magical healing’ as opposed to ‘secular medicine’ – are assessed. The book suggests focusing more on the plural nature of the Japanese healing system as encountered in the primary sources and reconsidering the use of categories from the European intellectual tradition.

Contents:

Prologue
Acknowledgements
Conventions

Introduction
1. Buddhism, Medicine and Magic: The Boundary Problem
2. Operating with Buddhism
3. The Eye I: An Organ as a Site of Empowerment and Healing 
4. The Eye II: Buddhist Healing and Living with Visual Impairment 
5. Women: Care of the Reproductive Female Body 
6. Plants: Materia medica, Medicinal Gardens and Panaceas 
7. Horses and Equine Medicine 
Conclusion: Boundaries, Maps and Types of Othering
Timeline
List of Images
Bibliography
Index

Please consult the publisher’s website for further details: https://www.degruyter.com/viewbooktoc/product/497439

Best wishes

Katja Triplett

Dr. Katja Triplett
Associate Fellow
Humanities Center of Advanced Studies "Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities"
Leipzig University
Nikolaistraße 8-10
04109 Leipzig
Germany
Email: katja.triplett@uni-leipzig.de

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NEW BOOK> Hugon/Stoltz: The Roar of a Tibetan Lion

by Birgit Kellner

Dear colleagues,
I would like to draw your attention to a new publication in the series "Beitraege zur Kultur- und Geistesgeschichte Asiens" of the Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, continuing Viennese efforts to link philological and philosophical research:
Pascale Hugon / Jonathan Stoltz: "The Roar of a Tibetan Lion - Phya pa Chos kyi seng ge's Theory of Mind in Philosophical and Historical Perspective"
This book explores the contributions to the philosophy of mind made by the Tibetan Buddhist thinker Phya pa Chos kyi seng ge (1109–1169) in his seminal text, the “Dispeller of the Mind’s Darkness.” This study, which includes a critical edition and English translation of those portions of the “Dispeller” devoted to explicating the nature of mental episodes and their objects, contributes to a deeper understanding of Tibetan intellectual history, while also facilitating a wider appreciation of both Phya pa’s theory of mind and its significance within the global history of philosophy.
The book can be ordered via the Press' website (https://verlag.oeaw.ac.at/the-roar-of-a-tibetan-lion), and is also available for download in Open Access.
With best regards,
Birgit Kellner (series editor)

Director

Institute for the Cultural and Intellectual History of Asia

Austrian Academy of Sciences

Hollandstrasse 11-13/2

1020 Wien / Vienna

Austria

Phone: +43-(0)1-51581-6420

Fax: +43-(0)1-51581-6410

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RESOURCE> Revised and expanded online guide to research in Buddhist studies

by Michael Kicey

Dear Colleagues,
This past May you might have read a brief notice sent to this group concerning a new, entirely free online guide to scholarly resources on Buddhism. Some of you may also have noticed that this guide has been unavailable for the past couple of months as I launched a major overhaul and expansion. I am happy to inform you that a revised and greatly expanded version of the guide is now available, at the same URL as before:

https://research.lib.buffalo.edu/buddhism

This second edition of my guide offers a comprehensive view of scholarly resources on Buddhist thought, history, and culture, from the life of the Buddha down to the present day, and across the entire globe. It is designed to support anyone who is interested in reading about or doing research on Buddhism, whether novice or expert, lay or monastic, public or scholarly. In this new edition, alongside numerous other additions and improvements, each book featured on the guide links directly to WorldCat, where users can discover the availability of that resource in libraries near them, no matter where they live or work.
As before, I am offering this guide as a gift of the dharma to you and to the wider world, with no obligation to you or to any of its users, financial or otherwise. Please distribute it freely and as you see fit to anyone for whom it can be of use, whether scholars, students, or members of the public. It rightfully belongs to those who will benefit from it.
Of course, I also gladly welcome your suggestions for books, links, or other resources that can be added to the guide, or any other comments you might have. As a new member of this group, I will be working back through posts from the recent past to ensure that the guide fully reflects the state of contemporary scholarship.
Thank you for your time, your collaboration, and for the great wealth of scholarship in Buddhist studies you have created and which my guide aims to promulgate.
Sincerely,
Michael Kicey, PhD
Humanities Liaison Librarian
Classics, Comparative Literature, History, Mathematics, Philosophy
University at Buffalo (SUNY), Buffalo, NY, USA

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CALL FOR PAPERS> Historical Mirror for the Contemporary World: International Conference on the Sinification of Buddhism through the Perspective of World History and Globalization

by Vicky Baker

Historical Mirror for the Contemporary World:

International Conference on the Sinification of Buddhism through the Perspective of World History and Globalization

(June 5 - 8, 2020; Hong Kong & Mount Wutai)

The organizing committee for the international conference on “Historical Mirror for the Contemporary World: The Sinification of Buddhism through the Perspective of World History and Globalization” cordially invites the submission of related papers.

The conference is organized by the Wutai Research Institute for Eastern Buddhist Culture 五臺山東方佛教文化研究院 in Shanxi, China, co-organized by the Center of Buddhist Studies at the University of Hong Kong 香港大學佛學研究中心, Research Center for Buddhist Texts and Arts (RCBTA) at Peking University 北京大學佛教典籍與藝術研究中心, and the From the Ground Up project based at the University of British Columbia (www.frogbear.org). The conference will be held between June 5 and June 8, 2020 in the Center of Buddhist Studies at the University of Hong Kong (June 5-6, 2020) and the Great Bamboo Grove Monastery 大聖竹林 on Mount Wutai 五臺山 (June 7-8, 2020).

From the perspective of the global history, when the teachings of Buddhism first arrived in the heartland of China around the first century CE, East Asia had just started what would become an ongoing exchange with Central and South Asia. Influence from the Han Empire already had spread to Central Asia, and as a result, at least two civilizations communicated with one another through various channels to allow for diverse cultural interactions and fusion. Buddhism, in this context, was one of among many players to participate in this rich cultural dynamic.

Buddhism, as a product of a foreign culture from the Chinese perspective, underwent an extended period of adaption and intermingling with indigenous cultures before many teachings were altered by the seventh century, which gave rise to a distinct Chinese Buddhist tradition that embodied the spirit of a new and vibrant host culture. Meanwhile, the Chinese Buddhism religion spread across East and Southeast Asia, generating a novel Chinese Buddhist sphere of influence with the classical Chinese language as its lingua franca. Against this backdrop of world history and globalization, the spread of Buddhism transcends a singular cultural phenomenon in one defined region, and instead represents a grand religious and cultural transformation with profound and far-reaching implications.

The Sinification of Buddhism, or more specifically the Chinese metamorphosis of core Indic cultural elements, transpired within several domains, including philosophy, religious practice, and the construction of Buddhist institutions. During the migration from its homeland in South Asia to China, Buddhism retained many core doctrines, such as the doctrines of independent origination and of the Middle Way, the Four Noble Truths, and the threefold training in discipline, concentration and wisdom. But when it comes to the exegetical traditions that interpreted the many Indian classics, the process of Sinification is evident. In the early period, Chinese Buddhists digested Indian concepts by clumsily relating them to indigenous Chinese terms. Even later on, as Chinese Buddhists developed sophisticated insights about the nature of reality as ultimately unconditioned, they could not restrain a powerful urge to integrate Indian elements into systems of Chinese thought, especially by infusing Buddhism with Confucian and Daoist teachings. Furthermore, Buddhist teachers were often learned masters of both Chinese and foreign traditions of learning and exegesis. These teachers symbolize cultural fusion at a time when the Buddhist teachings were understood with uniquely Chinese characteristics. In addition, for a thousand years after the fall of the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220 CE), Chinese Buddhists not only translated and interpreted texts imported from India, but many also composed apocrypha and treatises that in turn generated many original doctrines, institutional codes, and historical narratives. In contrast to the Tibetan Kangyur and Tengyur that mostly comprise translated texts, the Chinese Buddhist canons incorporate many texts written originally in the Chinese language. The formation of the Chinese Buddhist Canon, therefore, is another key part of the process of Sinification. 

Chinese Buddhists were also deeply affected by indigenous popular religious beliefs. Many secular followers were understandably more concerned with worshipping deities than with obscure doctrinal formulations. On this non-elite level, we find intriguing connections between Indian Buddhist and indigenous Chinese practices such as those techniques preached in the Huang-Lao school, and particularly the goal of spiritual immortality and the worship of ghosts and gods. Meanwhile, the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, and especially the Buddhas of the Three Ages and the four Bodhisattvas, emerged as central objects of worship in Buddhist rituals.  After the Tang Dynasty, Bodhisattva cults acquired its their own theoretical and institutional bases, and even absorbed the practices of mountain worship to produce a uniquely Chinese sacred geography that attracted not only Chinese pilgrims, but also pilgrims from across East and Southeast Asia and as far as the cradle of Buddhism itself in India. Within the context of this transformation, it seems that the axis-mundi of Buddhism gradually shifted from India to China.

The process of Sinification can be equally applied to the study of Buddhist institutions.  Indigenous Chinese religions did not conceive of any system of monastics, which only came into being during the Liu Song Dynasty (420-479) when Vinaya texts were translated and, with them, the Indian Buddhist institutional rules and regulations were transplanted to Chinese soil. But this relocated system experienced countless problems, of varying severity, within a new cultural milieu, especially when we consider conflicts with the dominant Chinese state.  For instance, should monks dine while crouching or should they sit down? Should monastics eat with their hands or with chopsticks? Should they kneel before the ruler? Even trivial habits, such as washing one’s hands, brushing one’s teeth, and relieving oneself generated considerable debates. These examples attest to the drastic differences between the Indic and Chinese cultural environments. But Chinese Buddhists eventually dictated their own terms for monastic life. In Chan Buddhism, for instance, agrarian-influences upon Buddhism can be seen in teachings such as “one day without labouring, one day without eating”, which is at odds with Indian monastic codes that explicitly preclude any agricultural work. Though not without controversies and occasional reversals of fortune, the Sinification of Buddhism proved to be inexorable over time.

The reason that Buddhism was able to establish such deep roots in China and later, when China was the source for the teachings of the religion after the seventh century in neighbouring kingdoms, has to do with a mutual attraction that bound the teachings of Indian Buddhism and Chinese culture together. The latter shaped the former in accordance with its own philosophy, culture, and institutions, creating a form of Buddhism instilled with myriad Chinese features. 

With this conference we are not only inclined to address our contemporary inquisitiveness by returning to the well-trodden path concerning the topic of the Sinification of Buddhism; we will address the process of Sinification against the backdrop of global history. We will also, therefore, reassess the potential uses of this term—Sinification—to serve as an historical precedent that may be able to teach us new lessons relevant to our own time. Today, we are witnessing the trend of globalization being forestalled. Given this challenge, can we draw any contemporary implications from this crucial event in the earlier history of globalization, the Sinification of Buddhism? For these reasons, we propose, though not exclusively, the following themes for discussion:

·         Sinification of Buddhism and Chinese Buddhist Philosophy

·         Sinification of Buddhism and Cults of Sacred Mountains;

·         Sinification of Buddhism and Bodhisattva Cults;

·         Sinification of Buddhism and (the history of) Buddhist Institutions;

·         Sinification of Buddhism and the formation of Chinese Buddhist Traditions;

·         Sinification of Buddhism under the Perspective of World History and globalization;

·         Sinification of Buddhism and Important Buddhist Figures;

·         Sinification of Buddhism and Neighbouring Countries/Regions.

The organizing committee welcomes all paper proposals related to the Sinification of Buddhism through the Perspective of World History and Globalization. All conference-related costs, including local transportation, meals and accommodation during the conference period, will be covered by the conference organizers, who—depending on availability of funding—may also provide a travel subsidy to selected panelists who are in need of funding. Please email proposals and CVs to frogbear.project@ubc.ca by February 1, 2020.

A conference volume will collect all the papers in English, plus English translations of several papers written in languages other than English; a volume in Chinese, to be published in Taiwan or mainland China, will include Chinese versions for all papers not written in Chinese in addition to those papers contributed by our colleagues based in China. Only scholars who are confident in finishing their draft papers by May 10, 2020 and publishable papers by the end of 2020 are encouraged to apply.

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