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Table of Contents
- Re: QUERY> Guhyagarbha-tantra in Taisho canon
- LECTURE>James Robson at Emmanuel College (Toronto), March 16, Thursday
- Call for Reviewers> New books on Japanese Buddhism
Re: QUERY> Guhyagarbha-tantra in Taisho canon
by Yi Ding
Dear Dr. Capitanio,It seems to me that the confusion stem from the Buddhist Chinese-Sanskrit Dictionary (仏教漢梵大辞典), where it lists *guhya-samaya-garbha-rāja and *guhya-garbha-rāja for the titles of T.883 祕密三昧大教王經 and T.884 佛說祕密相經 (p. 894). Seemingly, *guhya-samaya-garbha-rāja is simply a typo for *guhya-samaya-kalpa-rāja, which does not suggest a Guhyagarbha connection.
For T. 883, Sakai identifies it as the 13th assembly described by Amoghavajra in his list of 18 assemblies, see
Sakai Shirō 酒井 紫朗, 金剛頂經の第十三会について, 密教文化 32 (1956) 34–41.
For T.884, Sakai suggests that the title might be *Guhya-tilaka, because T.884 shares many features with another Tantra in the Kanjur, Guhya-maṇi-tilaka [To.493] (See 酒井紫朗, 五相成身観の西蔵伝訳資料に就いて, 密教研究 85 (1943).)
In terms of content, T.883 and T. 884 are squarely within the Tattvasamgraha circle, and probably compiled much earlier than the Guyagarbha in India. Whereas the former deals more with the Vajradhātumaṇḍala, the latter expounds the Pañcābhisambodhikrama sequence. It seems to me that here the "Secret feature" (祕密相) here possibly refers to both the stages (krama) and the shape (ākāra) of the moon-disk in the stages.
Best wishes
Yi Ding
PhD Candidate, Religious Studies, Stanford
LECTURE>James Robson at Emmanuel College (Toronto), March 16, Thursday
by Cuilan Liu
It is my great pleasure to announce a public lecture by Professor James
Robson (James C. Kralik and Yunli Lou Professor of East Asian
Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University) at Emmanuel College of
Victoria University in the University of Toronto. This lecture will be
delivered in a way to accommodate both English and Chinese speakers. Admission
is free but space is limited and RSVP is required. Please RSVP by clicking the
following link:https://goo.gl/forms/5cyDu8IqrJFQcGCh2
Title: A Crazy History of Buddhism: On Buddhist Monasteries, Mental Institutions and Meditation/Mindfulness
Venue: Emmanuel College, Chapel (3rd Floor), 75 Queen’s Park Crescent, Toronto ON M5G 0B2
Date and Time: March 16, 2017, Thursday, 7pm-9:00pm
Abstract: There has been increasing attention paid to the relationship between Buddhism and medicine, but despite the advances in a number of subfields, there remains a paucity of studies on Buddhism and mental illness. What was the early Buddhist doctrinal discourse on mental illness? How has the category of madness evolved within the Buddhist tradition? Were there connections between meditation and madness? This talk discusses the history of some of the specific ways Buddhism addressed madness, the intriguing history of particular sites in East Asia with close associations between Buddhist monasteries and mental institutions, and a critical assessment of modern appropriations and applications of Buddhist meditation and mindfulness practices in therapeutic contexts. In order to understand both the promises and potential problems of the use of meditation and mindfulness within various healing techniques (which are so celebrated in the popular media today) it is important to track how those practices developed within the Buddhist tradition and how they have been transformed down to the present day. Current writing on meditation and mindfulness generally celebrates those practices as a panacea for a wide range of physical and mental ailments, but the final section of this talk will discuss some emerging research that suggests that there can also be some unintended negative consequences associated with the contemporary unregulated experimentation with those practices.
About the speaker: James Robson is the James C. Kralik and Yunli Lou Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University. He specializes in the history of Chinese Buddhism and Daoism. He is the author of the Power of Place: The Religious Landscape of the Southern Sacred Peak [Nanyue 南嶽] in Medieval China (Harvard University Press, 2009), which won the Stanislas Julien Prize awarded by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in France and the Toshihide Numata Prize in Buddhist Studies. He is currently engaged in a long-term collaborative research project with the École Française d’Extrême-Orient studying local religious statuary from Hunan province and is completing a monograph on the Daodejing for the Princeton University Press, Lives of Great Religious Books Series entitled The Daodejing: A Biography.
Cuilan Liu
Assistant Professor of Buddhist Studies
Emmanuel College of Victoria University in the University of
Toronto
Call for Reviewers> New books on Japanese Buddhism
by Erez Joskovich
Dear Friends,I am writing to encourage you to write reviews for H-Buddhism, particularly on recently published monographs related to Japanese Buddhism. Please contact me if you are interested in reviewing one of the following books:
Bowring, Richard J. In Search of the Way: Thought and Religion in Early-Modern Japan, 1582-1860, 2017.
Stone, Jacqueline I. Right Thoughts at the Last Moment: Buddhism and Deathbed Practices in Early Medieval Japan, 2016.
Regards
Erez
P.S.
Reviewers should have demonstrated intellectual expertise and possess or be in the final stages of completion of a doctoral degree in a relevant field.
Erez, Joskovich Ph.D.,
Postdoctoral Fellow
Center for Japanese Studies, University of California, Berkeley
erez_j@berkeley.edu
