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Subject: H-Buddhism daily digest: 3 new items have been posted

New items have been posted in H-Buddhism.

Table of Contents

1. QUERY> Looking for HATTORI (1962) article
2. CALL FOR PAPERS> New England AAS, Fall 2020
3. Re: Query about the three wheels of doctrine

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QUERY> Looking for HATTORI (1962) article

by Paul Hackett

Dear all,
Would anyone happen to have an electronic copy of Hattori's 1962 article:
服部 正明 [ HATTORI Masāki ]
"Pramāṇasamuccaya I § 3: Nyāyamatavicāra"
インド学試設集 [= Indogaku Shironshū = Miscellanea Indologica Kiotiensia ] 3: 7-18
that they could share? It does not appear to be available via INBUDS
http://tripitaka.l.u-tokyo.ac.jp/INBUDS/search.php?m=trdd&usid=27343&a=
or in any other online archive that I have searched.
Thanks -- regards,
Paul Hackett

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CALL FOR PAPERS> New England AAS, Fall 2020

by Thomas Borchert

We are pleased to announce a call for proposals for this year’s New England regional meeting of the Association for Asian Studies.  The conference will take place at the University of Vermont on Saturday, October 17, 2020, from 8:45-7:30. The call is open to topics related to any issues in the study of Asia, across disciplines.  We are open to a variety of session styles, including individual papers, roundtable discussions, and panel proposals.  Sessions will be 90 minutes. We are particularly interested in providing opportunities for advanced doctoral students to present the outcomes of their research.

Proposals for individual papers or roundtables should be 250 words, and include name, title, and contact information.

Proposals for panels should be up to 400 words for the panel, and 200 words for each individual paper. They should include the name, title, and contact information for each panelist.

Proposals will be due June 5, 2020, and can be uploaded through the website for the conference. 

Responses will be returned by the end of July.

It is our hope that this conference will take place live at the University of Vermont. Given current conditions, it is of course impossible to guarantee that this will be the case.  Therefore we will be making contingency plans for the conference to go virtual should the need arise. 

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Thomas Borchert, director of Asian Studies at UVM (thomas.borchert@uvm.edu).

For the conference website please click here.

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Re: Query about the three wheels of doctrine

by John Newman

Dear colleagues,

I look forward to John Powers' nītārtha explanation of all this, but as I understand it trying to fit vajrayāna into one or the other of the last two dharmacakras (the first dharmacakra is clearly irrelevant) would be a category mistake. The Saṃdhinirmocana dharmacakra scheme lays out a hierarchical categorization of Śākyamuni Buddha's statements about ontology. Since vajrayāna/mantrayāna is merely the mantranaya subdivision of the mahāyāna (the other being the pāramitānaya), placing vajrayāna/mantrayāna as a whole exclusively in one or the other of the last two dharmacakras would be as artificial as placing the mahāyāna as a whole within one or the other of the last two dharmacakras. Of course specific statements in the tantras pertaining to ontology could be categorized and argued about as nītārtha or neyārtha within the Saṃdhinirmocana scheme, but that is another matter altogether.

            I wonder if the impulse to "elevate" Vajrayāna to the status of a Fourth Dharmacakra is not similar to the modern inventions "Sahajayāna" and "Kālacakrayāna" which, as far as I know, are not found in pre-modern Indic or Tibetan sources? In any case, it is indeed interesting to note that this idea can be found in pre-modern Tibetan sources, and it would be very interesting to trace its Indic roots, if any.

            Following up on Dol po pa's ideas about the dharmacakras, he says: "I bow to you who teach that the ultimate Dharma Wheel is the Final Wheel, the ultimate vehicle is the Mahāyāna. The ultimate Mahāyāna is the vehicle of the Buddha-nature, and the ultimate Buddha-nature is great bliss" etc. (Stearns trans. p. 119, op. cit. in previous post). As Stearns notes, Dol po pa holds that "the Buddha-nature...is pure, self (ātman), blissful, and permanent (gtsang bdag bde dang rtag pa)" (p. 241, n. 37). As previously mentioned in this thread, Dol po pa posits the standard set of three dharmacakras, but he radically "redefines" their meaning and content (Stearns pp. 86 ff.) in line with his interpretation of the Saṃdhinirmocana trisvabhāva doctrine and other ideas.

John

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