Buddhist Stories Research Articles

A Popular Buddhist Story at the Ming Court of the Early Sixteenth Century: Images of Miaoshan in the Monastery of the Great Wisdom in Beijing and Precious Scroll of Incense Mountain

This paper analyzes early illustrations of the Miaoshan story, which served a popular hagiography of Bodhisattva Guanyin — the murals of the Hall of the Great Mercy of the Monastery of Great Wisdom in Beijing (ca. 1513) — in relation to the vernacular narrative of performative nature, the Precious Scroll of Incense Mountain. These murals, though they have not received much attention from scholars so far, are noteworthy as the whole ensemble of this monastery was commissioned by Zhang Xiong, a powerful eunuch of the Zhengde court. This paper clarifies the source of the subject of these murals with the use of newly discovered textual materials, and also tries to contextualize them in the cultural life of eunuchs. Such analysis also leads to redefining the status of precious scroll literature, which, though written in vernacular language, was also used in the higher stratum of society, and entered the Ming inner court in the fifteenth to early sixteenth centuries.

The Changes and Meanings of the Image of Cow(牛) in Sino-Korean Poems during the Koryo and Early Joseon Dynasties

The Changes and Meanings of the Image of Cow(牛) in Sino-Korean Poems during the Koryo and Early Joseon Dynasties

Taming the Ox: Buddhist Stories and Reflections on Politics, Race, Culture, and Spiritual Practice by Charles Johnson

Taming the Ox: Buddhist Stories and Reflections on Politics, Race, Culture, and Spiritual Practice by Charles Johnson

Buddhist Wisdom for Healing the Earth

Buddhist Wisdom for Healing the Earth

Buddhas still in classrooms: where is the mustard seed?

In this article, we illustrate the challenges and possibilities of Buddhist stories, including Zen stories and Jataka Tales, in the service of compassionate teaching. Through the tropes of these stories, we address manifestations and extensions of compassion in our teaching, including interdependence, impermanence, and equanimity. Using Buddhist stories and parables in the service of Western education can illustrate such deeper concepts and work to awaken and/or reinforce compassion, reflection, and mindfulness in teachers, pre-service teachers, and students themselves. The incorporation of Buddhist stories and parables in pre-service teacher education can focus the lenses of attention, encourage self-examination, and inspire students for further learning.

AvadānasandJātakasin the Newar Tradition of the Kathmandu Valley: Ritual Performances of Mahāyāna Buddhist Narratives

AbstractAmong all the Sanskrit story narratives available in the vast archive of textual collections in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal, certain Buddhist tales among them found special provenance in the Mahāyāna culture of the Newars, the indigenous inhabitants of this surviving oasis of later Indic Hindu‐Buddhist civilization. This paper will examine how two stories, theSṛṇgabheri Avadānaand the Siṃhalasārthabāhu Avadāna, have been domesticated into the local religious field and adopted with special meaning for subgroups in the local society. The former recounts the consecutive, linked lives of a husband and wife, in a story of karmic retribution and reunion, a narrative that has a role in contemporary Buddhist widow mourning rites at the major stūpa in Nepal, Svayambhu. The latter, among the most popularjātakanarratives in the Buddhist world, relates the fate of a group of Buddhist merchants who are shipwrecked and captured by cannibalistic demonesses; in Nepal, this story was transposed into a tale of trans‐Himalayan conflict, and its central figure is regarded as a hometown hero. Until today, a three‐day festival procession of him circumnavigates the city of Kathmandu. This paper will explore these local domestications of Buddhist stories and analyze how these traditional celebrations have changed in the context of the shifting regional and political landscape of Nepal and the region.

Pictorial Versions of the Mulian Story in East Asia (Tenth–Seventeenth Centuries): On the Connections of Religious Painting and Storytelling

In this paper, I analyze pictorial representations of the Buddhist story of Mulian rescuing his mother in China, Japan, and Korea in the pre-modern and early modern periods. I have collected several pictorial versions of the Mulian story in these countries, and comparison shows close proximity of several such works. All of them are related to the narrative texts that represent elaboration of the originally scriptural story (it originated in the apocryphal Buddhist scripture that circulated in China) in vernacular languages. Images of the Mulian story in the countries of East Asia had diverse nature: they could appear as separate scenes in devotional religious paintings, multi-scene handscrolls, and illustrations in the manuscripts and editions. I argue that the subject of Mulian rescuing his mother was of primary importance in the popularization of Buddhist ideas among different layers of society. The related images were used for both storytelling and reading practices and helped different audiences to comprehend the Mulian story.

The Bird in the Corner of the Painting: Some Problems with the Use of Buddhist Texts to Study Buddhist Ornamental Art in Thailand

Despite the prevalence of ornament and decoration in Buddhist monasteries in Thailand, as an art form, ornament has been almost entirely ignored in favor of the study of narrative and didactic art and literature. In this paper, I approach the subject of temple ornament (focusing primarily on the use of decorative birds) in Thai Buddhism through the lens of Affect Theory. As scholars of this approach emphasize that to study affect is to study “of accumulative beside-ness.” It is the study of accumulation of encounters. The senses accumulate images, feelings, scents, and sounds constantly. It is the slow accretion of knowledge in the form of non-discursive impressions. It is not the systematic learning of facts, dates, titles, terms, narrative sequences, ethical standards, and logical progressions, but the body’s “capacity to affect and be affected.” Birds are so common in Buddhist stories, murals, illuminated manuscripts, dance dramas and comedies, jewelry, and decorative parts of clothing and temple architecture that they become, like ritual and music, repetitious affective encounters experienced in Buddhist popular culture. I assert that these affective encounters are as fundamental, if not more fundamental, to the ways Buddhists learn to be Buddhists, because they are more accessible and common, than ethical arguments, philosophical treatises, and doctrinal formulations.

Readers Respond

Readers Respond

Past Lives: Entering the Buddhist Imagination

This article examines the traditional, ancient Buddhist story tradition of jataka tales – tales of the Buddha's former births. And it connects the jataka tradition with contemporary Zen Buddhist practice, as well as with the role of deep imagination in the art of storytelling and its function in our lives today.

The Ancient Colors of Mural Paintingwan Chapel: Re-Imaging of Faith in the Bhuddhaisa

The study of the ancient colors at the Bhuddhaisawan Chapel, one of the most complete and oldest of the Rattanakosin Period, focuses on the wisdom that portrays Buddhism with faith through mural painting. This paper aims to systematically analyze the group of ancient colors found in the mural of the Chapel and depict the value of the work created by the Thais. The study identi!es basic colors: red, green, blue and black as the primary group. The other colors found are white, orange and yellow with gold as the speci!c color used particularly on the body of the Lord Buddha and the structures of the palace. The colors used here are unique and differ from those seen in the Ayuddhaya period or those found today. The base is often featured in dark colors, accentuated by bright colors or hues and high intensity colors such as red and gold from the gold leaves. The coloration has a pattern of high intensity colors over low intensity base colors. This invokes faith, mystique feelings, corresponding with magical elements in the Buddhist stories. In addition, colors are also used as symbols in painting.

Soma the Learned Brahmin

Soma is a female disciple of Gotama Buddha known from various early Indian Buddhist sources. In the story of Soma in the Avadanasataka, prior to her conversion to Buddhism she gains access to the three Vedas and becomes a learned Brahmin in her region. In this article, as well as providing an English translation of Soma's story in the Avadanasataka, I discuss this account of Soma the learned Brahmin and attempt to discern the basis for a Buddhist narrative representation of a female learned Brahmin. In this account, a Buddhist story which seeks to demonstrate the natural superiority of Buddhism over Brahmanism, the female Soma takes the place usually reserved, in similar accounts, for learned male Brahmins.

The Poisoned Tree: Infidelity as Opportunity for Transformation

Therapists working with couples will likely have opportunities to help couples dealing with affairs. Affairs present significant challenges not only to couples but also to therapists. Using a traditional Buddhist story as a metaphor, a three-stage model for working with couples after an affair is presented. The metaphor and model suggest a perceptual shift from seeing the affair as a relationship-ending event to viewing it as a transformational process and opportunity for growth. Each of the three stages is explained conceptually along with suggested interventions to help couples move through each stage in rebuilding a new, healthier relationship. The importance of mindfulness for both the therapist and couple is outlined, and limitations are suggested.

Children needing protection: experience from South Asia

As in many societies, child abuse is often denied in the Indian subcontinent. Probably one of the oldest recorded tales of child abuse is a 2500-year-old Buddhist story called Sopaka.1...

The Buddha in the Classroom

To teach with a moral lens, especially one centered in compassion and reinforced by an awareness of suffering, may require taking stands that challenge the dominant quantitative paradigm based on high-stakes testing and accountability. Yet what are the tools that would allow educators to renew their sense of compassion with themselves and their students? We draw on the diverse literatures of spirituality, social justice, and education. Following Thich Nhat Hanh and others, we find that Buddhist stories and parables are a useful tool in the contemporary United States for awakening or reinforcing compassion and mindfulness in teachers, students, and administrators so that they can address the joint challenges of “too much emptiness” and “too much fullness.”

Comparative religious ethics: a narrative approach

Preface.Acknowledgments.Part I: Post/Modern Stories of War and Peace.Introduction: Storytelling and Comparative Religious Ethics.1. Religion, Ethics and Storytelling.Religion: The Sacred and the Holy.The Awakening of Ethical Consciousness: The Power of Religious Stories, East and West.The Great Religious Stories of the World - An Overview.A Postscript on Religious Language - A Word of Caution.2. Stories of War and Peace - Ancient and Post/Modern.Tales of Demonic Madness - From Auschwitz to Hiroshima.Auschwitz and Hiroshima. The Formative Religious Events of the Post/Modern World.Tchno-bureaucratic Rationality and the Demise of Ethical Consciousness.Doubling and the Myth of Life through Death: The Spiritual Logic of Mass Death in the 20th Century.Apocalypse - A Story of War as Ritual Purification.The Way of All the Earth: Global Ethics and Tales of Divine Madness.Part II: War and Peace: Ancient Stories and Post/Modern Life Stories. Introduction to Part II: Ethics After Auschwitz and Hiroshima.3. The Religious Quest and the birth of Ethics.The Story of Gilgamesh: The Crises of Morality, Mortality and Meaning.Urbanization, Doubling and Death.The Story of the Trial of Socrates.The Socratic Invention of Ethics and the Way of Doubt.4. Hindu Stories - Ancient and Post/Modern.Cosmic Story: The Myth of Liberation.Formative Story: Arjuna and Krishna.Life Story: Mohandas K. Gandhi and the Way of Brahmacharya.Comparative Reflections: The Paradoxes of War and Peace.5. Buddhist Stories - Ancient and Post/Modern.Formative Story: Siddhartha.The Cosmic Story Revised: The Myth of Liberation.Life Story: Thich Nhat Hanh and the Way of Mindfulness.Comparative Reflections: Gandhi and Thich Nhat Hanh.6. Jewish Stories - Ancient and Post/Modern.Cosmic Story: The Myth of History.Formative Story: The Audacity of Job.Life Story: Abraham Joshua Heschel and the Way of Audacity.Comparative Reflections: Heschel, Gandhi and Thich Nhat Hanh.7. Christian Stories - Ancient and Post/ModernFormative Story: Jesus of Nazareth.The Cosmic Story Revised: The Incarnation of the World.Life Story: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Way of the Cross.Comparative Reflections: King, Heschel, Gandhi and Thich Nhat Hanh.8. Islamic Stories - Ancient and Post/Modern.Formative Story: Muhammad.Cosmic Story: Further Revisions of the Myth of History.Life Story: Malcolm X and the Way of Pilgrimage.Comparative Reflections: Just War or Non-Violence? - Malcolm's Argument with the Gandhian Tradition.Part III: The Way of All the Earth.Introduction.9. Feminist Audacity and the Ethics of Interdependence.The Feminist Challenge to the Myths of Life through Death.The Feminist Alternative: Interdependence and the Ethics of Care.Life Story: Joanna Macy and Buddhist Ecofeminism.Life Story: Rosemary Ruether and Christian Ecofeminism.10. The Way of All the Earth.The Story of Babel: From Ethnocentrism to Interdependence.Ecofeminism and the Ecology of Conscience.The Way of All the Earth.Questions for Discussion.Reference.Index.

The Carpenter-Heretic: A Collection of Buddhist Stories about Christianity from 18th-Century Sri Lanka

The Carpenter-Heretic: A Collection of Buddhist Stories about Christianity from 18th-Century Sri Lanka

Magic in the Monastery: Textual Practice and Monastic Identity in Sri Lanka

Previous articleNext article No AccessMagic in the Monastery: Textual Practice and Monastic Identity in Sri LankaAnne M. BlackburnAnne M. Blackburn Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by History of Religions Volume 38, Number 4May, 1999 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/463556 Views: 20Total views on this site Citations: 6Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1999 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Jonathan Young Practical Canons from Buddhist Pasts: What Pāli Anthologies Can Tell Us about Buddhist History, History of Religions 60, no.11 (Sep 2020): 37–64.https://doi.org/10.1086/709167Phyllis Granoff For the Love of Dogs: Finding Compassion in a Time of Famine in Pali Buddhist Stories, Religions 10, no.33 (Mar 2019): 183.https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10030183Richard Payne, Lethal Fire, Journal of Religion and Violence 6, no.11 (Jan 2018): 11–31.https://doi.org/10.5840/jrv201842348Malcolm Voyce From Ethics to Aesthetics: A Reconsideration of Buddhist Monastic Rules in the Light of Michel Foucault's Work on Ethics, Contemporary Buddhism 16, no.22 (May 2015): 299–329.https://doi.org/10.1080/14639947.2015.1020735Vanessa Sasson Divining the Buddha's Arrival, Religion Compass 9, no.66 (Jun 2015): 173–181.https://doi.org/10.1111/rec3.12151Rita Langer Chanting as ‘bricolage technique ’ :, (Apr 2012): 21–58.https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511782251.003

Cures and Karma II. Some Miraculous Healings in the Indian Buddhist Story Tradition

Cures and Karma II. Some Miraculous Healings in the Indian Buddhist Story Tradition

The Buddha legend: a footnote from an Arabic source

kitdb Ba/ilawhar wa-Buddsaf tells the story of the Buddha and his teacher. A discussion of the sources, existing versions of the work and its transmission to the West appears in Stern and Walzer's Three Unknown Buddhist Stories in an Arabic Version which was published in London in 1971. story or-in the words of Stern and Walzer-a form of the was translated first into Persian, then into Arabic, Georgian and finally Greek, as the legend of Barlaam and Joasaph (page 1). Although the secondary literature dealing with as popular a subject as the legend of the Buddha is rich and plentiful, Stern and Walzer introduce important new material in Arabic by reproducing and carefully editing three stories which occur in the kitdb Kamdl al-dTn wa-tamdm al-ni'ma fi ithbdt al-ghayba wa-kashf al-hayra (lithography Tehran 1301/1883) by the well-known 3/10th century author Ibn Babuya (F. Sezgin, GAS 1/1967/548ff.; Agha Buzurg Tihrani, al-Dharr'a ild tasdnlf al-ShT'a, Beirut 1983, 2/283 and 18/137 for variants in title). Stern and Walzer also used the Manchester and Berlin Mss. (see page 12). In their Introduction, Stern and Walzer trace the development of the Buddha legend and describe the historical background of its various translations and the extant manuscripts. They also list a number of other studies on the topic (see pages 1-3; in addition the following references are also useful: D.M. Lang, in: El2 s.n.; id., in: BSOAS 20/1957/389-407, and id.: Wisdom of Balavhar: a Christian legend of the Buddha, London/New York 1957, reviewed by S.M. Stern, in: BSOAS 22/1959/149-152). Buddha legend also appears in the celebrated kitdb Bilawhar wa-Buddsf (sic!) which has been edited by D. Gimaret in Beirut in 1972 on the basis of four manuscripts to which he had access, including the Bibliotheque Nationale manuscript of Ibn Babiya's kitdb Kamtl al-dTn cited above (see his Introduction pages 11-20). Gimaret also refers to an extensive section which deals with the legend of Balawhar and Budasaf in the Bihdr al-anwdr (lithography Tehran 1304/1886-87, 17/220-244) by the 11/17th century Persian scholar al-MajlisT. In the course of research on the kitdb Faraj al-mahmum Jt ta'rlkh 'ulama' al-nujum, a treatise on astrology and astrologers written by the well-respected ShFl scholar Ibn Tawis (d. 664/1266), I came across a shortened version of the story (fols. 126a-b of the Mashhad manuscript listed by A. Ma'ani in his Fihrist-i kitdbkhdna-i mubdrak-i Asitdn-i quds-i Rizavi, 8, Mashhad 1350/1971, pages 250-251, section 318) quoted in Ibn Babiiya's kitdb Kamdl al-dmn (page 352 = Stern & Walzer pages 28f.). This version presents striking similarities with the account which Stern and Walzer entitled The prince who flees his home and then refuses to marry a princess (pages 28-37). Indeed, the likeness is such that, save a few words and expressions, one can safely