Monastic Education Research Articles

Love and Knowledge: Recovering the Heart of Learning through Contemplation

The role of contemplative practice in adult education has a long history if one includes traditional monastic education in Asia and the West. Its use in American higher education is, however, more recent and more limited. Nonetheless, on the basis of evidence from surveys and conferences, a significant community of teachers exists at all levels of higher education, from community colleges to research universities, who are using a wide range of contemplative practices as part of their classroom pedagogy. In addition to existing well-developed pedagogical and curricular methods that school critical reasoning, critical reading and writing, and quantitative analysis, this article argues that we also require a pedagogy that attends to the development of reflective, contemplative, affective, and ethical capacities in our students. The significance of these is at least as great as the development of critical capacities in students. The rationale for the inclusion of contemplative modalities is articulated within this context. On the basis of considerable experience in teaching at Amherst College, I present an “epistemology of love,” which emphasizes a form of inquiry that supports close engagement and leads to student transformation and insight. This approach to knowing is implemented in the Amherst College first-year course, Eros and Insight. It includes a specific sequence of contemplative exercises that are practiced by students and integrated with more conventional course content drawn from the arts and sciences. Our experience shows that students deeply appreciate the shift from conventional coursework to a more experiential, transformative, and reflective pedagogy.

Images of Pity: The Regulatory Aesthetics of John Lydgate’s Religious Lyrics

Images of Pity: The Regulatory Aesthetics of John Lydgate’s Religious Lyrics Shannon Gayk Indiana University Late medieval clerics did not underestimate the power of the image. They did, however, differ on how to assess and respond to the laity’s increasing attachment to devotional artifacts.1 In a lyric on the pietà, one of the most popular images of the period, the Benedictine monk and poet John Lydgate offers a brief explanation of the proper use of visual images in religious devotion: To suche entent was ordeynt purtreture And ymages of dyverse resemblaunce, That holsom storyes thus shewyd in fygur May rest with ws with dewe remembraunce.2 Images, for Lydgate, are libri laicorum, books for the laity. This statement might seem like a critical commonplace. What I will suggest in this essay, however, is that Lydgate’s insistence on the mnemonic usefulI am very grateful to Maura Nolan, Jill Mann, James Simpson, Frank Grady, and the anonymous reader for SAC for their many helpful comments and suggestions as I wrote and revised this essay. 1 For example, Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image Before the Era of Art, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), p. 1, suggests that ‘‘[w]henever images threatened to gain undue influence within the church, theologians have sought to strip them of their power. . . . It was never easy to control images with words because, like saints, they engaged deeper levels of experience and fulfilled desires other than the ones living church authorities were able to address.’’ 2 ‘‘The Image of Pity,’’ lines 37–40, in John Lydgate, The Minor Poems of John Lydgate, part 1, ed. Henry Noble MacCracken, EETS, o.s. 192 (London: Oxford University Press, 1934), pp. 297–99. Hereafter cited as MacCracken with line numbers of the lyrics inserted parenthetically after quotations in the text. PAGE 175 175 ................. 16094$ $CH6 11-01-10 14:03:59 PS STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER ness of images sets him apart from his contemporaries, who emphasized the affective and emotional content of images. For Lydgate, images are valuable insofar as they help one remember in an intellectual rather than an affective way.3 In another lyric, Lydgate similarly urges the ‘‘folkys all, whyche haue deuocioun’’ when viewing visual signs ‘‘[t]o haue memory of Crystes passioun, / As doctors remembre in theyr doctryne’’ (lines 1, 14–15).4 Of this passage, we might ask: Is it reasonable for Lydgate to expect the unlearned laity to read complex visual figures with the exegetical skill of ‘‘doctors’’? After all, his contemporary, Nicholas Love, explicitly tells his lay readers that he will ‘‘passen ouer’’ those matters ‘‘expownet by holy doctours.’’5 For Love, the omission and suppression of such scholarly detail is an act of regulation. Lay piety, his Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ suggests, is best kept ‘‘bodily,’’ affective, and incarnational.6 Indeed, vernacular devotional works of this period typically are affective and incarnational, mirroring and embodying the agendas of emergent forms of lay piety influenced by Franciscan and Bernardine theology that de-emphasized the function of images as libri laicorum and emphasized their ability to effect ‘‘the stirring of emotion rather than the imparting of knowledge.’’7 3 Such an emphasis on relating images and memory is entirely consistent with Lydgate ’s monastic background. ‘‘Monastic art,’’ Mary Carruthers writes, is ‘‘an art for mneme, ‘memory,’ rather than one for mimesis. . . . Mneme produces an art for ‘thinking about’ and for ‘meditating upon’ and for ‘gathering.’ . . . An art of tropes and figures is an art of patterns and pattern-making, and thus an art of mneme or memoria, of cognition, thinking’’ (The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400–1200 [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998], pp. 3–4). Similarly Miriam Gill examines extant monastic wall paintings to suggest that unlike the libri laicorum found on the walls of parish churches, monastic art is figurally complex and intended to be an extension of monastic lectio; see ‘‘The Role of Images in Monastic Education: The Evidence from Wall Painting in Late Medieval England,’’ in Medieval Monastic Education, ed. George Ferzoco and Carolyn Muessig (London: University...

Toward an Action-Oriented Pedagogy: Buddhist Texts and Monastic Education in Contemporary Sri Lanka

By examining the role that texts play in the early training of Buddhist novices, this article supplements a growing collection of literature examining the role of canon in the Theravada tradition. Drawing on fieldwork recently conducted in Sri Lanka, this article maintains that the majority of young newcomers to the monastic community or sarigha learn about monastic behavior and practices less through learning the content of particular texts and more through doing, performing, and speaking. In the process of exploring the meaning and role of an action-oriented pedagogy in the monastic training of young novices, this article considers how engaging in such activities as eating, walking, chanting, and sweeping creates ritualized monastic agents who are imbued with an understanding of what it means to be a monk and how a monk should act.

Toward an Action-Oriented Pedagogy: Buddhist Texts and Monastic Education in Contemporary Sri Lanka

By examining the role that texts play in the early training of Buddhist novices, this article supplements a growing collection of literature examining the role of “canon” in the Theravāda tradition. Drawing on fieldwork recently conducted in Sri Lanka, this article maintains that the majority of young newcomers to the monastic community or sangha learn about monastic behavior and practices less through learning the content of particular texts and more through doing, performing, and speaking. In the process of exploring the meaning and role of an action-oriented pedagogy in the monastic training of young novices, this article considers how engaging in such activities as eating, walking, chanting, and sweeping creates ritualized monastic agents who are imbued with an understanding of what it means to be a monk and how a monk should act.

Theology, Contemplation and the University

Theology was one of the original faculties of the medieval university, which grew out of the earlier monastic and cathedral schools, where theology was central. The purpose of theology in monastic education was to provide not simply information about theological topics, but to prepare one to contemplate God, contemplation being the true knowledge of God. Contemplation as the goal of intellectual development, however, goes behind the Christian education of monastery and university to the intellectual and cultural ideals of classical civilisation, as seen in Plato and Aristotle. A contrast is drawn between contemplation, for which the object of knowledge is an end in itself, and the way in which knowledge has come to be seen as essentially instrumental, ultimately as an object of consumption, so that the one who knows becomes consumer rather than contemplator. Some of the consequences of this shift in understanding, which undermines the traditional ideals of culture, are explored.

The Tantric Rebirth Movement in Modern China

The present study aims to examine the so-called Tantric Rebirth Movement, which is part of the general context of reforms that involved the whole Chinese Buddhist community at the beginning of the 20th century. It was a time when, probably under the influence of the first Western studies in Buddhology, all Asian Buddhist communities began to re-think their own traditions. In China, the main aim was to reform the monastic education and to compare Chinese Buddhism with its original Indian teachings and other Asian Buddhist traditions. Tantrism was generally considered to have disappeared after its 'golden age' during the Tang dynasty. Due to its esoteric nature, to study Tantrism one had to turn to Tibet or Japan because its lineages had been interrupted in China for centuries. A number of Chinese Buddhist monks began thus to participate in pilgrimages to Tibetan areas, becoming disciples of lamas. On their return to China, many of these monks devoted themselves to spreading the Tibetan teachings - and above all the Vajrayana ones - among Chinese Buddhists. Meanwhile, a similar movement was flourishing in the East, mainly focusing on Japanese Esoteric Buddhism. Many masters went to Japan so as to learn and practice the particular form of Tantrism which was widespread among Tendai and Shingon communities, and which was considered to be closely related to the original Chinese tantric teachings. The intention was the same as the 'reformist' monks, that is to deepen the understanding of a different Buddhist tradition, while at the same time re-vivifying the Chinese tantric lineages.

Medieval monastic education. Edited by George Ferzoco and Carolyn Muessig. Pp. xv+237 incl. 10 ills. London–New York: Leicester University Press, 2000. £60. 0 7185 0256 9

<i>Medieval monastic education</i>. Edited by George Ferzoco and Carolyn Muessig. Pp. xv+237 incl. 10 ills. London–New York: Leicester University Press, 2000. £60. 0 7185 0256 9

Orality, Literacy, and the Early Notation of the Office Hymns

Abstract This article takes the early notation of the Office hymns as the framework for a new investigation of orality and literacy in musical notation. Of all chant genres, hymns remained an oral tradition the longest, and the notation of entire hymn repertories was apparently rare before 1100. As a repertory of melodies hardly written down before the eleventh century, the hymns offer an opportunity to study the initial recording of an oral tradition at a time when other chant genres were increasingly notated. The variety of approaches to notating both entire hymn repertories and individual hymns in the sources up to the early twelfth century signals the increasing reliance on writing, as well as the dynamic interaction between orality and literacy, that characterizes monastic textual production in the eleventh century. The article places the notation of hymns in the context of their important role in monastic education and proposes an analogy between hymnaries and monastic customaries.

Medieval Monastic Education. Edited by George Ferzoco and Carolyn Muessig. New York: Leicester University Press, 2000. xv + 237 pp. £60.00 cloth.

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Non-Conceptuality, Critical Reasoning and Religious Experience: Some Tibetan Buddhist Discussions

The Dalai Lama is fond of quoting a verse attributed to the Buddha to the effect that as the wise examine carefully gold by burning, cutting and polishing it, so the Buddha's followers should embrace his words after examining them critically and not just out of respect for the Master. A role for critical thought has been accepted by all Buddhists, although during two and a half millennia of sophisticated doctrinal development the exact nature, role and range of critical thought has been extensively debated. In general doctrinal difference in Buddhism has been seen as perfectly acceptable, reflecting different levels of understanding and therefore different stages on the path to enlightenment. Buddhism has tended not to look to or expect doctrinal orthodoxy, although there has always been a much stronger impetus towards orthopraxy, and common (largely monastic) code and behaviour has perhaps played a comparable role in Buddhism to common belief and creed in some other religions. Nevertheless an acceptability of doctrinal divergence has not lessened the energy and vigour devoted to lengthy and sometimes fiercely polemical debate between teachers and schools. This was nowhere more so than in Tibet, where doctrinal debates—sometimes lasting all night—to the present day form the central part of a monastic education in most of the largest Tibetan monastic universities.

Reginald of Durham and Saint Godric of Finchale: Learning and Religion on a Personal Level

In terms of their achievements in the field of learning, Reginald of Durham and saint Godric of Finchale present an enormous contrast. Reginald was a monk of the powerful and wealthy community of Durham and also, naturally enough in the second half of the twelfth century, a priest. As such he was the product of a formal monastic education. He was especially favoured, in addition, because the house which moulded him was at that time passing through a phase when letters flourished to a greater extent than at any other period in its history. Godric, on the other hand, was never anything but a layman. He earned a living as a pedlar and merchant first of all and only later decided to abandon the world and lead the eremitic life. His contacts with learning were thus tenuous at best. Both Reginald and Godric were trying, however, to achieve the same ideal: to live the religious life, and for some years in the third decade of the twelfth century circumstances led them to follow their vocations in close contact with one another. Students of this period are fortunate in having some insight into the relationship that developed between them. In particular one can isolate the part played in the relationship by learning or, more precisely, by Reginald’s substantial education and the hermit’s lack of it.

A Ninth-Century Commentator on the Gospel according to Matthew

The subject of this paper, Christian of Stavelot, though he is one of the less familiar figures of the Carolingian revival of learning, whose only substantial work is a commentary on the First Gospel, should be of interest to any student of monastic education. Yet, apart from an admirable essay by Ernst Dummler and a shorter, but very useful, article by Manitius, recent research has not paid much attention to this writer.