Scholar Monk Research Articles

The Exegetical Tradition of the Buddhāvataṃsaka-sūtra

The Buddhāvataṃsaka-sūtra, which served as an ideological foundation for the establishment and gradual development of the Huayan school, is one of the most influential Mahāyāna sūtras in East Asian Buddhism. This article shows how the exegetical tradition that focused on the study of this scripture was started by the scholar monks of the Dilun school, who highly valued the Vasubandhu’s commentary on the Daśabhūmika-sūtra chapter of the Buddhāvataṃsaka-sūtra, and was completed during the Tang dynasty by the masters of the Buddhist exegesis, who later were venerated as patriarchs of the Huayan school.

The Catechism of the Gods: Kōyasan’s Medieval Buddhist Doctrinal Debates, Dōhan, and Kami Worship

A survey of the history of medieval Kōyasan, an important mountain-based headquarters for esoteric Shingon Buddhism since the early ninth century, cannot omit significant developments in the worship of kami (tutelary and ancestral gods) from the end of the Heian period (794–1185) to the Muromachi period (1333–1573). A fundamental aspect of kami worship at Kōyasan was the regular offering to the kami (shinbōraku 神法楽) of mondō-kō 問答講 (catechism/dialogue form, or ‘question and answer’ ‘lectures’) and rongi (debate examinations in the form of mondō). The relationship between Buddhist scholarship and kami worship has not been fully elucidated and such will enrich understanding of both subjects. The identities and meanings of the two oldest kami enshrined at Kōyasan, Niu Myōjin 丹生明神 (also called Niutsuhime) and Kariba Myōjin 狩場明神 (also called Kōya Myōjin), were delineated in texts produced by scholar monks (gakuryo 学侶) during a period when the debates were re-systematized after a period of sporadicity and decline, so the precise functions of this cinnabar goddess and hunter god in the related ritual offerings deserve attention. In this paper I examine ideas about the Kōyasan kami that can be found, specifically, in the institution and development of these mondō and rongi 論義. Placing them in this context yields new information, and offers new methods of understanding of not only related textual materials, but also of the icons used in the debates, and the related major ceremonies (hōe 法会) and individual ritual practices (gyōbō 行法) that were involved. Given that the candidates of a major ritual debate examination—to be discussed—that has been practiced from the Muromachi period up to the present day are said to ‘represent’ kami, and are even referred to by the names of kami, the history of the precise relationship between the kami and the debates invites more detailed explanation that has so far been largely lacking in the scholarship.

ТОБОЛЬСКИЙ ИРМОЛОГИОН СВЯТИТЕЛЯ ФИЛОФЕЯ

The object of research in this article is the chant manuscript of a five-line notation kept in the funds of the State Archive in Tobolsk (No. 306). The significance of this musical monument for the culture of Siberia is determined by its belonging to the fifth metropolitan of Siberia and Tobolsk Philotheus (Schemamonk Feodor), the first Ukrainian scholar monk at the Siberian cathedra. About belonging of the manuscript to sainted Philotheus is testifies owner's record of his pupil Peter Tungus. Sainted Philotheus played an important role not only in the education of indigenous peoples, but also in the emergence of a new European type culture in Siberia. He initiated the construction of the first stone cathedral in Siberia in the name of the Holy Trinity in the monastery of the same name and founded of the bishop's school (later seminary), the religious theater. Metropolitan Philotheus paid much attention to the issues of church singing. Thus, in the bishop's school singing “according to the note” was taught, the lord himself organized the church and metropolitan choruses from the “written out” Kiev monks and exiled Cossacks, and taught literacy and singing, including of newly baptized Siberians. Given the period (the beginning of the XVIII century) and the ancestry of Metropolitan Philotheus, cultivated by him the church-singing culture in the Siberian metropolia was under considerable influence of the South-West Russian Baroque. The manuscript being analyzed is a monument of this tradition. According to the complex of paleographic signs, the manuscript dates back to the early 1660s. and, perhaps, was created by scribes of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, from where Philotheus was erected to the Siberian Metropolitan Сathedra. The singing book is written in four handwritings, representing the South-West Russian semi-uncial with elements of cursive writing and a lot of outline letter, some words are given under the titles, greekized and latinized variants of capital letters are actively used. The edit of the text is pre-reform, elements of razdelnorechyie are preserved. The composition and content of the book refers to the most common from the second half of the XVII century “Oktoih” type of the Ukrainian-Belarusian Irmologion. It consists of seven parts: 1) (main) chants of the Sunday service and the irmos of the canons; 2) automelon (αυτόμελον) (samples for chanting stichera, troparia and sedalen (Κάθισμα)); 3) Irmos and other hymns to the Compline of Feasts of the Nativity of Christ and the Epiphany; 4) a fragment of the Obikhod of Quadragesima; 5) selected holidays of the Minei stikheres-book; 6) a fragment of the Obikhod of the all-night vigil of the Kiev chant; 7) full-text canons in the Palm Sunday and Easter. Thus, the structure of the Irmolion differs from the Moscow singing books of both the Old Russian and the post-reform traditions, and some differences in the repertoire of the chants are noted. The musical material of the manuscript belongs to the Kiev “izvod” (derivation) of the znamenny chant. In conclusion, it is noted that the Tobolsk manuscript is a typical Ukrainian-Belarusian Irmologion, but for the Siberian region it is undoubtedly unique. Tobolsk Irmologion together with later manuscripts in various Siberian storages form the foundation for the statement of a large-scale problem of the influence of South-West Russian Baroque on the development of the musical culture of Siberia.

Seng Zhao’s The Immutability of Things and Responses to It in the Late Ming Dynasty

Seng Zhao and his collection of treatises, the Zhao lun, have enjoyed a particularly high reputation in the history of Chinese Buddhism. One of these treatises, The Immutability of Things, employs the Madhyamaka argumentative method of negating dualistic concepts to demonstrate that, while “immutability” and “mutability” coexist as the states of phenomenal things, neither possesses independent self-nature. More than a thousand years after this text was written, Zhencheng’s intense criticism of it provoked fierce reactions among a host of renowned scholar–monks. This paper explores Zhencheng’s main points as well as the perspectives and motives of his principal adversaries in order to shed light on the nature of philosophical discourse during the late Ming dynasty.

Кирик Новгородец — ученый инок и его «университет» (о значении Антониева монастыря в творческой судьбе древнерусского книжника)

Кирик Новгородец — ученый инок и его «университет» (о значении Антониева монастыря в творческой судьбе древнерусского книжника)

“Middle Way” Approach on Buddhist Ethics: Wŏnhyo on the Doctrinal Problem of the Buddha-nature and the Icchantika

The Buddhist ethical concept of kuśala (C. shan 善), which is usually rendered as “wholesome” or “skillful,” has drawn significant scholarly attention. Although scholars have not reached a consensus on how to approach Buddhist ethical systems, it seems to be commonly acknowledged that the wholesome dharmas in early Buddhism are divided into two types: the wholesome dharmas on the mundane level and the wholesome dharmas on the supramundane level. According to the typical account of Buddhist soteriology, a practitioner should cultivate these two types of wholesome dharmas in order to reach the final goal of nirvāṇa. However, in Mahāyāna Buddhism, in which the division between the mundane and the supramundane sphere was ultimately denied, the distinction between the wholesome dharmas on the mundane and supramundane levels was often seen as being problematic. As a result, a philosophical problem arose concerning how to explain the doctrinal contrast between the ultimate universality and the concrete particularities. In ancient East Asia this problem emerged centering on the two conflicting notions of the Buddha-nature (Skt. buddha-dhātu, alt. tathāgatagarbha, C. foxing 佛性), the universal spiritual capability innate in all sentient beings, and the icchantikas (C. yichanti 一闡提), “incorrigibles,” those who are devoid of the capability (or, the wholesome dharmas) to attain Buddhahood. This article discusses the philosophical conundrum entailed from doctrinal incompatibility between the universal capability to become a Buddha and the beings who lack the wholesome dharmas by examining the Silla scholar monk Wŏnhyo’s 元曉 (617–686) understanding of the four antinomies (Skt. catuṣkoṭi, C. siju 四句) on the Buddha-nature of the Nirvāṇa Sutra.

University of Sri Jayewardenepura: Towards Meeting National Aspirations

The Vidyodaya University (presently University of Sri Jayewardenepura) was established in 1959 under the provisions of the Vidyodaya and Vidyalankara University Act No 45 of 1958. Prior to the granting of university status the Vidyodaya and Vidyalankara Pirivenas had gained recognition as traditional centres of hip her learning. The Vidyodaya Pirivena pioneered by the erudite scholar monk Venerable IIikkaduwe Sri Sumangala was established as far back as 1873 at Maligakanda in Colombo. The Vidyodaya University commenced operations from these haloed grounds but shifted to its present location in Gangodawila in 1961 where a new Campus had been expeditiously completed thanks to the untiring efforts of the first Vice Chancellor Venerable Weliwitiye Soratha.

Paths of Monastic Practice from India to Sri Lanka

In 1996, L. S Cousins published a groundbreaking piece on paths of monastic practice titled ‘Scholar Monks and Meditator Monks Revisited’ (Powers and Prebish 2009, 31–46). As the title suggests, this work reconsiders the role of two types of monks, doing so by closely analyzing a famous sutta (Mah?cunda Sutta, A III 355–356) that depicts a strong dispute between jh?yins or ‘meditators’ and dhammayogas, whom scholarship has almost universally defined as ‘scholars’. Because of this, almost all have interpreted this debate as the first sign in early Indian Buddhism of a great bifurcation in the sa?gha between those concentrating on book learning (pariyatti) and those concentrating on practice (pa?ipatti) — a split that became more and more marked over the centuries until the division became more or less official in medieval Sri Lanka. Cousins convincingly contests this history, with one of his main points being that the dhammayogas were not at all just scholars. Like the meditators, theirs was a practical path that resulted in profound realization of the Dhamma, albeit a different path from that of the meditators. Cousins then goes even further, arguing that the split between scholars and meditators is not very evident in South Asian Buddhist history until the time of Buddhaghosa and thereafter. My intention here is to respond as fully as possible to Cousins’ methods and conclusions, by offering evidence and arguments that sometimes support his work further and sometimes critique his work. This is done in the spirit of spurring on more discussions on this important, complex, and contested issue.

Assembling Shinto: Buddhist Approaches to Kami Worship in Medieval Japan by Anna Andreeva

Reviewed by: Assembling Shinto: Buddhist Approaches to Kami Worship in Medieval Japan by Anna Andreeva Mark Teeuwen Assembling Shinto: Buddhist Approaches to Kami Worship in Medieval Japan. By Anna Andreeva. Harvard University Asia Center, 2017. 420 pages. Hardcover $49.95/ £36.95/ €45.00. This book's title may suggest that it focuses on such abstractions as Shinto and Buddhism and their interaction in medieval Japan. To this reviewer's relief, that proves not to be the case. Assembling Shinto offers a detailed and sophisticated case study of the development of a single thread of what modern scholars have called medieval Shinto: the so-called Miwa lineage. Perhaps the author (or the publisher) worried that flagging "Miwa" as the book's focus in the title would put readers off as being too specific. In this review I cannot play along with that ruse, but I can impress on those who are easily scared that both Miwa and this book are worth the time and effort one might dedicate to them, if one is interested in the early phases of Shinto's "assembly." [End Page 293] Medieval Shinto is best studied by focusing on a specific lineage. As Anna Andreeva puts it, medieval Shinto was not a coherent body of thought but rather a "multifaceted" and "dynamic" network shaped by "constant negotiation or 'power play' between different agents and institutions and different strands of religious thought and practice" (p. 15). Those strands were woven into transmission lineages, each with its own teachings, legends, and rituals, by practitioners who typically had their main base at a single site—but, as often as not, were also in frequent contact with other sites in the area. The result was a tangle of lineages feeding off each other, each applying mutually related ideas to the natural and social geography of its own location. The most promising, and perhaps the only, way to gain an understanding of the dynamics that energized this tangle is to select one site as a case study that, by extension, will point beyond that site to many others. Miwa presents itself as the ideal focus for such a case study. In retrospect, its Miwaryū lineage was arguably the most successful of all lineages of medieval Shinto: it not only survived the transition into Edo but even experienced a new heyday as late as the early nineteenth century, when "Miwa Shinto" practices spread around the country and found a broad audience. There is a relative abundance of materials connected to Miwa, ranging from medieval engi legends and hagiographies to ritual manuals, collections of initiation documents, and sources about the site's institutional history. From these materials, it is possible to reconstruct the ups and downs of the site as a whole, to pin down some of the institutions and individuals that contributed to Miwaryū's success, and to speculate, at least, about the reasons for this lineage's longevity. This is not to say that such an investigation is in any way a simple task. Miwa went through multiple cycles of destruction. Most of its early documents were lost in 1461, when a conflict between "meditation monks" and "scholar monks" at its main temple, Byōdōji, led the former to set fire to the hall where the latter kept their archive (pp. 274–75). Equally destructive were the early years of Meiji, when Miwa's temples were torn down to transform the site into a Shinto landscape cleansed of Buddhist blemishes. Early Miwa materials survived at sites in its wider network of ritual and doctrinal exchanges and also found their way into Edo-period collections compiled by a range of monks (Miwa insiders as well as outsiders) who sought to save or restore Miwa's legacy. Both these categories of sources are riddled with problems, however. Although medieval documents have survived in places such as Kanazawa Bunko and Ōsu Bunko, engi legends and hagiographies are not history, and lineage documents, too, served aims other than recording actual events in the past. It is seldom possible to determine the authors and dates of such documents, not least because surviving texts often have been "updated" and recalibrated by multiple authors with varying agendas...

Conceiving the Indian Buddhist Patriarchs in China by Stuart Young

Reviewed by: Conceiving the Indian Buddhist Patriarchs in China by Stuart Young Hans-Rudolf Kantor (bio) Stuart Young. Conceiving the Indian Buddhist Patriarchs in China. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2015. 338 pp. Hardcover $60.00, isbn 978-0-8248-4120-1. Conceiving the Indian Buddhist Patriarchs in China reviews and analyzes the changing representations of the Indian Buddhist saints in the hagiographical and iconographical source materials produced between the fifth and tenth century in medieval China. The book presents the historical trajectory and [End Page 97] chronological order of those varying images, by explaining the respective socio-cultural and historical-political circumstances that elicited each shift of paradigm in this tradition of religious imagery. The author focuses the discussion on the three Indian patriarchs Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva, who are the seminal and most exemplary figures of Buddhist saints venerated throughout all eras of Chinese Buddhism. This triad of Indian saints originally emerges as a group of authors who had composed doctrinal treatises that have later been transmitted to China. Their achievement in promoting the dharma long after the Buddha's realization of nirvaṇa in India is a constitutive element of their sanctity in many Buddhist traditions. For the Chinese Buddhists, who are fully aware of their own temporal and spatial distance from the historical source of Buddhism, this triad serves as a role model in a world, which the author refers to as "post-parinirvaṇa India." In addition to a wide array of primary sources such as prefaces composed by elite scholar monks and imperial patrons, doctrinal treatises, scriptural commentaries, hagiographies, master-disciple genealogies, and historiographies, this survey particularly considers the writings of Kumārajīva's (344-413 or 350-417) Chinese associates, the Dharma Treasury Transmission (Fu fazang yinyuan zhuan 付法藏因緣傳) and the iconographical imagery from the Cave of Perduring Saints (Dazhusheng ku 大住聖窟), the accounts of Jizang 吉藏 (549-623), Guanding 灌頂 (561-632), and Xuanzang 玄奘 (602-664), the Baolin Tradition (Baolin zhuan 寶林傳), and the Scripture of Kumbhīra (Foshuo jinpiluo tongzi weide jing 佛說金毗羅童子威德經). In reference to these primary sources, the book examines the Chinese Buddhist appropriations of the images of ancient Indian patriarchs and tries to delineate, in six chapters, the medieval Chinese conceptions of Buddhist sanctity "across the Indian-Sino divide" (p. 6). Characterizing the project as a whole, the study describes itself as the illustration of a "trajectory of localization, whereby ancient Indian founts of Buddhist sanctity were adduced initially as distant models of a True Dharma since diminished, before being increasingly portrayed as immanent presences within the newfound Buddhist heartland of imperial China" (p. 20). The Introduction provides an outlook of the methodological approach which mainly consists of (1) analyzing the narrative structures, themes, and tropes in the Chinese hagiographies and (2) interpreting the religious implication and functioning of these structures and themes as means of conveying the Buddhist ideal of salvation in the broader context of the sociopolitical and institutional history in imperial China. Chapter 1 deals with the accounts of Kumārajīva's Chinese associates and disciples, in particular, with those of Sengzhao 僧肇 (374-414), Sengrui 僧睿 (371-438), and Huiyuan 慧遠 (344-416), since it was Kumārajīva who first [End Page 98] translated and disseminated the early Indian Madhyamaka works of Nāgārjuna and Āryadeva in China. These accounts include the oldest extant images of Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva. Their narrative framework underscores and features the situation of the dharma long after the Buddha's realization of nirvaṇa as a state of decline in order to highlight the three Indian saints as models of Buddhist revivalism. According to the author, those Chinese accounts try to reveal that what has enabled and qualified the Indian saints to fulfill their role as the savior of the dharma in this Indian period of decay embraces the same values that the Chinese literati hold to in their own times. In this fashion, the Chinese Buddhist scholar-monks, who competed for patronage and prestige with those literati gentlemen, intend to present these values as fundamentally Indian and Buddhist, thereby underscoring their own relevance in bringing about salvation in this life and world. The...

Buddhist Debate in Medieval Japan

AbstractBuddhist debate was an oral exchange of questions and answers between two monks or nuns concerning issues of Buddhist doctrine. Although it has received considerable attention from scholars of Indian and Tibetan Buddhism, its vitality in medieval Japan has only recently begun receiving scholarly attention. As recent scholarship has emphasized, not only was participating in debates where issues of Buddhist doctrine were intensely deliberated indispensable to educating scholar monks, but it was also an official requirement for promotion. Yet the debates' politicized and highly technical nature has led many critics, both medieval and modern, to dismiss them as merely a device for self‐glorification or as tedious displays of pedantry. At the same time, the currently dominant historical paradigm of the ‘exoteric‐esoteric system’ presumes that doctrinal learning and debate practice declined as esoteric Buddhist schools and their thaumaturgic rites performed for private, this‐worldly purposes grew in popularity. Recent studies, however, have shown that debates in fact provided occasions for inter‐sectarian dialogue while advancing Buddhist doctrinal studies in both exoteric and esoteric schools and remained crucial to both educating and promoting monks throughout the medieval period.

The Mid-Tang Scholar-Monk Shenqing and His Beishan lu

This article investigates the thought of the mid-Tang scholar monk Shenqing through an examination of his Beishan lu. In this work, Shenqing launched a fervent attack against Southern Chan, while pressing for the harmonization of the Three Teachings. His critique of Southern Chan reflects his Theravadin tendency, as he expressed negative views about Southern Chan's violation of traditional Buddhist teachings. He specifically attacked its de-emphasis on the vinaya, and the fabrication of the 28-Patriarchs theory of transmission. In an effort to establish the orthodoxy of Southern Chan in early Northern Song, Chan clerics found it necessary to respond to Shenqing's critique, as clearly reflected in the writings of the monk Qisong. Beishan lu is a valuable source for a study of Shenqing's thought, and the unfolding of the harmonization of the Three Teachings. It also allows us to trace the historical unfolding of the Southern Chan movement from a different perspective.

Portrait of an Entrepreneur: Vincent van Gogh, Steve Jobs, and the Entrepreneurial ImaginationVan Gogh: The Life, by NaifehSteven and SmithGregory White. New York: Random House, 2011.Steve Jobs, by IsaacsonWalter. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011.

Academy of Management ReviewVol. 38, No. 4 Book ReviewPortrait of an Entrepreneur: Vincent van Gogh, Steve Jobs, and the Entrepreneurial ImaginationJoep P. CornelissenJoep P. CornelissenVU University AmsterdamPublished Online:11 Oct 2013https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2013.0068AboutSectionsView articleView Full TextPDF/EPUB ToolsDownload CitationsAdd to favoritesTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail View articleREFERENCES Alvarez S. , Barney J. B. 2013. Epistemology, opportunities, and entrepreneurship: Comments on Venkataraman et al. (2012) and Shane (2012). Academy of Management Review, 38: 154–157.Link , Google Scholar Bacharach S. B. 1989. Organizational theories: Some criteria for evaluation. Academy of Management Review, 14: 496–515.Link , Google Scholar Cobb E. 1959. The ecology of imagination in childhood. Daedalus, 88: 537–548. Google Scholar Cornelissen J. P. 2005. Beyond compare: Metaphor in organization theory. Academy of Management Review, 30: 751–764.Link , Google Scholar Cornelissen J. P. , Clarke J. S. 2010. Imagining and rationalizing opportunities: Inductive reasoning and the creation and justification of new ventures. Academy of Management Review, 35: 539–557.Link , Google Scholar Eckhardt J. T. , Shane S. A. 2013. Response to the commentaries: The individual-opportunity (IO) nexus integrates objective and subjective aspects of entrepreneurship. Academy of Management Review, 38: 160–163.Link , Google Scholar Garud R. , Giuliani A. P. 2013. A narrative perspective on entrepreneurial opportunities. Academy of Management Review, 38: 157–169.Link , Google Scholar Grégoire D. , Shepherd D. A. 2012. Technology market combinations and the identification of entrepreneurial opportunities: An investigation of the opportunity-individual nexus. Academy of Management Journal, 55: 539–557. Google Scholar Grégoire D. A. , Corbett A. C. , McMullen J. S. 2011. The cognitive perspective in entrepreneurship: An agenda for future research. Journal of Management Studies, 48: 1443–1477. Google Scholar Isaacson W. 2011. Steve Jobs. New York: Simon & Schuster. Google Scholar Kets de Vries M. F. R. 1977. The entrepreneurial personality: A person at the crossroads. Journal of Management Studies, 14: 34–57. Google Scholar Mitchell J. R. , Mitchell R. S. , Randolph-Seng B. In press. Handbook of entrepreneurial cognition. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar. Google Scholar Monk R. 2007. Life without theory: Biography as an exemplar of philosophical understanding. Poetics Today, 28: 527–570. Google Scholar Mullins J. , Komisar R. 2010. A business plan? Or a journey to plan B? MIT Sloan Management Review, 51(3): 1–5. Google Scholar Naifeh S. , White Smith G. 2011. Van Gogh: The life. New York: Random House. Google Scholar Padgett J. F. , Powell W. W. 2012. The emergence of organizations and markets. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Google Scholar Venkataraman S. , Sarasvathy S. D. , Dew N. , Forster W. R. 2013. Of narratives and artifacts. Academy of Management Review, 38: 163–166.Link , Google ScholarFiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Vol. 38, No. 4 Permissions Metrics in the past 12 months History Published online 11 October 2013 Published in print 1 October 2013 Information© Academy of Management ReviewI thank Eva Boxenbaum, Robin Holt, Leo Jansen, Renate Meyer, Majken Schultz, Roy Suddaby, Christine Quinn Trank, Elco Van Burg, and seminar participants at Copenhagen Business School and the University of St. Gallen for their helpful feedback on the ideas presented in this essay.Download PDF

Spiritual Authority: A Buddhist Perspective

Spiritual AuthorityA Buddhist Perspective Shenpen Hookham Whom Do Buddhists Look to for Spiritual Authority? I am taking spiritual authority in this context to refer to those to whom the tradition looks for authoritative guidance in regard to following the spiritual path. They constitute a category of people about whom, other than to recount their life stories and teachings, little has been written, even in traditional sources. Whether we call them saints, enlightened or realized people, yogins, practitioners, or gurus, who they are, exactly, is difficult to define, and yet without them the tradition is spiritually dead. Reginald A. Ray, in his groundbreaking work Buddhist Saints in India (1999),1 points out how such people are and have always been important, both in the early tradition and in the developed tradition, even though their place has never been well defined. As we shall see in the course of this paper, it is perhaps impossible to define. Ray chooses to talk in terms of “saints” when referring to enlightened people, since their spiritual authority stems from their exemplary lives and extraordinary spiritual knowledge and powers. There are, however, degrees of enlightenment and realization, so I am choosing to refer to the whole range as yogins, with Mahāsiddhas at the top end in terms of experience and spiritual authority and “practitioners” at the bottom. The term yogin presupposes a yogic process with a body of knowledge and experience in regard to it. “Enlightenment” or “realization,” the fruit of the yogic process, refers to insight into the true nature of reality, which those with realization embody, giving them their spiritual authority. In this paper I shall be writing in general terms for the whole Buddhist tradition on the basis of many personal and in-depth encounters with yogins in all the main traditions. This is an area in need of much further research, and what I propose to do in this paper is to flag the issues and raise pertinent questions. My particular interest is how spiritual authority is going to work in the future, especially in the West now that the Buddhist tradition is establishing itself here. [End Page 121] The tendency in modern scholarship has been to assume that spiritual authority in Buddhism lies with monastics (especially male monastics), who teach and are supported by laypeople who look to them for spiritual guidance. Ray challenges this assumption, pointing out that, throughout history, the most genuine spiritual authority within the tradition is found in the Buddhist saints. These are the yogins, male or female, possibly living within or outside monastic institutions, following any number of lifestyles, be it as wandering renunciates, hermits, householders, or kings. Ray, therefore, in place of the twofold model of monks and lay supporters, speaks of a need for a threefold model, which includes the saints /yogins. This puts into a broader historical perspective, the modern trend for Western Buddhists to not automatically think of themselves as a laity dependent on the spiritual authority of monks. At the time of the Buddha, spiritual authority rested in him and his enlightened disciples. Ray refers to their lifestyle as that of wandering forest renunciates. Over time, Buddhism followed the same pattern as emerged in Brahmanic society with the forest renunciates settling near towns and villages so that a symbiotic relationship could develop between the monks and their lay supporters. As the Buddhist tradition moved from an oral to a written tradition, the monastery became the place of learning, where the texts were kept and a highly organized and ordered lifestyle could develop within and around the monastery, contrasting markedly with the freer, and presumably more diverse and spontaneous, lifestyles of the forest renunciates. Ray argues that, as the writers of texts and commentaries, the learned monks systematically rewrote the values and orientation of early Buddhism in favor of the settled, ordered, lifestyle of the monasteries, regarding the renunciate lifestyle as an exceptional, if not inferior, option. His point is that, in this way, spiritual authority moved from the enlightened wandering, renunciate teacher, such as the person of the Buddha, to scholar monks within the monastic organizational hierarchy. He argues that, in this way, the...

Phra Payutto and Debates ‘On the Very Idea of the Pali Canon’ in Thai Buddhism

In this paper I investigate a number of public intellectual debates in current Thai Theravada Buddhism that are related to several fundamental questions regarding the meaning and function of the Pali canon. The focal point of this investigation will be debates in which the Thai scholar monk Phra Payutto (b. 1939) has been playing a significant role. In these debates, the Pali canon is regarded as a central text endowed with special normative and formative authority. I will look at contestations that concern Theravada-ness and, at the same time, and inextricably linked with this, at concepts of demarcation to systems of religious beliefs and practices that are believed to be ‘outside’ Theravada. This, of course, engages the question of inclusivism, exclusivism and pluralism within Theravada. In so doing, I explore and posit concepts on the meanings and functions of the Pali canon that position it either as the or an authoritative reference.

Marginal Man: The Dark Vision of Harold Innis (review)

Reviewed by: Marginal Man: The Dark Vision of Harold Innis Donald Wright Marginal Man: The Dark Vision of Harold Innis. Alexander John Watson. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005. Pp. 480, cloth $65 Harold Innis once characterized what he did as dirt research. By that he meant the long unearthing of the basic facts, figures, maps, and memoranda necessary to pattern recognition and abstraction. For his part, John Watson has attempted to apply Innis to Innis. 'This has involved great effort to track down individuals and obscure archival sources that may cast light on some aspects of the man' (ix). The result, Watson promises, is 'a full-scale intellectual biography' (11) of this country's most important thinker: Harold Adams Innis, 1894–1952. It is a promise deferred. Watson begins at the beginning: the Innis family farm located on 'marginal agricultural land' in Otterville, ON, itself a town located in the 'middle of the margin' between the urban metropolitan centres and the new agricultural frontiers of western Canada, between the cultural and economic influences of Great Britain and those of the United States, and between a pioneer past that had not yet disappeared and a future that had not yet fully arrived (31). Indeed, Watson uses margin as a trope to connect the Innis story. Innis was – even when he was at the centre, when he was head of the Department of Political Economy at the University of Toronto – a marginal man. He opposed the increasing specialization of intellectual life; he lamented the standardization of higher learning and its concomitant reduction to memorization; and he grew anxious and frustrated when his [End Page 320] communications work was misunderstood, poorly received, and harshly reviewed. In the end,Watson's Innis becomes a romantic and ultimately tragic figure. He was a man determined to realize an ambitious intellectual and political project – which in its ultimate phase became nothing less than the renewal of Western civilization against the corrosive effects of modern communications. That renewal, Innis believed, would come not from the centre but from the margin, from intellectuals on the edge of empire. But Innis was also a man destined to fail. 'Obsession with presentmindedness,' he wrote in 'A Plea for Time,' 'precludes speculation in terms of duration and time.' But speculation in terms of duration and time were essential, he argued, to the survival of civilization. That plea, of course, fell on deaf ears. His already dark vision grew darker and he died a 'desperately overworked' and 'embittered' man (222). In addition to reconstructing Innis's intellectual life, Watson has reconstructed Innis's emotional life from a limited – and more than likely vetted – archival record. As a husband, he took more than he gave and used Mary Quayle Innis as a crutch throughout their married life; as a father, he was absent and distant; and as a man, he was prone to periods of deep and debilitating depression. Watson also has uncovered new evidence relating to Innis's complicated relationship with Irene Biss. In the mid-1930s Biss was a brilliant and beautiful graduate student; he was a professor and a married man with a family. But their research interests overlapped and they worked closely together for a number of years. There is no evidence to indicate that they had an affair, but Watson believes that Innis was in love with her. He wanted to make her in his own image: 'an intellectual nun playing opposite his scholar monk' (194). He wanted her to remain monastically devoted to his idealized notion of scholarship and uninterested in the those 'hot gospellers' in the CCF and their political debates and policy discussions. Then, in 1938, their relationship ended when she married Graham Spry – 'the type of engaged intellectual that Innis despised' (197) – and left academic work. It is at this point that Innis the staples economist becomes Innis the communications theorist. Although he is careful not to reduce Innis's intellectual transformation to unrequited love, Watson also maintains that the battle for Irene Biss's soul continued but that it now took place on a higher plane in the form of Innis's lonely quest to save Western civilization from itself through intellectual...

Thai Buddhist studies and the authority of the Pāli Canon1

In Thai Buddhism, a high number of examples show that during the last 20 years or so the triangular interrelationship between hermeneutics, canonical authenticity and authority has been—more or less consciously—the subject of numerous, often very fervent debates. This has made clear the importance of the Pāli canon as a centre of reference for normative and formative authority in Thai society. Also, during these debates the conservatism of Thai Theravāda, and thereby its identity, has been challenged in various ways, e.g. by Western influenced text-critical or intertextual approaches, by reference to superior religious insight and by requests for feminist interpretations of the Pāli canon. At the same time, however, and in response to these challenges, the rationale for Thai Theravāda's conservatism and identity have become very clearly articulated, to an extent that has arguably never happened before in Thai history. By looking at some of the debates in which the foremost Thai Buddhist thinker and scholar monk P. A. Payutto (1939– ) has been involved, I seek to gain a deeper understanding of what these debates can teach us about the specific context and state of Thai Buddhist studies.

Hotan's Interpretation of Soto Zen's Fivefold Relations in His Iron Wall with Cloud Scraps

The career of the scholar monk Soshun Hotan _??__??__??__??_ (1659-1738) can be regarded as an epitome of the Buddhism during the 1650s to 1750s of the Edo period. For eight years he worked with the Obaku Zen master Tetsugen _??__??_ and assisted in printing and publishing the Obaku edition of the Tripitaka. Later he traveled around famous temples to collect old Buddhist texts, and studied Kegon and Tendai doctrines. He claimed himself as a Kegon monk who had inherited the tradition of Fazang, although his Kegon studies were marked by a very strong Tendai coloration. In his work Iron Wall with Cloud Scraps _??__??__??__??__??__??_, a critical tract against The Record of the Blue Cliff _??__??__??__??__??_, he employed the Tendai notion of six stages _??__??_ to interpret the fivefold relations of absolute and relative _??__??__??__??__??__??_ of Soto Zen in an original way. Focusing on this original exegesis, this paper reveals that, on the one hand, Hotan affirms the stages of practice, while on the other hand, he emphasizes the nature of original realization _??__??_ that the fivefold relations have, and maintains that every stage is identical with Buddha in the ultimate sense.

Thai monks and lay nuns (mae chii) in urban health care

In the process of defining their identity in relation to other social institutions, Thai monks and increasingly, lay nuns (mae chii), have been adopting social and community roles in rural areas. Studies conducted in the early 1980s and repeated more recently indicate that these can be adapted to suit urban situations such as paramedical roles in hospitals in which mae chii may prove more effective than monks as counsellors. But although the young scholar monks whose views were solicited were mostly open to such roles on the part of the mae chii, the majority were opposed to their full ordination as bhikkhuni.

Visions of Salvation: a Thai Buddhist Experience of Ecumenism

AbstractMigration from the countryside to urban provincial centres and capital cities is a major reason why rural communities in southeast Asia suffer extensively from acute poverty and ill health. In Thailand, as elsewhere, it is principally the young and able who move to the cities in search of jobs, and whose departure impoverishes even more their home communities. The Thai Sangha has traditionally accommodated this pattern of migration by providing educational opportunities for those who ordain at an early age, but in recent years a variety of schemes has enabled monks to learn secular skills which equip them to become ‘practitioners of development’ in their home regions. This training has gone hand in hand with attempts by leading scholar monks to reformulate Buddhist teaching to emphasize the importance of living in self-reliant communities which are alert to the most up-to-date scientific information available on health care and environmental protection.