The Poetry Demon: Tensions within Chinese Buddhist Monks’ Literature
Abstract: Buddhist monks in Song dynasty China were visited by a literary impulse that interrupted religious activities and ritual. This unwelcome muse was sometimes referred to as the demon of poetry. In this talk, I explore some lesser-known intersections of Chinese poetry and the Buddhist path. I read monks’ verse together with prescriptive texts that restricted literary activity, including legal codes, primers, and hagiography. I hypothesize that at the heart of monastic verse culture was...
Crossing the Dharmascape: Mindfulness and Insight Practice in Burma and America
Abstract: In this talk, I analyze and compare divergent approaches to mindfulness (sati) in the work of contemporary Burmese monastic figures who have profoundly influenced conceptualizations of insight practice (vipassanā) in the U.S. (especially, Ledi Sayadaw, Mahāsi Sayadaw, Pa Auk Sayadaw, and Sayadaw U Tejaniya). By doing so, my goal is to explore how their teachings about mindfulness (and their receptions) reshape insight practice and senses of its purposes (as a therapeutic...
The Indian Yogācāra Scholar Sthiramati and the Works Attributed to Him
Abstract: This paper focuses on the scriptural corpus of Sthiramati, a pivotal scholar in the development of Indian Yogācāra thought in the 6th century. So far Sthiramati’s work has received far less attention from modern scholars than the treatises of other Yogācāra authors like Asaṅga or Vasubandhu—probably because of the perception of Sthiramati as a commentator and not as an original author and thinker in his own right. However, as I have tried to show in a recently...
The All-Encompassing Lamp of Awareness: A forgotten treasure of the Great Perfection, its authorship and historical significance
Abstract: In 2001 an unusually fine Tibetan manuscript dating to about the 13th century appeared in the catalogue of a London dealer of antique books. The text found there, The All-Encompassing Lamp of Awareness, like the author to whom it is attributed, Shākya Rdo-rje, seemed otherwise unknown, though a copy of the same work was found in recent editions of the Rnying ma bka’ ma shin tu rgyas pa from Kaḥ thog...
Center for the Study of World Religions, 42 Francis Ave.
Buddhist Stairways to Heaven
Abstract: Buddha’s stairway to heaven traced a route most Buddhists aspired to follow. Pāli suttas and abhidharma offer ascent to radiant, pure, blissful lands ideal for enlightenment, through devotion, “a single mind of faith to the marrow of one’s bones,” and deathbed aspiration practices. Contrary to established opinion, “pure land” is a term of Indian origin developed from earlier “pure abodes.” Kumārajīva used “jing tu” to translate...
Social Networking in the East Asian Buddhist World in the Late 12th Century
Shea Ingram, Ph.D. Candidate, Harvard University
Social networks have always played a role in the development of religion. By the Southern Song, large-scale networks centered around a particular monastery had emerged in China that attracted the participation of common people through Pure Land devotion. A type of "two-tiered" Pure Land network, which included an "inner" tier of monastics and an "outer" tier of hundreds, thousands, or even tens of...
