2023-2024 Events

Reiki, Japanese Buddhism, and Imperial Veneration in the Transwar North Pacific
Justin B. Stein, Kwantlen Polytechnic University

In the years leading up to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, hundreds of Japanese Americans in the Hawaiian Islands were learning a new therapy that had been brought over from Japan called Usui Reiki Ryōhō or, more simply, Reiki. The teachings of Reiki’s founder, Usui Mikao (1865–1926) included several Buddhist elements, including esoteric (mikkyō) practices, such as initiations (kanjō, Skt. abhiṣeka) and deity yoga (kaji, Skt. adhiṣṭhāna). The latter was practiced not only with Amida (Amitābha) Buddha as the object of attention, but also the Meiji Emperor, whose poetry practitioners recited to purify their hearts and minds. The chief Reiki instructor in Hawai’i in the transwar period, Hawayo Takata (1900–1980) drew on Jōdo Shinshū Buddhist networks to promote Reiki, teaching in temples and arranging lectures in the sect’s large YMBA Hall in Honolulu, but the outbreak of the Pacific War (and the subsequent persecution of Japanese American Buddhists) severed these connections. This talk will explore the connections between Reiki, Japanese Buddhism, and imperial veneration in the 1920s and 1930s, how Takata adapted the practice in the 1940s (likely out of wartime exigencies), and to what extent these connections remained in the postwar period and today. 

Justin B. Stein is chair of the Asian Studies Program at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. This talk is adapted from his recent monograph, Alternate Currents: Reiki’s Circulation in the Twentieth-Century North Pacific (University of Hawaii Press, 2023). Some of his other recent publications include “Reiki and the Discursive Spaces of Spiritual Therapies in Twentieth-Century Japan” (Japanese Religions, 2023), “Nationalism and Buddhist Youth Groups in the Japanese, British, and American Empires, 1900s–1930s” (Journal of Global Buddhism, 2021), Routledge Handbook of Religion Medicine and Health (co-edited volume, 2021), and “Japanese Religions and the Global Occult: An Introduction and Literature Review (co-authored with Ioannis Gaitanidis, Japanese Religions, 2019).

The Toshihide Numata Book Award in Buddhism is presented on an annual basis to an outstanding book in the area of Buddhist studies. The selection is made by an external committee that is appointed annually.The winner of the 2023 Toshihide Numata Book Award in Buddhism is Professor John Kieschnick (Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Professor of Buddhist Studies, Stanford University), for his book Buddhist Historiography in China (Columbia University Press, 2022). 

Program

2:10 - 2:30 - Welcome Remarks and Award Presentation

2:30 - 3:30 - Keynote by Award Winner

The Death of the Karmic Detective: Buddhist Historiography in Modern China
John Kieschnick, Stanford University

3:30 - 3:45 - Break

3:45 - 5:30 - Symposium

What Counts as Buddhist Historiography and Why Does It Matter?
Stephen F. Teiser, Princeton University

The Dawn of Tibetan Buddhist Historiography: On Early Dharma Origins (chos ‘byung) Works
Marta Sernesi, École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris and
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

Chinese Buddhist Translation Historiography: A Few Comments
Eric Greene, Yale University

5:30 - 6:00 - Discussion

Buddhist Philosophy of the Emotions: Solitude (viveka) 

2023 Numata Lecture in Buddhist Philosophy

How did first millennia Indian Buddhists understand the emotions? What are the theoretical resources, methodologies and vocabularies they used to account for emotive phenomena, and how do these relate, if at all, to contemporary philosophy of the emotions? This talk will focus, as a case study, on the notion of ascetic solitude (viveka) presented by the Buddhist thinker and poet Aśvaghoṣa’s (second century CE) in his poetical work the Saundarananda. Approaching Aśvaghoṣa’s work as a lens through which to examine the broader Buddhist philosophical conception of the emotions, it is demonstrated that solitude, far from being conceived as a physical withdrawal from the world (into an interior subjective space), is seen as a mode of engagement with the world, a dynamic and transformative experiential process. This understanding, it is argued, is set within a broader Buddhist philosophical conception of emotions primarily in terms of a shifting evaluative perceptual content. Within the Saundarananda, emotions are akin to “ways of seeing”—a matter of perceptual modes and patterns of salience and what they experientially pick and leave out. Outlining some of the features of this theory that are distinctively Buddhist, I join the scholarly critique of the practice of applying readymade contemporary emotive categories to the study of Indian Buddhist texts, and advocate the need to account for these texts as much as possible in their own terms.  

Roy Tzohar (PhD Columbia University, 2011) is an associate professor in the Department of South and East Asian Studies and the Department of Philosophy at Tel Aviv University. He specializes in the Buddhist and Brahmanical philosophical traditions of pre-modern India, with a focus on the ways in which the function and role of language is theorized in Indian philosophical and literary works. He is the author of A Buddhist Yogācāra Theory of Metaphor (Oxford University Press, 2018), for which he received the Toshihide Numata Book Award in Buddhist Studies. He has co-edited with Maria Heim and Ram-Prasad Chakravarthi Emotions in Classical Indian Thought (Bloomsbury, 2021), and guest-edited Reading Aśvaghoṣa Across Boundaries (Journal of Indian Philosophy, 2019), a special issue dedicated to the works of the Buddhist poet and thinker Aśvaghoṣa, who is the topic of his next monograph.

He is a former visiting research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin; a recipient of the Marie Curie Grant of the European Commission; and recently, recipient of Tel Aviv University’s Kadar Award for Outstanding Research. He is engaged in an ongoing collaborative research project in the digital humanities (supported by the Israeli Science Foundation) together with the Digitization of Gandharan Artefacts (DIGA) group at Ruhr-Universität Bochum, which is examining the possible relation of Aśvaghoṣa’s works to Gandharan iconography.

Carving the Divine: Buddhist Sculptors of Japan

Yujiro Seki
United States, Japan, 2020

Copresented by the Center for Buddhist Studies, UC Berkeley

FEATURING
Kourin Saito, Koun Seki, Koukei Konno, Koumei Yamada,
A beautifully made film that examines the mentorship of Japanese sculptors, who learn the art of busshi through the master-apprentice relationship and continue a 1,400-year-old tradition. “Artworks depicting buddhas and bodhisattvas are wordless teachings. In their facial expressions and gestures, we can see what we’re aiming for in our lives and practice—be it compassion, equanimity, meditative focus, or even wise anger. But who are the people who create these contemplative artworks? In Carving the Divine, a new, award-winning documentary, we meet some of these artists. Specifically, we’re offered a rare and intimate look at the lives and artistic process of traditional Japanese wood carvers” (Andrea Miller, Lion’s Roar).

An Inquiry into the functions of Abhiṣeka

The ritual of initiation (abhiṣeka)—more correctly signifying lustration or invivification of an individual—is an essential feature of the esoteric Buddhist tradition, first adapted from the rites associated with royal coronation or ritual consecration. Abhiṣeka was employed as a gateway rite, perhaps since the late sixth or early seventh century, and over time developed extraordinary complexity, both in the country of its origin and its diaspora through Central and East Asia. Yet the circumstances of the inauguration and ritual development of abhiṣeka in India remain somewhat elusive, and further investigation might prove fruitful. Many of its social and ritual functions as executed appear quite far from the secretive one-on-one images portrayed in some of the esoteric texts, and we may pose questions about its transition from a consecratory ritual to a grand public ceremony. The presentation will outline some of the fundamental features of the Indian abhiṣeka ritual and suggest potential approaches to the functions of the ritual as seen in India and medieval Tibet.

Ronald M. Davidson is Professor of Religious Studies at Fairfield University. He received his degrees in Psychology, Sanskrit and Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, working with Padmanabh Jaini, Frits Staal, Barend van Nooten, Lewis Lancaster and Michel Strickmann. Additionally, he worked with Tibetan intellectuals, especially Ngor Thartse Khanpo (Hiroshi Sonami), for seventeen years on Tibetan documents and ritual. His books include Indian Esoteric Buddhism: A Social History of the Tantric Movement (Columbia U.Pr 2002) and Tibetan Renaissance: Tantric Buddhism in the Rebirth of Tibetan Culture (Columbia U. Pr 2005). His current work is on dhāraṇī literature in Indian Buddhism, already published in a series of studies, and on pre-tantric elements of Indian religion that contributed to the formation of tantrism. He is completing a translation of the *Mūlamantra, the earliest Indian Buddhist pre-tantric work that brings together elements that eventually will become inscribed in tantric Buddhism, and is also working on the earliest tantric Buddhist documents, many of which only in Chinese or Tibetan translations.

Speaker: Ronald M. Davidson, Professor, Fairfield University

European-language scholarship on Theravada Buddhism still needs a systematic study of cosmology. This neglect of cosmology contrasts with the interests of Theravada scholar-monks in history, who, over two thousand years, have produced a vast archive of thought about the world or loka. In this talk, I will discuss historical and methodological reasons why Buddhist studies has ignored this knowledge. I will also offer an interpretative sketch of Theravada cosmological literature and highlight some of the tradition’s crucial yet overlooked concepts.

Alastair Gornall gained his Ph.D. in Asian Studies from the University of Cambridge in 2013. He is currently an Assistant Professor in History and Religion at the Singapore University of Technology and Design and a Research Associate in the Department of the Languages and Cultures of South Asia at SOAS, University of London. His research focuses on the intellectual and cultural history of Buddhism in South and Southeast Asia. He teaches courses on Asian religion and history and helps lead the digital humanities minor program.

The Pali Tipiṭaka or Pali Canon is considered to be the largest collection of Early Buddhist Texts in an Indic language, known as Pali. Pali is a Middle Indic dialect, but the Pali Texts are literary compositions, and therefore Pali is considered to be an artificial language, not a colloquial one. This means that our Pali texts are probably not a faithful reproduction of the Buddha’s words. The question, however, remains: what do we mean by artificial language (Kunstsprache)? Dialectal variation within Pali texts and other phonetic peculiarities indicate that Pali is not a “natural” language. Some scholars have also endorsed the view that the Pali texts we have received are heavily influenced by editorial interventions. At times it is difficult to determine whether a feature of Pali language is due to phonetic evolution or to editorial intervention (the heavy hand of a scribe/editor who knew Sanskrit…). These interventions are supposedly based on medieval Pali grammatical scholarship, highly influenced by Sanskrit grammatical knowledge. In this lecture I will problematize this issue and I will show a few examples of Pali grammatical theory and philological practice in Medieval and Early Modern Burma. I will argue that Early Buddhists Texts of the Pali canon have been transmitted and preserved up to our day thanks, and not despite, the grammarians.

For more than four centuries, the history of Japanese religions has been dominated by secrecy. Secret texts circulated in every group regardless of their affiliation or social status, showing the porosity and pervasiveness of secrecy. Why and how did secrecy become such a central component of religious life? Although works on secrecy abound in the field of European and Tantra studies, the enormous body of Japanese secret works – many of which are recently discovered – has received relatively little attention, casting a shadow on a fundamental aspect of medieval and early modern Japanese religions.

This symposium brings together scholars working on a wide range of topics in the context of Japanese religions to discuss secrecy from different perspectives and methodologies. The aim of this event is to draw attention to the role of secrecy and better illuminate the dynamics underlying the process of “secretization,” the mobility of secrecy, as well as the factors that marked the decline of the culture of secrecy. More broadly, the scope of this symposium is to foster a conversation on Japanese religions from a cross-disciplinary perspective to understand the networks and logics that participated in the creation of religious identities during the Japanese age of secrecy.

Day 1 – Friday, March 3
9:30-09:35 | Opening Remarks by JSPS Director (San Francisco Office)

9:35-09:40 | Opening Remarks by CJS Director

9:40-09:45 | Introduction by the Organizer

9:50-11:00 | Session 1 - Secret Pure Land

Secrets, Secrecy, Secrecies: Non-Human and Social Concealment in a Shin Buddhist Ritual
Clark Van Doren Chilson, Associate Professor, University of Pittsburgh

Hiding the Nenbutsu
Mark L. Blum, Professor and Shinjo Ito Distinguished Chair in Japanese Studies, University of California, Berkeley

Chair: Robert H. Sharf, D. H. Chen Distinguished Professor of Buddhist Studies, University of California, Berkeley

11:15-12:25 | Session 2 - Secret Zen

Dōgen’s Quest for the Arcane Import of Zen
William M. Bodiford Professor, University of California, Los Angeles

Revealing the New Aspects of Esoteric Buddhism: From the Activities of Eisai
YONEDA Mariko 米田真理子, Professor, Tottori University

Chair: Marta Sanvido, Shinjo Ito Postdoctoral Fellow in Japanese Buddhism, University of California, Berkeley

1:40-2:50 | Session 3 - Secret Bodies

Esoteric monks and production of secret knowledge on childbirth and women’s reproductive health in medieval Japan
Anna Andreeva, Research Professor of Japanese Language and Culture (Ghent University, Belgium)

Secret Teachings of Waka Poetry and Meditation Practices of Esoteric Buddhism
UNNO Keisuke 海野圭介, Professor, National Institute of Japanese Literature

Chair: Marta Sanvido, Shinjo Ito Postdoctoral Fellow in Japanese Buddhism, University of California, Berkeley

3:00-4:10 | Session 4 - Secret Places

Secrecy, Hagiography, and Place
Marta Sanvido, Shinjo Ito Postdoctoral Fellow in Japanese Buddhism, University of California, Berkeley

Territories of Secret Transmission in Medieval Japan: Shōtoku Taishi Legends as a Frame of Reference
ABE Yasurō 阿部泰郎, Professor, Ryūkoku University

Chair: Mark L. Blum, Professor and Shinjo Ito Distinguished Chair in Japanese Studies, University of California, Berkeley

4:30-6:00 | Keynote Address

The Language of Secrecy: Allegoresis in Medieval Japanese Culture
Susan B. Klein, University of California, Irvine

Day 2 – Saturday, March 4
10:30-12:15 | Session 5 - Secret Rituals

New Findings in the Kokūzō Bosatsu Gumonji-hō in Medieval Japan
KIKUCHI Hiroki 菊地 大樹, Professor, Historiographical Institute — The University Tōkyō

The History of the Kurodani Lineage of Tendai’s Consecrated Ordination (Kai Kanjō 戒潅頂): Ritually Embodying “The Lotus Sutra”
Paul Groner, Professor Emeritus, University of Virginia

Secret Teachings of Miwa Shōnin Kyōen and Estoteric Shintō
ITŌ Satoshi 伊藤聡, Professor, Ibaraki University

Chair: Mark Blum, Professor and Shinjo Ito Distinguished Chair in Japanese Studies, University of California, Berkeley

1:30-2:40 | Session 6 - Secret Vows

Devotional Disclosures: On Prayer Texts and Mandalas
Heather Blair, Professor, Indiana University Bloomington

Sex, Lies, and Kishōmon or Japanese Religious Oaths: the Public, the Private, and the Secret
D. Max Moerman, Professor, Barnard College

Chair: Robert H. Sharf, D. H. Chen Distinguished Professor of Buddhist Studies, University of California, Berkeley

2:50-4:20 | Session 7 - Secret Music

Secrecy in the Transmission of Buddhist Chant
Michaela Mross, Assistant Professor, Stanford University

Performance and Performativity: Religious Aspects of the Secret Repertory of Gagaku Musicians (presentation followed by a music performance)
Fabio Rambelli, Professor, University of California, Santa Barbara

Chair: TBA

4:30-5:00 | General Discussion

5:00 | Closing Remarks

Finland, Ireland, Estonia, 2022

To purchase tickets for the screening, please visit the BAMPFA website.
(see below)

Is it possible to die in a consciously controlled way? The Tibetan Buddhist tradition of tukdam, a practice of meditating at the deepest level of consciousness right before death, has been shown to delay rigor mortis and other postmortem decay for days or even weeks. The bodies of those in tukdam remain warm and in the meditation position even after they are declared medically dead. Through interviews with Western scientists, Tibetan medical professionals, the Dalai Lama, and respected bhikkhus, Coleman’s fascinating documentary explores current research into the practice, in which the cessation of brain function, breathing, and heart activity is not necessarily life’s clear-cut end but instead a pliant threshold.

Screening followed by a conversation with Donagh Colemen, David Perlman, and Jacob Dalton.

Donagh Coleman is a Finnish-Irish-American filmmaker whose award-winning films have have received wide international festival and television distribution, with shows at museums like the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Donagh is also a PhD candidate in medical anthropology at UC Berkeley.

David Perlman, PhD worked ten years in neuroscientist Richie Davidson’s lab, where he designed and managed the first phase of the Tukdam research project.

Jacob Dalton is a professor of Tibetan Studies in the Department of South & Southeast Asian Studies at UC Berkeley.