2008-2009

Despite the fact that there are currently over 300,000 officially certified Buddhist priests in Japan, there has hardly been any significant scholarly research into their lives and training. What are their backgrounds? How are they trained? What are their day-to-day activities? How do they mediate between the doctrinal ideals of their particular traditions and the real-world needs of parishioners? What do priests think of the larger organizations (sects) to which they belong? As a way to open up some of these issues, this presentation will explore varying ideas of "propagation" within several Japanese Buddhist sects. Time permitting, there will also be an audience participation component to the talk.

Mark Rowe is an Assistant Professor of Japanese Religions at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. He received an M.A. from Kyoto University and his Ph.D. from Princeton. He is an ethnographer of Japanese Buddhism specializing in the current realities of Japanese temple priests. In 2004 he co-edited (with Stephen Covell) a special issue of the Japanese Journal of Religious Studies focusing on contemporary Japanese Buddhism. He is currently completing a book manuscript titled "Death By Association: Temples, Burial, and the Transformation of Contemporary Japanese Buddhism," which traces the institutional realities of the "traditional" Buddhist sects through an exploration of Buddhist responses to radical shifts in contemporary burial practices.

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February 19 - April 15, 2009
Portraits of Buddhist Bhutan
An exhibit of photographer Mark Tuschman's images of Bhutan
IEAS gallery, 2223 Fulton Street, 6th Floor

Buddhism is the state religion of Bhutan, and its institutions play a central role in society. Its monasteries are centers of continuing training. Buddhist ceremonial dances, choreographed over the centuries by religious leaders, serve not only spiritual functions but offer merit to all who observe. The visual arts, however beautiful, exist as expressions and enactments of Buddhist world-view, and as revelations of meaning for the initiate.

Known as the "Land of the Thunder Dragon," Bhutan has guarded its borders against much of twentieth-century development. With the acceptance by its king of a constitution in 2008, Bhutan may emerge as Asia's newest democracy. However, access to the country remains strictly controlled, and its traditional Buddhist culture as yet yields little to modernity.

American photographer Mark Tuschman seeks "to photograph people with compassion and dignity in the hope of communicating our interrelatedness." His images capture structures, rituals, arts, and individuals — young and old alike — that suggest the range of visual imagery associated with Buddhism in Bhutan.

This exhibit has been arranged as a complement to the exhibition The Dragon's Gift: The Sacred Arts of Bhutan at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco.

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Thursday, February 12, 2009, 5:00 pm
Toru Funayama, Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University
Calling Oneself a Saint: Religious Awareness in Medieval Chinese Buddhism
IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton Street, 6th Floor

We find some cases of self-designation of saintliness, i.e. saying "I am a saint of such-and-such a stage," in Medieval Chinese Buddhist texts. Some of those practitioners were truly regarded as saints by their contemporaries and revered as such; others were just frauds. In this talk Professor Funayama will introduce several interesting examples of this phenomenon and discuss some of the problems underlying self-designation in Buddhism. He will also take up such related problems as the connection with the monastic code of conduct (vinaya) and an example of cultic massacre.

Toru Funayama, born in 1961, is currently Associate Professor of Buddhist Studies at the Institute for Research in Humanities at Kyoto University in Japan. His research mainly covers two different areas in the history of Buddhism. One is Chinese Buddhism in the Six Dynasties period, especially in the 5th and 6th centuries (in particular, the formation of Chinese Buddhist translation and apocrypha and the spread of the notion of Mahayana precepts). His second specialty concerns philological and philosophical issues in Buddhist epistemology and logic in India from the 5th-10th centuries, particularly Kamalaśīla's (ca. 740-795) theory of perception. In both areas, he is interested in the concept of saints and saintliness in Buddhism, and the historical formation of Buddhist commentarial literature in India and China.

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Thursday, January 29, 2009, 5:00 pm
Giulio Agostini, Visiting Scholar, UC Berkeley
Buddhist dreams, Erotic Dreams, and Herophilus of Chalcedon
IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton Street, 6th Floor

For a Buddhist cleric, a seminal emission is a fault, unless it occurs in a dream. The traditional definition of karma as passionate intention entails that dream actions are real and produce retribution, because intention and passions are present even while dreaming. Thus believed the Theravādins, the Vaibhāsikas, and the Mūlasarvāstivādins. And yet, dreams are instead unreal according to the Uttarapāthakas, the Dārsṭāntikas, Harivarman, the Yogācārabhumi, and arguably the Mahāsāṁghikas. In these disagreements, one must also see different reactions to Mahādeva's thesis on the possibility of nocturnal emissions for liberated beings. Related to the dream exception are the various Buddhist classifications of dreams. In most of them, a separate category for dreams caused by desire and for wet dreams is conspicuously missing. Noteworthy are those classifications mentioning dreams caused by humor disequilibrium and prophetic dreams not sent by the gods. The latter category is problematic because it includes heterogeneous elements: in the Theravāda commentaries, its prophetic character is explained in terms of the theory of karma, as a result of past actions; in the Milindapañha, instead, it is explained in terms of a theory of dream perception of external subtle images; according to a Chinese Theravāda commentary, to this category also belong dreams caused by desire, in which karma is produced. Quite surprisingly, this heterogeneity may be understood in the light of the Greek physician Herophilus' threefold classification, mentioning dreams caused by humor disequilibrium, dreams sent by the gods, and dreams caused by external subtle images. In the last category, Herophilus includes two Buddhist apparently heterogeneous elements: explicitly, dreams caused by desire and wet dreams; implicitly, referring to Democritus' theory of eidola, prophetic dreams not sent by the gods. Other details confirm the hypothesis of Herophilus' influence on the Buddhist classification, especially evident in the Milindapañha.

After completing a laurea in Classics and Sanskrit from the University of Milan, Giulio Agostini earned a Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. His thesis focused on doctrinal debates about the definition of 'lay Buddhist' in ancient India. He has published on ethics and legal issues, such as the admissibility of abortion and of taking 'partial' lay vows, and on the history of exegetical disagreements between competing Buddhist traditions. Dr. Agostini will be a Visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley during Spring 2009.

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Thursday, January 22, 2009, 5:00 pm
Imre Hamar, Fulbright Scholar, Department of Religious Studies, University of Virginia
Commentary-writing in Chinese Buddhism
IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton Street, 6th Floor

In several major cultures of the world, commentaries make up a considerable proportion of the full body of written texts. Holy scriptures are often hazy and ambiguous, or even completely incomprehensible, without additional explanations. To understand them in the right way is, therefore, both an important task and a serious challenge for the literati of all times. In Chinese Buddhist literature, the significance of commentaries is well illustrated by the fact that in the Taishō edition they make up eleven and a half volumes, as opposed to the four and a half volumes of essays expounding the teachings of schools. The formal and essential criteria of commentary-writing formulated gradually, with commentary as a genre attaining its final form by Tang times. This is the form that became the model to be followed by later generations. In this lecture, Professor Hamar will show the process of how commentary-writing developed from the early period and discuss the main features of the full-fledged commentary.

Imre Hamar received his Ph.D. from the Hungarian Academy of Science in 1997 and earned his habilitation in 2004 with the completion of his study titled "Manifestation of Buddha." He has published many books and articles in Hungarian and English, most recently "A Religious Leader in the Tang: Chengguan's Biography" (2002) and "A kínai buddhizmus története" (History of Chinese Buddhism) (2004). In addition to his appointment as Professor of Chinese Studies at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) in Budapest, Dr. Hamar is also the director of ELTE's Institute of East Asian Studies. He is a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Virginia for the 2008-09 academic year.

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Friday-Saturday, November 14-15, 2008
Recovering Afghanistan's Past: Cultural Heritage in Context
Chevron Auditorium, International House
2299 Piedmont Ave., Berkeley
Cosponsored by the Al-Falah Program for Islamic Studies (CMES), Townsend Center for the Humanities, Center for South Asia Studies (CSAS), Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ISEEES), History of Art Department, Society for Asian Art, Association for the Protection of Afghan Archaeology (APAA), California State University-East Bay, Consulate General of France, International House, and Willis Deming on behalf of the Society for Art & Cultural Heritage of India (SACHI)

The "Recovering Afghanistan's Past: Cultural Heritage in Context" conference will focus on Afghanistan's cultural heritage in its past and present contexts and bring together scholars from various disciplines to address, among others, the following issues:

• The recovered objects from the National Museum
• Recent research and preservation/renovation projects
• Challenges of cultural heritage protection
• The complexities of 'targeted' heritage
• Cultural heritage and identity

This conference is organized in conjunction with the "Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul" exhibit which will be on display at several venues in the United States in 2008-2009, including the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, October 24, 2008 - January 25, 2009. This exhibit highlights the objects thought to have been looted from the National Museum of Afghanistan, but later rediscovered in the vault of the Presidential Palace. The exhibit centers on three major collections — Ai Khanum, Tillya-tepe, and Begram — which represent important archeological discoveries that have informed our understanding of the development of ancient Afghan cultures.

For more information, please go to the conference website at http:// ieas.berkeley.edu/ afghanconference2008.

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Thursday, November 6, 2008, 5:00 pm
2008-09 Numata Lecture
James Robson, Numata Visiting Professor in Buddhist Studies
Searching For a Better Return: "Preparatory Cultivation" [nixiu 逆修, yuxiu 預修] and the Economy of Salvation in East Asian Buddhism
IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton Street, 6th Floor

It is commonly understood that Buddhist death rituals, which transfer merit from the living to deceased ancestors, exemplify the importance of filial piety in East Asia. In this talk Prof. Robson discusses a variety of Chinese and Japanese sources that suggest that some people were in fact uneasy about placing their post-mortem fate in the hands of surviving relatives. His talk will explore the development of a ritual of "preparatory cultivation," which involves accruing merit for oneself while alive that is transferred to oneself after death. These pre-mortem rites were propagated by Buddhist institutions and became a widespread phenomena in East Asia. How does an understanding of the development of these practices force us to rethink commonly held notions about East Asian conceptions of death and the afterlife?

James Robson is an Associate Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University. He specializes in the history of Medieval Chinese Buddhism and Daoism and is particularly interested in issues of sacred geography, local religious history, talismans, and the historical development of Chan/Zen Buddhism. He is the author of "Buddhism and the Chinese Marchmount System [Wuyue]: A Case Study of the Southern Marchmount (Mt. Nanyue)" in John Lagerwey, ed. Religion and Chinese Society: Ancient and Medieval China (Hong Kong: The Chinese UP and École Française d'Extrême-Orient, 2004) and "A Tang Dynasty Chan Mummy [roushen] and a Modern Case of Furta Sacra? Investigating the Contested Bones of Shitou Xiqian," in Bernard Faure, ed. Chan Buddhism in Ritual Context (London: Routledge Curzon, 2003). He is presently completing a book manuscript entitled Power of Place: The Religious Landscape of the Southern Sacred Peak [Nanyue 南嶽] in Medieval China (forthcoming, Harvard Asia Center). He has also been engaged in a long-term collaborative research project with the École Française d'Extrême-Orient studying local religious statuary from Hunan province and what they can tell us about the local religious history of that region.

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Tuesday, October 21, 2008, 5:00 pm
Inaugural Khyentse Foundation Lecture in Tibetan Buddhism
Jacob Dalton, Assistant Professor, UC Berkeley
Rethinking Tibet's Dark Age: Demons, Tantras, and the Formation of Tibetan Buddhism
Heyns Room, The Faculty Club, UC-Berkeley

With the collapse of the Yarlung empire around 842 C.E., Tibet descended into its so-called "dark age." As for Europe's own dark ages, few documents survived the period, and what little we do know is usually filtered through traditional historical narratives that portray the age as one of religious corruption and decay. In this talk, Dalton will suggest that such traditional accounts have obscured the more positive aspects of the period. Freed from the watchful eyes of the imperial court and the monastic orthodoxy, Tibetans of the late ninth and tenth centuries were able to make Buddhism their own. The themes, the imagery, and the strategies they developed during these inchoate years formed the cultural foundations upon which Tibetan Buddhism would be built. Only by excavating these foundations and shedding some light on this "dark age" can we gain a clear appreciation of the Tibetan adaptation of Buddhism.

Jacob Dalton received his M.A. and Ph.D. (Buddhist Studies) from the University of Michigan. After working for three years (2002-05) as a researcher with the International Dunhuang Project at the British Library, he taught at Yale University (2005-2008) before moving to Berkeley. He works on Nyingma religious history, tantric ritual, paleography, and the Dunhuang manuscripts. He is the author of a forthcoming study on violence and the formation of Tibetan Buddhism, and co-author of Tibetan Tantric Manuscripts from Dunhuang: A Descriptive Catalogue of the Stein Collection at the British Library (Brill, 2006). He is currently working on a history of Tibetan Buddhism, as seen through the eyes of the "Sutra Empowerment" (Mdo dbang) tradition of the Nyingma school. Future plans include a study of tantric ritual in the Dunhuang manuscripts.

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Thursday, September 11, 2008, 5:00 pm
Frances Garrett, University of Toronto
Considering Anthropophagy in Tibet
IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton Street, 6th Floor

This presentation will examine "cannibalism" as a locus of connection between religious, medical and occult traditions in Tibet. Surveying examples of the consumption of human body parts as articulated in Tibetan contemplative, ritual, occult and medical literature, and in myth, iconography and narrative, this talk will consider how anthropophagy has been controversial not only for Buddhologists and European visitors to Tibet, but also for Tibetans themselves. Professor Garrett draws in particular from the Nectar Tantras canon and its writings on the contemplative and ritual practice called Accomplishing Medicine (sman sgrub), an esoteric exercise that involves the creation and use of "nectar" recipes using human products. She concludes that in Tibet anthropophagous practices and narratives are acts of transgression, generosity, and incorporation that are simultaneously savage and civilized.

Frances Garrett is Assistant Professor of Tibetan Buddhism in the Department for the Study of Religion. She received her PhD from the University of Virginia in 2004. She is intrigued by how Buddhist voices command a growing literary, ideological, social and political presence in the formative twelfth-fifteenth centuries in Tibet. A history of ideas that weaves across sectarian and disciplinary boundaries, her book, Religion, Medicine and the Human Embryo in Tibet (Routledge, 2008) links aspects of Tibetan medicine to expressions of culture, religion, art and literature through a study of embryology in Tibetan literature. Current projects consider the intersections between tantric practice, ritual and occult knowledge, and medical theory, and what these tell us about the processes of institutional and ideological change in "renaissance" Tibet.

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Wednesday, September 10, 2008, 4:00 pm
Patricia Graham
Faith and Power in Japanese Buddhist Art, 1600-2005
IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton Street, 6th Floor
Cosponsored by the Institute of East Asian Studies and the Center for Japanese Studies

Introduced by Gregory Levine, History of Art, UC Berkeley.

This talk explores the reasons for the enduring popularity in the Japanese Buddhist pantheon of Buddhist "saints" — monks known as Rakan (Luohan in Chinese; and Arhat in Sanskrit) and laity known as the Buddha's 10 Great Disciples (Shaka Judai deshi). Both groups were devout, unconventional personages who gained enlightenment after hearing the teachings of the Buddha in India. Their popularity as personal saviors continues to the present and has inspired the creation of numerous idiosyncratic images by artists working within and apart from formal Buddhist organizations. Their widespread appeal is emblematic of their transcendence beyond Buddhism to universal symbols of individualism and integrity.

Patricia J. Graham, a former professor of Japanese art and culture, and museum curator, is an independent scholar and Asian art consultant based in Lawrence, Kansas. This talk is drawn from her new book, Faith and Power in Japanese Buddhist Art, 1600-2005 (University of Hawai'i Press, 2007).