Content varies with student interests. The course will normally focus on classical Buddhist texts that exist in multiple recensions and languages, including Chinese, Sanskrit, and Tibetan.
Fall 2022:
The Sūtra on the Ocean-Like Samādhi of the Visualization of the Buddha, engaging with its Reseach Past and Present. In 1999, I submitted a doctoral dissertation about the textual background of a Chinese sūtra that teaches the method of visualizing Śākyamuni Buddha, entitled, Guanfo sanmei hai jing 觀佛三昧海經 (The Sūtra on the Ocean-Like Samādhi of the Visualization of the Buddha, hereafter Ocean Sūtra). This is one of the “six visualization sūtras” allegedly written in India and translated into Chinese in the fifth century. In spite of its importance in Buddhist history, the textual background of this sūtra is obscure.
In my dissertation, I attempted to clarify the origin of the Ocean Sūtra and locate it in its proper place within Buddhist textual history. The main line of my argument was as follows. A detailed examination of the language and content of this sūtra makes it clear that the Ocean Sūtra was not translated from an Indian original but was heavily dependent on prior Chinese Buddhist texts. In addition, the detailed description of the “Buddha Image Cave” (a well-known pilgrimage spot in northwest India) in the Ocean Sūtra contradicts the testimonies of Chinese pilgrims. These factors suggest that the Ocean Sūtra was an apocryphal work originally written in Chinese.
At the same time, it should be noted that the Ocean Sūtra shares significant similarities with Indian texts that were not available in Chinese when the Ocean Sūtra was composed. Of these, the most notable is the so-called Yogalehrbuch, a Sanskrit meditation manual that was found in Qizil and elsewhere in the Talim Basin. Furthermore, the Ocean Sūtra contains phallic elements apparently derived from the Indian Shaivite tradition, which are rarely found in Chinese texts but were certainly known in Central Asia. In addition, there are mural paintings in Toyok caves, Turfan, that seem to reflect early stages of the textual formation of the Ocean Sūtra.
These points are understandable only if we posit that the Ocean Sūtra was composed in Central Asia, where Chinese and non-Chinese peoples had significant interaction. I concluded, therefore, that the Ocean Sūtra could have been produced only in such a milieu and retains many traces of cross-cultural interactions. Since the submission of my dissertation, research of meditation/visualization in Central Asia has made significant progress.
On the textual side, the most noteworthy are Eric Greene’s research of Chinese meditation texts and Athanaric Huard’s work on Tocharian meditation texts that show significant similarities to the Yogalehrbuch. On the archeological side, recent excavations of Toyok deserve full attention. Taking these new findings into consideration, in this course I would like to reexamine the arguments I presented in my dissertation.
The seminar will include readings in Chinese (of the mentioned sutra) and also cover sources in Sanskrit (in particular, the so-called Yogalehrbuch), Pāli, and Tibetan.
