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Mahayana, Theravada, ancient, modern? Even at the most basic level, the diversity of Buddhism makes a comprehensive approach daunting. This book is a first step in solving the problem. In foregrounding the bodies of practitioners, a solid platform for analysing the philosophy of Buddhism begins to become apparent.
Building upon somaesthetics Buddhism is seen for its ameliorative effect, which spans the range of how the mind integrates with the body. This exploration of positive effect spans from dreams to medicine. Beyond the historical side of these questions, a contemporary analysis includes its intersection with art, philosophy, and ethnography.
Building upon somaesthetics Buddhism is seen for its ameliorative effect, which spans the range of how the mind integrates with the body. This exploration of positive effect spans from dreams to medicine. Beyond the historical side of these questions, a contemporary analysis includes its intersection with art, philosophy, and ethnography.
Volume Editor:
Mahayana, Theravada, ancient, modern? Even at the most basic level, the diversity of Buddhism makes a comprehensive approach daunting. This book is a first step in solving the problem. In foregrounding the bodies of practitioners, a solid platform for analysing the philosophy of Buddhism begins to become apparent.
Building upon somaesthetics Buddhism is seen for its ameliorative effect, which spans the range of how the mind integrates with the body. This exploration of positive effect spans from dreams to medicine. Beyond the historical side of these questions, a contemporary analysis includes its intersection with art, philosophy, and ethnography.
Building upon somaesthetics Buddhism is seen for its ameliorative effect, which spans the range of how the mind integrates with the body. This exploration of positive effect spans from dreams to medicine. Beyond the historical side of these questions, a contemporary analysis includes its intersection with art, philosophy, and ethnography.
Author:
This essay will be an introduction to the 12th century Japanese monk Myōan Eisai 明菴栄西 and his application of the esoteric term kaji 加持 (empowerment), utilized in the unique practice of visceral visualization contained within the Body Mandala outlined in his text, the Kissa Yōjōki 喫茶養生記. The attempt of this essay is to convey an appreciation of the uniqueness of this type of visceral visualization and to initiate a dialogue as to why Eisai chose to preface his Kissa Yōjōki with this unusual excerpt taken from the no-longer surviving text of the Rituals of the Mandala of the Five Viscera 五藏曼荼羅儀軌. Through a brief discussion of the history of kaji and its function within visceral visualization, an understanding will emerge of how crucial this term is in uniting both esoteric Buddhism and Chinese medicine within the thought of Eisai. An analysis of this term and its usage within the Kissa Yōjōki will reveal a more refined application of kaji an exhibit an evolution of technique, thus distinguishing Eisai’s text from previous uses and associations.
Author:
Recent scholarship has demonstrated that dream experiences - and, in particular, the experience of intentionally sought dreams - were an important source of religious revelation and verification for Chinese Buddhists in the Sui and early Tang dynasties. But how were such dreams understood? Considering this question in light of Richard Schusterman’s somaesthetics, and, in particular his multivalent notion of the body (soma) as a material object in the world, a locus of subjective knowing, and a palimpsest upon which cultural values and social power relations can be inscribed, inspired this chapter to reframe the contours of this inquiry, focusing in on dreamt bodies as depicted in medieval Chinese Buddhist sources. The present chapter explores the implicit and explicit perspectives on dreams propounded by two influential Buddhist intellectuals of the early Tang: the renowned Vinaya master and monastic biographer Daoxuan 道宣 (596–667 CE), and the polymathic editor Daoshi 道世 (d. 683 CE). It will explore the dream discourses included in Daoxuan’s hagiographical collection Continued Biographies of Eminent Monks (Xu gaoseng zhuan 續高僧傳 [T. 2060]) and in the “Dream” chapter of Daoshi’s Forest of Pearls from the Garden of Dharma (Fayuan zhulin 法苑珠林 [T. 2122]).
Author:
A scientific approach is currently demanded among universities for a credible contribution to an artistic discipline. In the course of what is now called “research-creation,” the spiritual is largely understood as the entirety of the human mind or spirit at work, including thoughts, moral values, personal ethics, the whole psyche of the individual, as well as its interaction with the body and the phenomenal world. This spiritual dimension is explored through different forms of autoinvestigation, of which autoethnography (Adams, Jones and Ellis), autoexplicitation (Vermersch), somaesthetics (Shusterman) count as rigorous frameworks. It seems that the Buddhist pragmatic of the mind may be a valid complimentary method for the arts practitioners eager to better understand their inner realm and creative potential. However, religious approaches nowadays trigger important discomforts in academia. Looking into the contextual reasons that justify this discomfort, and addressing the troublesome question of faith that awaits any university arts researcher and professor wanting to add Buddhadharma to their references, this essay explores a few Buddhist and non-Buddhist artists case studies in order to show how artists in the making would benefit from the integration of Buddhist concepts in their curriculum.
Author:
The book explores Buddhism from the lived experiences of its practitioners. In a historical mode the book spans the abstraction of dreams to the concreteness of medicine. There are also chapters that analyze the importance of the senses in Theravadan bodily cultivation, the mind/body question in Zen and how the bodily practice of nonduality is inseparable from discord in the Vimalakirti. Beyond this historical side, contemporary analysis includes chapters on art, philosophy, and ethnography. This Introduction begins by outlining the history of strategies for denying Buddhism’s relationship with the body, which was done by criticizing it for being superstitious and idolatrous. These criticisms are predicated upon the premise that this religion is devoid of rational grounding, of which a connection to the body is of paramount importance. Exploring this critical perspective will underscore the value of bringing together the scholarly perspectives presented in this book. The chapter concludes by discussing the strategies of twentieth century religious leaders who began the process of responding to critics by emphasizing the bodily connections of traditional Asian religions.
Author:
The goal of this chapter is to relate some examples of how a few contemporary Buddhist women think about their gender and their bodies in connection with their Buddhist practice, in their own words as much as possible. This work comes in part from research for my 2021 book, Exploring the Heart Sutra (Lexington, 2021), which involved a series of ethnographic interviews with American, Chinese, and Taiwanese Buddhist women conducted in 2018-2019. This essay begins with a discussion of the theoretical framing of the project in terms of feminist reclamation, and then organizes some of the participants’ comments into three broad sections: responses to the importance of their gender/body to practice; gender segregation and discrimination; and woes and/or wonders of a woman’s body. The essay then concludes with a final story and some thoughts for what this sort of ethnographic work might imply in terms of future philosophical research.
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My 2021 book Reconsidering the Life of Power attempts to reconcile recent approaches from critical theory with classical and contemporary Confucian sources to reckon with the self as (A) relational (B) bodily (C) discursive and (D) ritually impelled. However, while somewhat successful, this effort treats Confucianism in a historical vacuum. The result is an oversight when it comes intriguing and pertinent insights from East Asia into the paradoxes that arise when discriminating “this” from “that,” bordering off “here” from “there,” and pursuing purity over and against impurity, as happens in perfectionist self-cultivation endeavors like those taken up in Confucianism broadly and my project more specifically. Such considerations lead classical Buddhist sources such as The Platform Sutra and more recent Kyoto School philosophers including Nishida Kitarō 西田 幾多郎 and Yuasa Yasuo 湯浅 泰雄 to argue in favor of purity beyond form and place. Accordingly, and not just as concerns my book, but within the context of somaesthetic self-cultivation projects generally, the question becomes: In what way might a kind of formlessness lead somatic practice to flourish? This, in turn, leads to the following question: Might such formless purity surpass being located in any one body?
Author:
In various early Buddhist texts, skillful management of one’s sensory apparatus is presented as essential to salvation. Ironically, however, when we attempt to reflect on the workings of our senses, we find that although sensation is a dimension of human experience to which we seem to have an intimate and immediate access, its mechanics remain inaccessible to direct examination. The Saḷāyatana-vagga, which provides an extensive analysis of the nature of the senses and sensation, deals with this issue by offering a variety of allegories and metaphors through which we might conceptualize our own sensory faculties. Following the work of Lakoff and Johnson, this chapter seeks to uncover the root conceptual metaphors employed in these similes and reveal the complex—often contradictory—models of mind and body that undergird them.
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This chapter examines the importance of discord in the bodily practice of nonduality in the Vimalakirti. This sutra argues against what it sees as an important misconception about Buddhist practice, namely that it emphasizes rigid distinctions, such as between the idyllic nature of heaven and the flawed nature of life on earth. However, transcending these distinctions does not produce an experience of anesthetized tranquility but instead a uniquely human experience, which includes becoming ill and engaging in conflict-filled debates over dharma. In focusing on this embodied practice, the text can be understood as remaining consistently critical of both Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism. Richard Shusterman’s somaesthetics provides a framework for analyzing the lived experience of the enlightened being, Vimalakirti, who is presented as a common layperson. One example of the importance of aesthetics can be found in Chapter Eight of the sutra where it discusses the importance of the lotus flower. It states that lotuses do not grow in pristine environments, instead they are nourished by filth and mud. Conflict is a necessity for self-cultivation and is thus an inseparable component of the embodied experience of enlightenment.
Author:
My goal in this paper is to explore whether, after a close reading of his works including the philosophical essays of the Treasury of the True Dharma Eye and related passages, there is any slight discrepancy in Dōgen’s thought between the physical and mental, and if so, which side is more prevalent. This investigation is carried out in light of recent research trends in the field of Buddhist studies that tend to highlight the examination of “on-the-ground” somatic, material, ritual, and visual levels of experience after decades of scholarship that was dominated by text-historical or philological studies. In particular, I focus on the practice of zazen and other forms of monastic discipline in pursuit of the purification of body-mind as articulated in terms of corporeal or conceptual components. I also take into account the standpoint of Critical Buddhism (Hihan Bukkyō 批判仏教), an intellectual movement that insists Dōgen and other Buddhist thinkers must be evaluated in terms of their ability to create a compelling view of ethics in relation to modern societal issues, such as discrimination against women and outcasts or tacit support for prewar imperialism and authoritarian outlooks.