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The Economics of Buddhism  

Elizabeth Williams-Oerberg

The economics of Buddhism brings to the fore a conundrum with which Buddhists have had to contend since the time of the Buddha: how should Buddhists engage in economic activity in order to provide for their individual lifestyles and the Buddhist monasteries that support Buddhism? The widespread image of a monk or nun sitting deep in meditation in a cave may exemplify a religion that values nonattachment to materiality and disengagement with economic action. However, when looking more closely at how Buddhist monastics maintain these austere lifestyles, one sees a complex Buddhist economic engagement throughout the history of Buddhism. The economics of Buddhism examines how Buddhists must necessarily engage in economic relations not only to support their lifestyles, but also to establish and expand Buddhist institutions across the world. A large part of Buddhist economic engagement involves an economy of merit. Buddhists have been dependent on dāna, a system of donation and sponsorship, that has aided the building and expansion of Buddhism since the time of the Buddha. This merit-based economy involves a system of exchange in which virtuous actions such as generosity are rewarded with an accumulation of merit (puñña), leading to beneficial circumstances in this life or the next life to come. Based on this system of exchange, monks and nuns receive remuneration from the lay community for their services. It is due to this merit economy that monks and nuns have been able to pursue a monastic lifestyle and monasteries have been built, some of which have become economic epicenters for the surrounding community. Historically, large monasteries across Asia have acquired large plots of land, accumulated large storehouses of grains and goods, and engaged in various other economic endeavors, such as lending money, running businesses, hiring laborers, and so forth. In order to maintain these at times very large Buddhist institutions that have supported monks and nuns, and in essence the survival of Buddhism, this system of exchange—money for merit—has been a crucial aspect of Buddhism. Since the time of the Buddha, the spread and survival of Buddhism has been reliant on economic exchanges and the economic environment of the time. This is very much the case in the early 21st century, with the spread of global capitalism affecting how Buddhist images, goods, and services have been adopted and altered in new environments. For example, with changing economic conditions and the rise of the consumer society, Buddhist monasteries have found new sources of income, such as through tourism. Global sentiments regarding Buddhism as primarily positive, furthermore, have led to the proliferation of Buddhist-inspired objects for sale in the mass consumer society. Instead of seeing Buddhist economic engagement as a paradox, or hypocrisy even, when looking closely at how Buddhism and economic relations are necessarily entwined, one sees a complex relationship that provides the basis for the survival and spread of Buddhism worldwide.

Article

Mipam  

Douglas S. Duckworth

Mipam (or “Mipham”; ’Ju mi pham rgya mtsho, 1846–1912) was one of the most influential figures in the Tibetan Buddhist world in the last 500 years. In his writings, he integrates aspects of the Buddhist epistemological tradition with a view of tantra and associates the view of the Great Perfection (rdzogs chen) with Prāsaṅgika-Madhyamaka. The Great Perfection is for the Nyingma (rnying ma) tradition its highest esoteric teachings, and Prāsaṅgika-Madhyamaka is the philosophy commonly accepted in Tibet as the highest exoteric view. Buddhist epistemology, as a system that delineates the means of reliable knowledge, in particular plays an important role in both esoteric (e.g., sutra) and exoteric (e.g., tantra) domains by outlining the authentic means of knowing reality. By integrating the esoteric teachings of Nyingma tantra with Buddhist epistemology and Prāsaṅgika-Madhyamaka, Mipam affirms the Nyingma not only as a tradition of tantric exegesis and ritual practice, but also as grounded within the rigorous intellectual traditions of Buddhist exoteric philosophy. Mipam systematized the Nyingma tradition’s view of the Great Perfection within his writings on the Buddhist literature that had become the predominant topic of study in the curriculum of monastic education. Central to Mipam’s writing is the prominent place of reasoned inquiry as a means to arrive at the view of the Great Perfection. This is a feature that distinguishes the character of his works and is a significant contribution to Nyingma philosophy. Indeed, the interplay of reason and the transcendence of reason is a central theme in his writings. His skill in engaging the Great Perfection within a rational, dialectical exchange underscores that the Great Perfection is not naive anti-intellectualism, but involves a subtly profound view that, at least in Mipam’s presentation, incorporates reason and transcends it. In his writings on Madhyamaka and other works, Mipam developed a platform for Nyingma monastic education by formulating a systematic presentation drawn from an interpretative framework based on the Great Perfection. This was his unique contribution to the Nyingma, but not all in the Nyingma tradition were ready or willing to adopt his interpretation. It did not take long, however, for this interpretative framework, forged for the Nyingma monastic colleges, to dominate the curriculum in these colleges in Tibet, India, and Nepal. His works continue to be widely studied in such institutions up to the present day.

Article

Early Modern European Encounters with Buddhism  

Thomas Calobrisi

Historians Urs App and Martino Dibeltulo Concu have argued that the European “discovery” of Buddhism as a “religion” can be dated to the 16th century rather than the 19th, and that the presentation of the Buddha as a philosopher by the likes of Eugène Burnouf is a secularized holdover from the Jesuit accounts of the 16th century. These claims have a tenuous basis, and Burnouf’s portrayal of the Buddha as a philosopher was a radical break from earlier Jesuit accounts. Unlike the Asian Buddhists who preceded him, Burnouf separated the facts from beliefs and concluded the Buddha was a human philosopher. The essay explores the 16th-century Jesuit encounter with Buddhists in Japan and the accounts that were generated therefrom, with particular attention to the notion that the Buddha taught both an inner materialist doctrine and an outer moral one; it looks to the dissemination and development of these ideas in the 17th and 18th centuries, with a focus on the “African hypothesis” as it is found in various European savants; it turns to the 19th-century “discovery” of Buddhism by the likes of Ozeray, Abel-Rémusat, Hodgson, and Burnouf. it then draws out the implications of the defense of Masuzawa and Droit’s position given in this article for the field of Buddhist studies, particularly with regard to methodological issues.

Article

Bodhisattva-bhūmi  

John Powers

The Bodhisattva-bhūmi (Resources for Bodhisattvas) is part of Resources for Yoga Practitioners (Yogācāra-bhūmi), an encyclopedic treatise that was one of the most important works of the Indian Buddhist School of Yoga Practitioners (Yogācāra). It contains material relating to the doctrines and practices of both Mainstream Buddhists and Mahāyānists, mostly in condensed form. The Bodhisattva-bhūmi brings together disparate sources, and there is considerable overlap between the various lists it presents and the explanations of their contents. Contemporary text-critical scholarship has led to a broad consensus that the text available in the early 21st century is most likely a product of centuries of development during which material was compiled and edited, internal cross-references were provided to direct readers to similar discussions in other parts of the Bodhisattva-bhūmi and the Yogācāra-bhūmi, and a loose structure was imposed. It presents itself as a sourcebook of lore that can help both aspiring bodhisattvas and those who have embarked on the bodhisattva path to awakening (bodhi) in order to free sentient beings from suffering and guide them either to the peace of nirvana or to the ultimate attainment of buddhahood. Keywords: Buddhism, Yogācāra, bodhisattva, Asaṅga, Mahāyāna

Article

Tibetan Buddhist Power Objects  

James Duncan Gentry

As Tibetans began to import Buddhist scriptures and translate them into the Tibetan language in the 8th and 9th centuries, they also imported items like relics, reliquaries, statues, paintings, amulets, and other material objects believed to embody and transmit power through their physical connections with buddhas, bodhisattvas, and saints of the past. Guided by scriptural pronouncements, as these resonated with indigenous sensibilities Tibetans came to hold that sensory interactions with Buddhist power objects would enable unmediated access to the powerful sources of the Buddhist tradition for a range of pragmatic and transcendent goals. Such encounters were held to be so efficacious that they were sometimes promoted as viable complements or substitutes for the study and cultivation of Buddhist doctrine. As Tibetans integrated Buddhism into Tibetan culture they began crafting their own Buddhist power objects. These became so ubiquitous and diverse in Tibetan Buddhist societies that there is no single Tibetan term that directly corresponds with the category of “power objects” to encapsulate their full range. Patterned after Indian prototypes, Tibetans developed their own terms and rubrics for these kinds of objects. They also adapted them to include a wider spectrum of items and advanced theories of their power and efficacy that extend beyond their Indian Buddhist counterparts. On this account, controversies sometimes erupted among Tibetan ecclesiastical scholars over the purported nature and potency of such things. The prominent role given to Buddhist power objects in Tibet entailed they would serve as touchstones for the formation of Tibetan Buddhist communities, institutions, and states. Yet, sustained discussion of these kinds of objects has only been sporadic among traditional Tibetan exegetes and modern academic scholars of Tibetan Buddhism.

Article

Pilgrimage in China  

Courtney Bruntz

Pilgrims in China have historically traveled to locations considered to be ling—holding spiritual power. Such locations became known as sites where the sacred becomes manifest. A resident bodhisattva (enlightened being) might appear to travelers, or pilgrims might receive miraculous healing after having visited a mountain. Often through stories of such extraordinary events, sites became popular for their efficacious power, and pilgrims journeyed to them hoping to receive a vision, a healing, and/or a blessing in return. Ling differentiates a site as sacred, and in many Chinese religious traditions, ling is associated with mountains.

Article

Theos Bernard, the “White Lama”  

Paul G. Hackett

Theos Bernard was an early pioneer of yoga in the United States and only the third American to reach the capital of Tibet, Lhasa, but the first to do so as a religious pilgrim. Although born in Los Angeles, California, Bernard was raised and educated in Tombstone, Arizona. In the late 1930s, Bernard embarked upon a journey to India and Tibet and, while there, explored the yogic traditions of India and participated in some of the highest religious rituals in Tibet, all while documenting his experiences on paper, in photographs, and on film. Upon returning to New York in 1937, Bernard wrote and published several books purporting to chronicle his experiences in India and Tibet and setting forth the fundamental principles of Indian and Tibetan philosophies as he understood them. During the years that followed, Bernard attempted to establish a Tibetan research center in Santa Barbara, California, together with the Tibetan monk and scholar Gendün Chöpel. His efforts having been thwarted by the events of World War II, in 1942, Bernard instead entered Columbia University to pursue a PhD in philosophy. Completed less than a year later, his dissertation, “Hatha Yoga: The Report of a Personal Experience,” was an ethnographic report of his studies in India that was subsequently published, and which served to introduce the practices of yoga to a new American generation. Bernard went on to found the short-lived Tibetan Text Society in Santa Barbara, California, prior to returning to the Indian subcontinent in 1946 in search of additional resources. Finding his entry to Tibet blocked by the British government in India, he bided his time until Indian independence. In August 1947, he launched a different expedition into the western Himalayas—to Spiti, Lahoul, and Ladakh—five days after the Partition of India. He was never seen again.

Article

Abhidharmakośabhāṣya (Treasury of Metaphysics with Self-Commentary)  

Oren Hanner

The Abhidharmakośabhāṣya (Treasury of Metaphysics with Self-Commentary) is a pivotal treatise on early Buddhist thought composed around the 4th or 5th century by the Indian Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu. This work elucidates the buddha’s teachings as synthesized and interpreted by the early Buddhist Sarvāstivāda school (“the theory that all [factors] exist”), while recording the major doctrinal polemics that developed around them, primarily those points of contention with the Sautrāntika system of thought (“followers of the scriptures”). Employing the methodology and terminology of the Buddhist Abhidharma system, the Abhidharmakośabhāṣya offers a detailed analysis of fundamental doctrines, such as early Buddhist theories of mind, cosmology, the workings of karman, meditative states and practices, and the metaphysics of the self. One of its unique features is the way it presents the opinions of a variety of Buddhist and Brahminical schools that were active in classical India in Vasubandhu’s time. The work contains nine chapters (the last of which is considered to have been appended to the first eight), which proceed from a description of the unawakened world via the path and practices that are conducive to awakening and ultimately to the final spiritual attainments which constitute the state of awakening. In its analysis of the unawakened situation, it thus covers the elements which make up the material and mental world of sentient beings, the wholesome and unwholesome mental states that arise in their minds, the structure of the cosmos, the metaphysics of action (karman) and the way it comes into being, and the nature of dispositional attitudes and dormant mental afflictions. In its treatment of the path and practices that lead to awakening, the treatise outlines the Sarvāstivāda understanding of the methods of removing defilements through the realization of the four noble truths and the stages of spiritual cultivation. With respect to the awakened state, the Abhidharmakośabhāṣya gives a detailed description of the different types of knowledge and meditational states attained by practitioners who reach the highest stages of the path.

Article

Buddhist Missionaries  

Brooke Schedneck

Buddhists missionize in distinct ways by building on historical models, such as a concern with bringing knowledge and spreading teachings, as opposed to formal conversion and renunciation of previous religious beliefs. Academic scholarship tends to treat Buddhist missionization as a historical phenomenon. Yet it continues to be an important component of the tradition for Buddhists in the 21st century, motivating them to travel to spread the Buddha’s teachings to those who demonstrate curiosity. Because of Buddhists’ interest in conveying the dharma, they have often aligned the teachings with modern discourses, resulting in what scholars have called modern Buddhism. Buddhist missionaries have also argued that the dharma fits within contexts of social justice, which has been labeled engaged Buddhism. Examples of missionaries from East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and the West, and world-famous monks such as the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh, demonstrate spreading the teachings is a major motivation. These figures formulate their message in modern or socially engaged frameworks, but the root of their activity is missionizing. The main message of contemporary Buddhist missionaries is that Buddhism is open and welcoming to everyone, one does not have to convert to practice within Buddhism, and the Buddhist teachings apply to everyone.

Article

Debate Traditions in Premodern Japan  

Asuka Sango

In its simplest definition, debate is a formal discussion of a topic in which different (usually oppositional) arguments are submitted and examined. In premodern Japan, there were many overlapping practices that could be called debate, or rongi論義 (literally, “discussing meanings”). Originating in the intellectual traditions of Buddhism and Confucianism, rongi came to encompass a variety of activities, ranging from oral examinations and group discussions to formal debates and lecture and answer sessions. Some were specialized and targeted for a scholarly audience; others were held as public entertainment for secular audiences. Whereas scholars debated to advance their academic knowledge and gain status and promotion, secular authorities—be they the emperor or shogun—also sponsored scholarly debates to help legitimize their power. Rongi thus shows a bewildering variety of practices combining seemingly opposite qualities: the serious and the playful, or the political and the scholarly. Japan’s rich and diverse debate traditions traverse the realms of religion, politics, and the performing arts.

Article

Guardian and Protector Deities in Tibetan Buddhism  

Cameron Bailey

Dharma protectors are a critical and indispensable aspect of Tibetan Buddhism, but the full theological, psychological, political, and literary significance of this special class of deity and their cults is still relatively poorly understood and understudied in Western scholarship. Dharma protectors, who in their typically distinctively wrathful appearances embody and transmute negative emotion and terrifying existential realities, constitute a kind of spiritual or daemonic sangha that in their most immediate function is meant to act as an apotropic ward against any and all threats to the human Buddhist community. Further, these beings are often invoked and employed as something like “familiar” or servitor spirits for a range of purposes by Buddhist religious specialists. While there are hundreds if not thousands of different protector deities in the shifting, kaleidoscopic “polytheon” of Tibetan Buddhism, there are a relative few main deities around which Tibetans have historically and continually produced a large body of art, ritual, and narrative literature. The most soteriologically and cosmologically significant protector deities, and consequently often the most popular, are usually figures directly borrowed from Indian Buddhism, such as Mahākāla, a wrathful Buddhist form of the Hindu god Śiva, or they are adaptations of Indian deities, such as the great goddess Śrī Devī and the astrological demon Rāhula. These more “Indian” deities tend to be regarded in Tibetan Buddhism as fully enlightened and are distinguished from native Tibetan deities who are more typically seen as unenlightened or more recently enlightened protectors. The Tibetan mythology of these deities usually takes the form of a conversion narrative, describing how they were born and the events leading up to their becoming (under often quite violent circumstances) guardians of the Buddhist teachings. These Tibetan Buddhist myths, which have largely been neglected by Western scholars, imitate the structures and themes of Indian Buddhist and non-Buddhist Jātaka, Purāṇic, Māravijaya, and Avadāna literary genres, but also often transvalue and subvert them. Thus the “biographies” of these protector deities represent the dark tantric inversions of normative Buddhist hagiography.

Article

Debate in the Tibetan Tradition  

Jonathan Samuels

“Debate” (Tibetan: rtsod pa), in the present context, refers to a uniquely Tibetan method of structured analysis and discourse conducted between two (or more) parties on matters pertaining to religion. The practice is extremely technical and has traditionally been the province of monks. It has medieval roots, and it references logical principles derived from the Indian Buddhist pramāṇa system. Debate is also closely aligned with the tradition of commentarial writing, in which the evaluation and critiquing of earlier interpretations of Indian-origin Buddhist works has long been standard. A custom among Tibetan religious writers has been to deal with “rival” interpretations in a truculent fashion, redolent of an actual confrontation. There is also much in the dialectical approach, analytical process, and language that can best be described as shared between the literary and oral spheres (with frequent crossover and borrowing). But debate is primarily to be understood as a face-to-face practice, distinct from what is represented in the written medium, and only truly comprehensible in terms of the institutional context of its performance. Furthermore, while inspired by Indian scholastic traditions, this kind of argumentation is peculiarly Tibetan in its formulation. The practice of debate is especially associated with the largest school of Tibetan Buddhism, the Geluk (dGe lugs). In the school’s major scholastic centers, which were, for a number of centuries, the largest monasteries in the world, debate was employed as the primary tool of education, with those trained in the scholastic tradition, including its most prominent figures, such as various Dalai Lamas and Panchen Lamas, having been required to master it. Academic understanding of debate relies heavily on analysis of the so-called Collected Topics (bsDus grwa) works, primer materials, chiefly composed of sample debates, from which students (and academics) learn about the logical principles, basic taxonomies, and informal “rules” that structure debate.

Article

Imaging the Buddha in South Asia  

Claudine Bautze-Picron

The image of the Buddha appeared in the north of the South Asian subcontinent around the 1st century ce, following a period when no actual representation had been produced. Detailed considerations on how to represent this human being who had reached the highest spiritual plane are clearly illustrated in the highly elaborate portrayal in the literary sources and led to the visual formulation of an image based on strict iconographic rules, texts and art being both sides of the same issue. The texts include lengthy lists of either thirty-two or eighty marks that characterize the body of the Buddha, some being actually seen in the visual depiction, such as the tuft of hair between the eyebrows, the protuberance on the head, and the webbed hands, all of which contribute to the manifestation of a metamorphosed body that can become a powerful source of magic. This image does not stand on its own but is 1ed in a set of motifs—the throne, the nimbus, the aura, the lotusseat—that bring out the supramundane nature of the Buddha; further additions were to be the crown and the necklace, transforming the simple monk into a king. The various gestures that the Buddha displays reflect different aspects of his personality, as protector, as paradigm of generosity, as the ultimate teacher. Elements such as the monachal robe or hair style showed up in various forms in the early phase; however, the stylistic evolution progressively led to a uniformized figure that appeared in the 4th–5th century and became standardized in South Asia before finding its way to faraway regions. This figure was also used to represent the Buddhas of the past or the Tathāgathas and became the visual element unifying all Buddhist schools.

Article

Buddhism in Colonial Contexts  

Douglas Ober

Scholars have long recognized the transformative impact that colonialism had on Buddhist institutions, identities, thought, and practice. The period marked the rise of politicized identities linking Buddhism to anti-colonial nationalist movements alongside boisterous discussions about reforming Buddhism to its “innate” humanistic, scientific core. For many decades, histories of Buddhism under colonialism generally subscribed to a singular narrative in which colonial forces leveled such monumental changes that almost all forms of modern Buddhism were seen as derivative of ideologies introduced by Western colonial regimes. These narratives, however, only tell some of the story. Beginning in the last decades of the 20th century, scholarship has increasingly shown how Buddhists responded in a multitude of ways to colonial influence. There was resistance and collusion as well as instances where colonial systems had only minimal impact. Numerous ideas about Buddhism which for most of the 20th century were taken for granted—that the text is closer to “true” Buddhism than contemporary practice, that texts composed in “classical” languages are more authoritative than those in the vernacular, that Buddhism is not really a religion at all but more like a science of the mind or philosophy, that Buddhism is less ritualistic and more rational than other religious traditions, and so on—have their roots in the colonial encounter with Buddhism. Any student wishing to understand the place of Buddhism during the colonial period must consider the multiple trajectories and plural histories rather than singular, monolithic narratives.

Article

Tantra and the Tantric Traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism  

David B. Gray

The term tantra and the tantric traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism have been subjected to a great deal of misunderstanding in both India and the West. There is a diverse range of attitudes toward the tantric traditions, ranging from their emic understandings as paths to liberation to the relatively widespread associations of the tantric traditions with sorcery and libertine sexuality. Likewise, tantric traditions are also extremely diverse, which has made it difficult to develop a definition broad enough to cover the various tantric traditions without being overly broad. There have also been many attempts to discern the origins of the tantric traditions. While there is very little evidence supporting the hypothesis that any of the tantric traditions existed before the 5th century ce, there have been attempts to trace back these traditions much earlier, to the time of the Buddha or the ancient Hindu sages, or even back to the Indus Valley civilization. In overviewing various attempts to date these traditions, it appears that the first tantric traditions to emerge in a distinct form almost certainly first emerged in a Hindu context around the mid-first millennium ce. An overview of the history of tantric traditions, then, should begin with a survey the development of the Hindu tantric traditions, from the mid-first millennium ce up to the colonial period, when tantric traditions in South Asia generally entered a period of decline, followed by a renaissance in the 20th century. The historical appearance of Buddhist tantric traditions occurs a few centuries later, during the 7th century. Buddhist tantric traditions were strongly influenced at their inception by preexisting Śaiva Hindu traditions, but they also drew on a growing body of ritual and magical practices that had been developing for several centuries, since at least the 5th century ce, in Mahāyāna Buddhist circles. The spread of tantric traditions quickly followed their development in India. They were disseminated to Nepal; Central, East, and Southeast Asia; and also, much later, to the West. Tantric Hindu and Buddhist traditions were also a significant influence on a number of other religious traditions, including Jainism, Sikhism, the Bön tradition of Tibet, Daoism, and the Shintō tradition of Japan.

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Mongolian Buddhism in the Early 20th Century  

Matthew W. King

Mongol lands were bastions of Mahāyāna (Mon. yeke kölgen) and Vajrayāna (Mon. vačir kölgen) Buddhist life from the seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries, vast territories of the Buddhadharma deeply twinned with Tibetan traditions but always of local variation and distinct cultural content and purpose. Mongol contact with the Dharma reached its apex in the early decades of the 20th century, a flourishing of Buddhist knowledge, craft, and institutionalism that would soon face the blunt tool of brutal state violence. As the great Eurasian Empires came undone with tectonic force and consequence, Mongol lands along the frontiers of the Qing and Tsarist formations had the highest per capita rate of monastic ordination in the history of Buddhism (up to one in three adult men holding some monastic affiliation). Decades into the revolutionary aftermath of imperial collapse, at the interface of Republican China and Soviet Russia, Mongolian monastic complexes were hubs of cultural, economic, and intellectual life that continued to circulate and shape anew classical Indian and Tibetan fields of knowledge like medicine and astrology, esoteric and exoteric exegesis, material culture, and performance traditions between the Western Himalaya; the northern foothills of the British Raj; the Tibetan plateau; North China; Beijing; all Mongol regions; and Siberia, right to St. Petersburg. In addition to being dynamic centers of production, Mongolian Buddhist communities in the early 20th century provided zones of contact and routes of circulation for persons, ideas, objects, and patronage. Pilgrims, pupils, merchants, diplomats and patrons (and those that were all of these) moved from Mongol hubs such as Urga, Alashan, or Kökeqota to monastic colleges, markets, holy sites (and at this time, universities, parliaments, and People’s Congresses) in Lhasa, Beijing, Wutaishan, France, and St. Petersburg. In the ruins of the Qing and Tsarist empires, to whatever uneven degree these had been felt in local administrative units, Buddhist frames of references, institutions, and technologies of self- and community formation were central in the reimagination of Mongol and Siberian communities. In the decades this article considers, such imperial-era communal and religious references were foundational to new rubrics associated first with the national subject and then the first experiments with state socialism in Asia. In many Mongol regions, Buddhism was at first considered “the very spirit” of revolutionary developments, as the Buryat progressive and pan-Mongolist Ts. Jamsrano once put it. By the late 1930s, however, the economic, social, and political capital of monks (especially monastic officials and khutuγtu “living buddhas”) and their monastic estates were at odds with new waves of socialist development rhetoric. Buddhist clerics and their networks (though not “Buddhism” as such) were tried en masse as counterrevolutionary elements. Able only to speak their crimes under interrogation and in court, monks fell to firing squads by the tens of thousands. All monastic institutions save three were razed to the steppe grasses and desert sands. Any continuity of public religiosity, other than minimal displays of state-sponsored propaganda, was discontinued until the democratic revolution of 1990. Mongol lands and its Buddhism was thus an early exemplar of a pattern that would repeat itself across socialist Asia in the 20th century. From China to Cambodia, Tibet to Vietnam and Korea, counter-imperial and colonial nationalist and socialist movements who were at first aligned with Buddhist institutions would later enact profound state violence against monastics and their sympathizers. Understanding Buddhism in early 20th century Mongolia is thus a key case study to thinking about the broad processes of nationalization, reform, violence, Europeanization, state violence, and globalization that has shaped Buddhism and Buddhists in much of Asia in the recent past.

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Pilgrimage in Buddhist Tibet  

Paul B. Donnelly

The English word “pilgrimage” has been used to translate the Tibetan nekor or nejel, which means to circumambulate or to meet a sacred place, respectively. “Tibet” here refers not only to the modern Tibetan Autonomous Region but also to what has been called “Ethnographic Tibet.” This area includes the three provinces of Utsang, Kham, and Amdo, but also regions outside the modern political borders of China, such as Ladakh, Zangskar, Bhutan, Dolpo, and Mustang. The people across these regions share a common written language, largely similar social institutions and values, and a shared sense of historical connection. Though lesser known in the West than the doctrinal and meditative traditions of Tibet, pilgrimage has always been central to the religious lives of the people of the Tibetan cultural regions. In fact, while doctrine and meditation have been the purview of the elite monastic scholarly minority, pilgrimage has been far more pervasive and practiced by laypeople as well as the monastics for purposes both worldly and soteriological. Though religious elites or even ordinary Tibetans may describe pilgrimages in sophisticated Buddhist doctrinal terms, what they actually do is often as rooted in indigenous Tibetan conceptions of place and sacred power as it is in Buddhism. The concept of sacred place preceded the introduction of Buddhism into Tibet, and sacred places have remained important to both adherents of the Bön religion and of Buddhism. Pilgrimage to holy mountains, lakes, caves, and “hidden lands” was, and remains, central to Bön practice. This fact is consistent with the Bönpos’ self-identification as the preservers of the indigenous religion of Tibet. Buddhists in Tibet visited and venerated these powerful places, either overwriting their pre-Buddhist understandings with Buddhist ones or allowing the autochthonous powers respect alongside Buddhist practice. One well-known myth describes the Buddhist taming of Tibet in terms of Buddhist masters subduing and pinning down a demoness identified with the land of Tibet itself. Once tamed, mountains, lakes, caves, and hidden lands became understood in terms of tantric Buddhist doctrine and practice. After the conquest of Tibet by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1950, pilgrimage became difficult for many Tibetans. This remained the case until the liberalizations of the PRC in Tibet in the mid-1980s. This shift allowed Tibetans to resume the practice of pilgrimage and opened Tibet to Western scholars interested in the practice. Since the mid-1990s, scholarship on Tibetan pilgrimage has flourished, and some scholars have turned their attention to pilgrimage in the ethnographically Tibetan regions in Northern India.

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Dunhuang Art  

Michelle C. Wang

The oasis city of Dunhuang lies at the eastern end of the southern Silk Routes, in Gansu Province in northwestern China. In the 2nd century BCE, Dunhuang was established by the Chinese Han dynasty as a center for military operations and trade. Over time, Dunhuang became an important hub for multicultural trade as well as for the transmission of commodities, ideas, and religions. The status of Dunhuang as an important regional center for Buddhism is demonstrated by a wealth of paintings and manuscripts that provide crucial insights into the unfolding of religious praxis and developments in visual culture over many centuries. A few centuries after the establishment of Dunhuang as a military garrison, the construction of cave shrines in the area began. Four major groups of cave shrines were constructed in the Dunhuang region: the Mogao, Yulin, and Western Thousand Buddhas caves, and the Five Temples site. The most well-studied of these are the Mogao 莫高, or “peerless,” cave shrines, which are located 25 kilometers southeast of Dunhuang at the eastern edge of Mount Mingsha 鳴沙山 (Mountain of the Singing Sands). From the 4th to the 14th centuries, 492 man-made caves were carved from the sandstone cliffs, stretching 1,680 meters from south to north. They were painted with over 45,000 square meters of mural paintings and installed with more than 2,000 painted clay sculptures. To the north, 248 additional caves were carved. Mostly unadorned, the northern caves served as habitation chambers for monks. In addition to the mural paintings and inscriptions in the Mogao caves, more than 50,000 manuscripts and portable paintings were discovered in 1900 by the caretaker and Daoist priest Wang Yuanlu 王圓籙 from one cave, numbered Mogao cave 17, popularly though perhaps problematically known as the “library cave.” These objects were dispersed in the early 20th century to library and museum collections, the most prominent of which are the Stein collection in the British Museum, British Library, the National Museum of India, and the Pelliot collection in the Musée National des Arts Asiatiques-Guimet and Bibliothèque Nationale de France. For this reason, the study of Dunhuang art and material culture encompasses both objects held in museum and library collections worldwide as well as mural paintings and sculptures located in situ in the cave shrines. Bringing these two bodies of material into conversation with one another enables a nuanced understanding of Dunhuang as a religious and artistic center, focusing in particular on the Mogao caves.

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Imperialism, Mission, and Global Power Relations in East Asian Religions in the United States  

Connie A. Shemo

The history of East Asian religions in the United States is inextricably intertwined with the broader history of United States–East Asian relations, and specifically with U.S. imperialism. For most Americans in the 19th and into the early 20th centuries, information about religious life in China, Japan, and Korea came largely through foreign missionaries. A few prominent missionaries were deeply involved in the translation of important texts in East Asian religions and helped promote some understanding of these traditions. The majority of missionary writings, however, condemned the existing religions in these cultures as part of their critiques of the cultures as degenerate and in need of Christianity. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the women’s foreign mission movement was the largest women’s movement in the United States, women missionaries’ representations of East Asian religions as inherent in the oppression of women particularly reached a large audience. There was also fascination with East Asian religions in the United States, especially as the 20th century progressed, and more translations appeared from people not connected to the foreign mission movement. By the 1920s, as “World Friendship” became an important paradigm in the foreign missionary movement, some missionary representations of East Asian religions became more positive, reflecting and contributing to a broader trend in the United States toward a greater interest in religious traditions around the world, and coinciding with a move toward secularization. As some scholars have suggested, the interest in East Asian religions in the United States in some ways fits into the framework of “Orientalism,” to use Edward Said’s famous term, viewing religions of the “East” as an exotic alternative to religion in the West. Other scholars have suggested that looking at the reception of these religions through a framework of “Orientalism” underestimates and distorts the impact these religious traditions have had in the United States. Regardless, religious traditions from East Asia have become a part of the American religious landscape, through both the practice of people who have immigrated from East Asia or practice the religion as they have learned from family members, and converts to those religions. The numbers of identified practitioners of East Asian religions in United States, with the exception of Buddhism, a religion that originated outside of East Asia, is extremely small, and even Buddhists are less than 2 percent of the American population. At the same time, some religious traditions, such as Daoism and some variants of Buddhism (most notably Zen Buddhism), have exercised a significant impact on popular culture, even while a clear understanding of these traditions has not yet been widespread in the United States. Some understanding of Confucianism as well has recently been spread through the propagation of “Confucian” institutes in the United States. It is through these institutes that we may see the beginnings of the Chinese government exercising some influence in American universities, which, while not comparable to the impact of Christian missionaries in the development of Chinese educational institutions in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, nonetheless can illuminate the growing power of China in Sino-American relations in the beginning of the 21st century. While the term “East Asian” religions is frequently used for convenience, it is important to be aware of potential pitfalls in assigning labels such as “Western” and “Eastern” to religious traditions, particularly if this involves a construction of Christianity as inherently “Western.” At a time when South Korea sends the second largest number of Christian missionaries to other countries, Christianity could theoretically be defined as an East Asian religion, in that a significant number of people in one East Asian country not only practice but actively seek to propagate the religion. Terms such as “Eastern” and “Western” to define religious traditions are cultural constructs in and of themselves.

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Buddhism and Healing in China  

Natalie Köhle

The history of Buddhism in China is deeply connected with healing. Some of the scriptures that were translated into Chinese discuss Indic conceptions of the body as an amalgamation of elements, and causes of illness in the tridoṣa, that is pathogenic body fluids and internal winds. Others discuss materia medica, and monastic rules on healing and hygiene in the monastery. Yet others set forth the ritual worship of the Medicine Buddha (Skt. Bhaiṣajyaguru; Ch. Yaoshi fo 藥師佛), the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara (Guanyin pusa 觀音菩薩), and other deities that promise healing. Apart from the translated scriptures, there is a huge body of indigenous works that synthesized the wealth of information on Indic healing which arrived in China between the 2nd and 10th centuries ce. Foremost among those are Yijing’s 義淨 (635–713) account of Indian monastic practices, Daoxuan’s 道宣 (596–667) vinaya commentary, and Daoshi’s 道世 (?–683) encyclopedia chapter on illness. Chinese compositions, such as Zhiyi’s 智顗 (538–597) treatises on meditation, and Huizhao’s 慧皎 (497–554) hagiographies bear witness to the hybridity to which the reception of Indic ideas in China gave rise. With the widening reach of Buddhism into every layer of Chinese society during the Sui and Tang dynasties, eminent Chinese physicians, such as Tao Hongjing 陶弘景 (452–536), Chao Yuanfang 巢元方 (550–630), Wang Tao 王焘 (670–755), and Sun Simiao 孫思邈 (581–682) also began to incorporate Buddhist ideas into their medical treatises. Chinese Buddhist monasteries introduced hospital services to China, and certain lineages of monks continued to provide medical care to the laity in late imperial China. Their healing was based on Chinese medical theories, however, and there is no evidence that they persisted in applying Indic medical ideas.