Master Questions, Student Questions, and Genuine Questions: A Performative Analysis of Questions in Chan Encounter Dialogues

I want to know whether Chan masters and students depicted in classical Chan transmission literature can be interpreted as asking open (or what I will call “genuine”) questions. My task is significant because asking genuine questions appears to be a decisive factor in ascertaining whether these figures represent models for dialogue—the kind of dialogue championed in democratic society and valued by promoters of interreligious exchange. My study also contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of early Chan not only by detailing contrasts between contemporary interests and classical Chan, but more importantly by paying greater attention to the role language and rhetoric play in classical Chan. What roles do questions play in Chan encounter dialogues, and are any of the questions genuine? Is there anything about the conventions of the genre that keeps readers from interpreting some questions in this way? To address these topics, I will proceed as follows. First, on a global level and for critical-historical context, I survey Chan transmission literature of the Song dynasty in which encounter dialogues appear, and their role in developments of Chan/Zen traditions. Second, I zoom in on structural elements of encounter dialogues in particular as a genre. Third, aligning with the trajectory of performative analyses of Chan literature called for by Sharf and Faure, I turn to develop and criticize a performative model of questions from resources in recent analytic and continental philosophy of language and I apply that model to some questions in encounter dialogue literature

Becoming a Nun, Becoming a Man: Taiwanese Buddhist Nuns’ Gender Transformation

This paper explores apparent contradictions in the gender identifications of Taiwanese Buddhist nuns. Because the texts and teachings of their tradition provide conflicting messages about women\u27s spiritual abilities, the nuns create a complex gender cosmology as a means to accommodate textual contradictions without rejecting any textual statements. This strategy allows the nuns to assert that they have spiritual abilities equal to those of men without rejecting or contradicting textual statements that they do not. Without denying that they are women (and that they are therefore threatening to men) the nuns primarily identify with the male gender. Compartmentalizing and contextualizing gender symbols allows the nuns to see themselves both as men and as women without contradiction

Book Review: \u3ci\u3eAbhishiktananda (Henri Le Saux): Christian Nondualism and Hindu Advaita\u3c/i\u3e

Book review of Abhishiktananda (Henri Le Saux): Christian Nondualism and Hindu Advaita. By J. Glenn Friesen. Calgary: Aevum Books, 2015, 592 pages

‘A story of a bird named Bìm Bịp’: lies, violence, and meaning

The essay discusses the meaning of 'A story of a bird named Bìm Bịp', Vietnamese traditional folklore. Through contradiction between a bandit and a monk, the meaning of lies, violence, and enlightenment is being told

Buddhism\u27s Worldly Other: Secular Subjects of Tibetan Learning

By analyzing the writings of select Tibetan authors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, this article reflects on the prestige attached to secular (but not anti-religious) knowledge, and the ambivalence prominent thinkers expressed around the proper relationship between worldly and religious learning. Tibetan lay and religious leaders have long been steeped in a classical Indic system of categorizing knowledge, known in Sanskrit as pañcavidyāsthāna and in Tibetan as rikné nga (Tib. rig gnas lnga). Sakya Paṇḍita first established the importance of these fields of knowledge in Tibet during the thirteenth century. Later intellectual figures such as the Fifth Dalai Lama Ngawang Lozang Gyatso and his cohort, including figures associated with the influential Nyingma monastery called Mindroling (Smin grol gling), all acknowledged the significance of rikné even as they struggled to balance their worldly interests with religious concerns. Their writing shows that worldly subjects, distinct from but in combination with the study of religion, have been important in shaping Tibetan thinking and social life for many centuries. Worldly knowledge was and is a basis for political and cultural prestige in Tibetan society as well as a common ground for connecting with the ruling classes of neighboring civilizations, also shaped in part by Buddhism. Over the centuries, the inculcation of rikné among educated Tibetans contributed to the development of a connoisseur class. Further, the Tibetan socio-political theory of the union of religion and the secular (chos srid zung ’brel) and the closely related ‘two traditions’ (lugs gnyis) model, were primary concerns of the Fifth Dalai Lama and his colleagues. These theories articulated an ideal union between worldly and religious power. Precisely how Tibetan literati have understood and valued worldly fields of learning in relation to religious subjects has varied across time, place, and religious tradition. Investigating particular Tibetan statements on the significance of rikné reveals the strong, if notably ambivalent, presence of secular values in Tibetan history and culture

The Spread of Buddhism during Ancient China

Stories contain the power to be able to pull people in and engulf them with the teachings and enjoyment they possess. Storytelling is used in many different manners and one of those is through religion. It is through the telling of stories, and eventually the writing of them, that major religious beliefs have successfully spread to other parts of the world instead of staying in one place. Buddhism is one of the religions that is well-known and practiced by many because of the spread of its stories to other parts of the world, especially Asia. In ancient China, Buddhism flourished among the Chinese people because it was not suited just for the elites. Lay people were able to enjoy and relate to Buddhist doctrines as well. Through different tales and explanations, Buddhism was able to flourish among not just one class but all classes because it related to many aspects of life. Stories played a key part