Practice and Other Power in Daochuo’s Pure Land Buddhism

Daochuo 道綽 (562–645) is revered as a patriarch of both the Pure Land and the True Pure Land schools of Buddhism in Japan. In his Anleji 安楽集 he makes a variety of arguments about the necessity and importance of relying on the “path of easy practice” whereby one aspires to enlightenment through birth in the Amituo’s Pure Land based on the working of the other power of Amituo’s vows. Daochuo’s prioritization of the Pure Land teachings in well know both inside and outside of Japan, but previous scholarship has focused particularly on Daochuo’s arguments that the Pure Land teachings should be taken as the centerpiece of Buddhism due to the degenerate nature of the age and the inferior capacities of the people. Therefore, previous scholarship in both Japanese and English on Daochuo has primarily characterized him as offering an easy practice for incompetent people who were unlucky enough to have been born at a time far removed from Śākyamuni. Through a careful analysis of passages in the second fascicle of the Anleji, in the first section of this paper I show that this understanding of Daochuo’s view of the “path of easy practice” fails to take into account the severity of his criticisms of the Buddhist practices that were preached in the Buddhist scriptures and prevalent at his time and therefore mischaracterizes the nature of his choice of Pure Land Buddhism as the most effective and excellent form of Buddhism and the only avenue for anyone at any time, regardless of their individual capacities or temporal relation to a Buddha, to genuinely fulfill the Mahayana ideal. Although Daochuo took a very broadminded stance toward practice, holding that any practice undertaken with a desire to be born in the Pure Land would qualify the practitioner to receive the benefits of the other power of Amituo’s vows, there are also several points in the Anleji where he singles out the practice of the nianfo 念仏, particularly vocal recitation of the nianfo, as the most appropriate and effective practice for people to engage in. In the second section of this paper, I introduce the passages where Daochuo encourages the practice of the nianfo and show that he prioritized it both because he held it was most appropriate for the sentient beings of the Latter Days of the Dharma and because it afforded practitioners with a variety of benefits that were not available to those who sought after birth in the Pure Land through other practices

Tele-autonomous systems: New methods for projecting and coordinating intelligent action at a distance

There is a growing need for humans to perform complex remote operations and to extend the intelligence and experience of experts to distant applications. It is asserted that a blending of human intelligence, modern information technology, remote control, and intelligent autonomous systems is required, and have coined the term tele-autonomous technology, or tele-automation, for methods producing intelligent action at a distance. Tele-automation goes beyond autonomous control by blending in human intelligence. It goes beyond tele-operation by incorporating as much autonomy as possible and/or reasonable. A new approach is discussed for solving one of the fundamental problems facing tele-autonomous systems: The need to overcome time delays due to telemetry and signal propagation. New concepts are introduced called time and position clutches, that allow the time and position frames between the local user control and the remote device being controlled, to be desynchronized respectively. The design and implementation of these mechanisms are described in detail. It is demonstrated that these mechanisms lead to substantial telemanipulation performance improvements, including the result of improvements even in the absence of time delays. The new controls also yield a simple protocol for control handoffs of manipulation tasks between local operators and remote systems

The Tensions of Ministry

A living faith is gifted, lived, and transmitted from within the horizon that is culture. There is no faith life that is not expressed to some degree or other in the terms of the supporting culture. ‘Living faith’ – in the sense of being alive and life-giving and in the sense of being an action and an endeavour – is not only expressed in the terms of a ‘living culture,’ but it is, itself, nourished by that culture within which it sinks its redemptive roots. The achievements of any particular culture become the subsoil in which the life of faith renews the culture and is itself renewed by that same culture in every age. In this article I would like to consider two achievements of contemporary culture that now have a powerful bearing on ‘living’ faith and, in the light of these, explore briefly a number of issues in the living out of faith. The first achievement is what I will term the recognition of singularity as a way of understanding the human person in its total integrity; and the second is the importance of story or narrative in coming to a full realization (in both senses) of our personal identity. Against this background I’d like then to explore what I will call ‘intrinsic tensions’ in the living out of the life of faith. Whereas these ‘tensions’ hold in different and varying degrees for all who strive to live faith in our contemporary culture, they are thrown into sharp relief in priestly life, and here I will pay particular attention to a number of crucial issues. This is an initial attempt to reflect on material that is not only complex on a number of levels (theological, sociological, psychological, etc), but that looks to a future, which, although upon us, is not yet established in any definitive and remarkable way

Beyond Sight: The Artist and Mystic Intuition

If you visit Tate-Britain and stand in the main foyer and look down the long corridor to your right, you will see in the distance on the farthest wall the extraordinary triptych Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion by Francis Bacon from 1944. Bacon, of Irish Protestant descent, was a non-believer, who had, however, great admiration for the ‘dedication’ of believers despite, what he termed, ‘living by a total falseness’! As you turn left, your vision is, then, rather quickly interrupted by a very powerful and massive sculpture from Jacob Epstein, Jacob and the Angel from 1940/41. The mysterious, haunting, background story from Genesis (32:22-32), paradigmatic, perhaps, for all spiritual struggle with power, tells of Jacob’s confrontation with an unknown stranger, who refuses to reveal his name. He does, however, concede to give a blessing, in response to which Jacob declares: ‘I have seen God face to face; yet, my life has been spared.’ Richard Harries surmises that this sculpture from Epstein ‘clearly reflects something of the struggle of his own life, both artistic and domestic, out of which he was to wrest a blessing.’ Perhaps. Epstein, himself, was of Jewish background, but he regularly depicted, in various media, Christian themes and subjects. But back to the Tate: formally, the space is entirely secular; the supporting language and narratives, however, at least in part, are religious. How is one to read and make sense of such juxtapositions in contemporary culture? What, if anything, has art to do with religion beyond mere mimetic re-presentation, and does religion have something to offer the arts beyond the bare thematic? In his introduction to the Reith Lectures from 1982 Denis Donoghue observes: ‘A work of art is in some sense mysterious; but I see no evidence, in contemporary criticism that the mystery is acknowledged or respected.’ It is through this lens that I wish to explore the arts in this short paper

Theology Going Somewhere and Nowhere

In Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, chapter six, there is a very interesting exchange between Alice and the Cheshire Cat: ‘Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’ ‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ said the Cat. ‘I don’t much care where⎯’ said Alice. ‘Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,’ said the Cat. ‘⎯so long as I get somewhere,’ Alice added as an explanation. ‘Oh, you’re sure to do that,’ said the Cat, ‘if you only walk long enough.’ This particular dialogue is most often paraphrased as: ‘If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.’ And this, which is a line from a song, is sometimes given, incorrectly, as a quotation from the book itself. If you take the question of Theology and its future as your Leitmotif, then, I would suggest that this paraphrase is far too simplistic, and I would like to unravel the complexity of the original dialogue. Where have we come from? Which way ought we go from here? Where is somewhere? And what about the possibility of going nowhere? As I reflect on this activity that we call ‘theology,’ questions, such as these, spring to mind

i4i Makes the Patent World Blind

All patents receive a presumption of validity pursuant to 35 USC § 282. Courts have traditionally put this presumption into practice by requiring invalidity to be established by clear and convincing evidence. The Supreme Court reaffirmed this understanding of the presumption in Microsoft Corp v i4i Ltd Partnership. District courts have divided, however, on whether to require clear and convincing evidence when the challenger seeks to invalidate a patent for covering ineligible subject matter. The conflict originates from a concurrence written by Justice Stephen Breyer in i4i, in which he stated that a heightened standard of proof—like the clear and convincing standard—can apply only to issues of fact, not issues of law. Because subject-matter eligibility has traditionally presented an issue of law, some courts hold that subject-matter-eligibility challenges cannot be subjected to the clear and convincing standard. Other courts agree with that sentiment but would apply the clear and convincing standard to resolve any underlying issues of fact. Still others maintain that subject-matter-eligibility challenges must be established by clear and convincing evidence. This Comment resolves this ambiguity by showing that subject-mattereligibility challenges must be established by clear and convincing evidence. It compares subject-matter-eligibility challenges to two other patent validity challenges: the on-sale bar and nonobviousness. These two comparisons show that patent law has consistently failed to confine the clear and convincing standard to issues of law. In fact, the standard has been imposed without regard for the distinction between issues of law and fact. Accordingly, judges should impose the clear and convincing standard on subject-matter-eligibility challenges