Searching for a Possibility of Buddhist Hermeneutics: Two Exegetic Strategies in Buddhist Tradition
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Buddhist Spiritual Practices
Buddhist Spiritual Practices Thinking with Pierre Hadot on Buddhism, Philosophy, and the Path Edited by David V. Fiordalis Mangalam Press Berkeley, CA Mangalam Press 2018 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA USA www.mangalampress.org Copyright © 2018 by Mangalam Press. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be copied, reproduced, published, distributed, or stored electronically, photographically, or optically in any form without the prior written permission of the publisher. ISBN: 978-0-89800-117-4 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018930282 Mangalam Press is an imprint of Dharma Publishing. The cover image depicts a contemporary example of Tibetan Buddhist instructional art: the nine stages on the path of “calming” (śamatha) meditation. Courtesy of Exotic India, www.exoticindia.com. Used with permission. ♾ Printed on acid-free paper. This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). Printed in the USA by Dharma Press, Cazadero, CA 95421 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Table of Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 David V. Fiordalis Comparisons with Buddhism Some Remarks on Hadot, Foucault, and 21 Steven Collins Schools, Schools, Schools—Or, Must a Philosopher be Like a Fish? 71 Sara L. McClintock The Spiritual Exercises of the Middle Way: Madhyamakopadeśa with Hadot Reading Atiśa’s 105 James B. Apple Spiritual Exercises and the Buddhist Path: An Exercise in Thinking with and against Hadot 147 Pierre-Julien Harter the Philosophy of “Incompletion” The “Fecundity of Dialogue” and 181 Maria Heim Philosophy as a Way to Die: Meditation, Memory, and Rebirth in Greece and Tibet 217 Davey K. -
Some Reflections on the Place of Philosophy in the Study of Buddhism 145
Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies ^-*/^z ' '.. ' ' ->"•""'",g^ x Volume 18 • Number 2 • Winter 1995 ^ %\ \l '»!#;&' $ ?j On Method \>. :''i.m^--l'-' - -'/ ' x:N'' ••• '; •/ D. SEYFORT RUEGG £>~C~ ~«0 . c/g Some Reflections on the Place of Philosophy in the Study of Buddhism 145 LUIS O. G6MEZ Unspoken Paradigms: Meanderings through the Metaphors of a Field 183 JOSE IGNACIO CABEZ6N Buddhist Studies as a Discipline and the Role of Theory 231 TOM TILLEMANS Remarks on Philology 269 C. W. HUNTINGTON, JR. A Way of Reading 279 JAMIE HUBBARD Upping the Ante: [email protected] 309 D. SEYFORT RUEGG Some Reflections on the Place of Philosophy in the Study of Buddhism I It is surely no exaggeration to say that philosophical thinking constitutes a major component in Buddhism. To say this is of course not to claim that Buddhism is reducible to any single philosophy in some more or less restrictive sense but, rather, to say that what can be meaningfully described as philosophical thinking comprises a major part of its proce dures and intentionality, and also that due attention to this dimension is heuristically necessary in the study of Buddhism. If this proposition were to be regarded as problematic, the difficulty would seem to be due to certain assumptions and prejudgements which it may be worthwhile to consider here. In the first place, even though the philosophical component in Bud dhism has been recognized by many investigators since the inception of Buddhist studies as a modern scholarly discipline more than a century and a half ago, it has to be acknowledged that the main stream of these studies has, nevertheless, quite often paid little attention to the philosoph ical. -
Buddhism and Written Law: Dhammasattha Manuscripts and Texts in Premodern Burma
BUDDHISM AND WRITTEN LAW: DHAMMASATTHA MANUSCRIPTS AND TEXTS IN PREMODERN BURMA A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Dietrich Christian Lammerts May 2010 2010 Dietrich Christian Lammerts BUDDHISM AND WRITTEN LAW: DHAMMASATTHA MANUSCRIPTS AND TEXTS IN PREMODERN BURMA Dietrich Christian Lammerts, Ph.D. Cornell University 2010 This dissertation examines the regional and local histories of dhammasattha, the preeminent Pali, bilingual, and vernacular genre of Buddhist legal literature transmitted in premodern Burma and Southeast Asia. It provides the first critical analysis of the dating, content, form, and function of surviving dhammasattha texts based on a careful study of hitherto unexamined Burmese and Pali manuscripts. It underscores the importance for Buddhist and Southeast Asian Studies of paying careful attention to complex manuscript traditions, multilingual post- and para- canonical literatures, commentarial strategies, and the regional South-Southeast Asian literary, historical, and religious context of the development of local legal and textual practices. Part One traces the genesis of dhammasattha during the first and early second millennia C.E. through inscriptions and literary texts from India, Cambodia, Campå, Java, Lakå, and Burma and investigates its historical and legal-theoretical relationships with the Sanskrit Bråhmaˆical dharmaßåstra tradition and Pali Buddhist literature. It argues that during this period aspects of this genre of written law, akin to other disciplines such as alchemy or medicine, functioned in both Buddhist and Bråhmaˆical contexts, and that this ecumenical legal culture persisted in certain areas such as Burma and Java well into the early modern period. -
Buddhism and Cross-Cultural Hermeneutics
93 ISSN 1648-2662. ACTA ORIENTALIA VILNENSIA. 2002 3 INTERPRETATION AS A SPIRITUAL PRACTICE: BUDDHISM AND CROSS-CULTURAL HERMENEUTICS Audrius BEINORIUS Centre of Oriental Studies, Vilnius University The article deals with a problem of relation between textual interpretation and methodology of enlightenment in the Buddhist tradition. According to traditional exegesis, works of Buddhist philosophy are something like a samadhi, a sustained and penetrating contemplation of certain pathways of thought and insight. The author reveals that the Buddhist hermeneutical tradition is a tradition of realization, and devoid of any dichotomy between intellect and experience, the rational and the mystical. A principal role of the tradition is to supply the intertextual context of prejudices that makes the reading and talking possible and the background in which the revelation of meaning and the composition ofa meaningful text become possible. Finally, it is pointed out that it is impossible to separate the study of Buddhist hermeneutics from the question of hermeneutics of the modern scholar who having his prejudices and preunderstandings determined by time and culture interpretes traditional Buddhist texts. Whatever is well spoken, has been spoken by the Buddha AIiguttara nikaya IV. 163 In recent years hermeneutical reflexiveness has become a hallmark of East-West studies by reflecting the historical relativity of the comparative process itself in a self-critical way. It is by now a commonplace to remark that attempts to interpret Buddhist thought in Western terms have generally reflected the intelectual perspectives of interpreters as much as those of the Buddhist thinkers we wish to intrepret. Nagarjuna has seen Hegelian, Heideggerian, and Wittgensteinian readings come and gol; Vasubandhu has been incarnated as both transcendentalist idealist and phenomenologist; the arguments of Dharmakirti and his successors might have stepped out of the pages of Husserl's Logishe Untersuchungen or the Principia Mathematica of Russell and Whitehead. -
The Buddhist Educational Psychological Concept of Anattā in Pāli Nikayas Qing MING Yunnan Normal University, Kunming, Yunnan, China [email protected]
2017 International Conference on Education Science and Education Management (ESEM 2017) ISBN: 978-1-60595-486-8 The Buddhist Educational Psychological Concept of Anattā in Pāli Nikayas Qing MING Yunnan Normal University, Kunming, Yunnan, China [email protected] Keywords: Buddhist Psychology, Anattā, Pāli Nikayas, Ǡlayavijnāna. Abstract. “Anattā” is a key concept of Buddhist educational psychology, it has exerted a tremendous, profound and far-reaching influence upon the history of Mahayana and Hinayana Buddhist psychology. In this paper, the author will use Buddhist hermeneutics as research method to explain the philosophical and psychological concept of anattā, address the different interpretive strands, classical and modern, of this concept, and to interpret some of the widely identified problematiques of this concept. Finally, there will be a summary of the basic characteristics of the “anattā” as the nature of human being. Introduction Robert H. Thouless, a renowned Cambridge University western psychologist, is known for his scholarship on the Theravada Buddhist psychology and western psychology. After made a comprehensive survey of Theravada Buddhist Pāli Nikayas, he said: “anybody with a good knowledge of psychology and its history who reads the Pāli Nikayas must be the fact that the psychological terminology is richer in this than any other ancient literature and that more space is devoted to psychological analysis and explanations in this than in any other religious literature.”[1] The concept of anattā is the foundation of Buddhist educational psychology that has been discussed in Pāli Nikayas, thus, this paper took this concept as its objects of research. Description of Anattā in Classical Pāli Texts The Buddhist educational psychological and philosophical Pāli term “anattā” (it is known as “anātman” in Sanskrit) is often translated as “no-self,” “not-self,” “no-soul,” or “no-ego” by western researches. -
Phra Payutto and Debates 'On the Very Idea of the Pali Canon' in Thai
BSRV 26.1 (2009) 1–31 Buddhist Studies Review ISSN (print) 0256-2897 doi: 10.1558/bsrv.v26i1.1 Buddhist Studies Review ISSN (online) 1747-9681 Phra Payutto and Debates ‘On the Very Idea of the Pali Canon’ in Thai Buddhism1 Martin Seeger University of Leeds In this paper I investigate a number of public intellectual debates in current Thai Theravāda Buddhism that are related to several fundamental questions regarding the meaning and function of the Pali canon. This investigation focuses on debates in which the Thai scholar monk Phra (Ven.) Payutto (b. 1939) has been playing a significant role. In these debates, the Pali canon is regarded as a central text-corpus endowed with special normative and formative authority. I will look at contestations that concern Theravāda- ness and, at the same time, and inextricably linked with this, at concepts of demarcation between the Theravāda and systems of religious beliefs and prac- tices that are believed to be ‘outside’ the Theravāda. This, of course, engages the question of inclusivism, exclusivism and pluralism within the Theravāda. In so doing, I explore and posit concepts of the meanings and functions of the Pali canon that position it either as the or an authoritative reference. 1. A short version of this paper with the title ‘Authority, Identity and Pluralism: “On the Very Idea of the Pali Canon” in Thai Buddhism’ was first read at the Annual Confer- ence of the UK Association of Buddhist Studies at York St John University, York (UK), on 2 September 2008. A few parts of it have more or less literally been translated from my PhD dissertation (Seeger, 2005a) which was written in German. -
The Deer Park Project for World Peace
^LLionPO Box 6483, Ithaca, NY 14851 607-273-8519 SUMMER 1996 NEWSLETTER AND CATALOG SUPPLEMENT Anyone who has read more than a few books on Tibetan Buddhism will Sarnath, India: have encountered references to the Six Yogas ofNaropa. These six—in- ner heat, illusory body, clear light, The Deer Park Project consciousness transference, forceful projection, and the bardo yoga—rep- resent one of the most popular Ti- for World Peace betan Buddhist presentations of yo- gic technology. These teachings, given by the Indian sage Naropa to Early in 1996 during the Tibetan When Lord Buddha announced the Marpa gradually pervaded thousands Buddhist Losar celebration at Sarnath, date of his Mahaparinirvana, many of of monasteries and hermitages India, over 100 persons attended an his disciples were distraught and throughout Central Asia regardless informal consecration and dedication asked him, "What shall we do? How of sect. Tsongkhapa's discussion of ceremony for the newly completed will those who do not see you receive the Six Yogas is regarded as one of Deer Park Project for World Peace. your teachings?" Buddha told them the finest on the subject to come The temple, Padma Samye Chokhor that his followers should journey to out of Tibet. His treatise has served Ling, is situated directly between the and meditate at the holy places where as the fundamental guide to the sys- place of Buddha Shakyamuni's re- his enlightened activities occurred, tem as practiced in the more than union with his five disciples and where including: three thousand Gelukpa monasteries, he first turned the Wheel of Dharma • Lumbini, the birthplace of the Lord nunneries and hermitages across at Deer Park. -
Proquest Dissertations
A study of Master Yinshun's hermeneutics: An interpretation of the tathagatagarbha doctrine Item Type text; Dissertation-Reproduction (electronic) Authors Hurley, Scott Christopher Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 24/09/2021 19:57:12 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/279857 INFORMATIOH TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. in the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overiaps. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in ttiis copy. Higher quality 6' x 9" black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. -
BSO Volume 58 Issue 2 Front Matter
BULLETIN OF THE SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES UNIVERSITY OF LONDON Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.33.42, on 29 Sep 2021 at 22:18:32, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0041977X00010715 EDITORIAL BOARD PROFESSOR J. C. WRIGHT, M.A., B.A. (Chairman) S. K. M. ALLAN, M.A., PH.D. D. L. APPLEYARD, B.A., PH.D. PROFESSOR T. H. BARRETT, M.A., PH.D. G. R. HAWTING, B.A. PH.D. K. HAYWARD, B.A., DIP.COMP.PHIL., D.PHIL. M. J. HUTT, B.A., PH.D. S. KAVIRAJ, B.A., M.A., PH.D. D. O. MORGAN, B.A., PH.D. A. H. MORTON, M.A. N. G. PHILLIPS, M.A., PH.D. EDITORIAL SECRETARY: MISS D. MATIAS, B.A. The Bulletin is published three times a year, in February, June and October. Each year's issues make up one volume. All editorial communications should be addressed to the Editorial Secretary at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1E OXG. Articles, notes and communications, and notices of books should be submitted in typescript. Authors of articles will be supplied with 25 offprints free of charge. SUBSCRIPTIONS Published at an annual subscription of £68 in the UK and Europe, US$122 elsewhere; single issues £26 in the UK and Europe, US$47 elsewhere. Rate in developing countries is US$110 a year. ORDER INFORMATION Payment is required with all orders and subscriptions are accepted and entered by the volume. -
Buddhism and the Dynamics of Transculturality Religion and Society
Buddhism and the Dynamics of Transculturality Religion and Society Edited by Gustavo Benavides, Frank J. Korom, Karen Ruffle and Kocku von Stuckrad Volume 64 Buddhism and the Dynamics of Transculturality New Approaches Edited by Birgit Kellner ISBN 978-3-11-041153-9 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-041308-3 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-041314-4 ISSN 1437-5370 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. For details go to: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. Library of Congress Control Number: 2019941312 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2019 Birgit Kellner, published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston This book is published in open access at www.degruyter.com. Typesetting: Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com Contents Birgit Kellner 1 Introduction 1 Ingo Strauch 2 Buddhism in the West? Buddhist Indian Sailors on Socotra (Yemen) and the Role of Trade Contacts in the Spread of Buddhism 15 Anna Filigenzi 3 Non-Buddhist Customs of Buddhist People: Visual and Archaeological Evidence from North-West Pakistan 53 Toru Funayama 4 Translation, Transcription, and What Else? Some Basic Characteristics of Chinese Buddhist Translation as a Cultural Contact between India and China, with Special Reference to Sanskrit ārya and Chinese sheng 85 Lothar Ledderose 5 Stone Hymn – The Buddhist Colophon of 579 Engraved on Mount Tie, Shandong 101 Anna Andreeva 6 “To Overcome the Tyranny of Time”: Stars, Buddhas, and the Arts of Perfect Memory at Mt. -
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Kervan – International Journal of Afro-Asiatic Studies n. 21 (2017) Thoughts on the Early Indian Yogācāra Understanding of Āgama- Pramāṇa Roy Tzohar The Buddhist approach to testimony (āptavāda, āptāgama) as a valid means of cognition (pramāṇa) is far from univocal and involves an intricate and often also ambivalent attitude toward scriptural authority. The paper focuses on several early Yogācāra Buddhist thinkers who accepted testimony as a reliable epistemic warrant, and offers an account of the sophisticated and highly reflective manner in which they approached the issue of scriptural meaning and authority. For this purpose, the paper first outlines the theoretical framework for considering scripture presented by the early Yogācāra philosopher Vasubandhu’s Vyākhyāyukti, focusing especially on his discussion of the criteria for canonicity and its implications for a system of hermeneutics based on the uncovering of authorial intent. The paper then examines in turn the way in which this framework and its internal tensions were worked out in the writings of Sthiramati (circa 6th century CE) and especially in his Madhyāntavibhāga-bhāṣya-ṭīkā, focusing on his definition of “treatise” (śāstra) and his implied understanding of textual authority. The Buddhist approach to testimony (āptavāda, āptāgama) as a valid means of cognition (pramāṇa) is far from univocal – it varies across times, schools and sometime even within the thought of a single thinker1 – and involves an intricate and often also ambivalent attitude toward scriptural authority. -
Studies in Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Hermeneutics (4) the Vyakhyayukti by Vasubandhu1
STUDIES IN INDO-TIBETAN BUDDHIST HERMENEUTICS (4) THE VYAKHYAYUKTI BY VASUBANDHU1 BY PETER C. VERHAGEN (0) Introduction. A considerable portion of the extraordinarily extensive and diverse lit- erature which has been produced in the Indian and Tibetan Buddhist tra- ditions throughout their long history belongs to the genre of the com- mentary. Either offering comments directly on a basic text or —quite frequently— commenting on another commentary, or giving a survey or synopsis of a basic text and / or its commentaries, a very large part of the Buddhist scholastical literature has come down to us in the form of a commentary. Nonetheless, surprisingly few treatises are extant in these literatures that deal specifically with the theory and practice of compos- ing such commentaries on the sacred scripture. It is my intention to devote a number of articles in this series to this genre of the commentator's manual. As the first of these, the present article will focus on one particular specimen of this type of text, namely the Vyakhyayukti attributed to Vasubandhu. In the Buddhological sec- ondary literature, very little investigation of this genre has been docu- mented. For Vyakhyayukti we have a few studies2 which are mainly of a preliminary or fragmentary nature. By far the most important single 1 This research was made possible by a subsidy of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek, NWO). Cordial thanks are due to Professor T.E. Vetter (Leiden University, emeritus) for care- fully reading draft versions of this article and providing a number of valuable suggestions for improvement.