VOLUME 13 (NOVEMBER 2017) ISSN: 2047-1076 Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies The Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies A Recognised Independent http://www.ocbs.org Centre of the University of Oxford JOURNAL OF THE OXFORD CENTRE FOR BUDDHIST STUDIES volume 13 November 2017 Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies Volume 13 November 2017 ISSN: 2047-1076 Published by the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies www.ocbs.org Wolfson College, Linton Road, Oxford, OX2 6UD, United Kingdom Authors retain copyright of their articles. Editorial board Prof. Richard Gombrich (General Editor): [email protected] Prof. John Holder: [email protected] Dr Tse-fu Kuan: [email protected] Dr Alex Wynne: [email protected] All submissions should be sent to: [email protected] Production team Operations and Development Manager: Steven Egan Development Consultant: Dr Paola Tinti Journal production and cover illustration by www.ivancious.com Annual subscription rates Students: £20 Individuals: £30 Institutions: £45 Universities: £55 Countries from the following list receive 50% discount on all the above prices: Bangladesh, Burma, Laos, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Pakistan, all African Countries For more information on subscriptions, please go to www.ocbs.org Contents Contents 4 List of Contributors 6 Editorial Richard Gombrich 8 The Luminous Mind in Theravāda and Dharmaguptaka Discourses Bhikkhu Anālayo 10 Form is (Not) Emptiness: The Enigma at the Heart of the Heart Sutra. Jayarava Attwood 52 Portrayal of the Didactic through the Narrative The structure of Aśvaghoṣa’s Buddhacarita Tanya Bharat Verma 81 Sleeping Equipment in Early Buddhism From India to China Ann Heirman 98 Putting smṛti back into sati (Putting remembrance back into mindfulness) Bryan Levman 121 An Overview of Buddhist Precepts in Taiwan and Mainland China Tzu-Lung Chiu 150 Samādhi Power in Imperial Japan Brian Victoria 197 List of Contributors Bhikkhu Anālayo specializes in early Buddhist studies. He is a professor at the University of Hamburg and a member of the Numata Center for Buddhist Studies. Jayarava Attwood is a member of the Triratna Buddhist Order, and on the editorial board of the Western Buddhist Review. His academic background is in the sciences and librarianship, and his main research interest is in the history of Early Buddhist thought. [email protected] Tzu-Lung Chiu works as a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Germany. Previously she was a Postdoctoral Fellow in Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2016 she received a Ph.D. at Ghent University, Belgium. Her research interests include Indian Vinaya rules, contemporary Chinese Buddhism, and Buddhist nuns. [email protected] Ann Heirman, Ph.D. (1998) in Oriental Languages and Cultures, is professor of Chinese Language and Culture and head of the Centre for Buddhist Studies at Ghent University in Belgium. She has published extensively on Chinese Buddhist monasticism and the development of disciplinary rules, including Rules for Nuns according to the Dharmaguptakavinaya (Motilal Banarsidass, 2002), The Spread of Buddhism (Brill, ed. with Stephan Peter Bumbacher, 2007), and A Pure Mind in a Clean Body (with Mathieu Torck, Academia Press, 2012). [email protected] Bryan Levman (PhD, University of Toronto) is a Visiting Scholar in the Department for the Study of Religion, Buddhist Studies, where he teaches Pāli. His main academic interest is the early language of Buddhism and transmission of the canon. [email protected] Tanya Bharat Verma (MPhil, Jawaharlal Nehru University) is a research scholar pursuing her PhD from the Centre for Historical Studies, School of Social Sciences, JNU. Her academic interests include the study of ancient Indian social and religious history, especially comparative religious studies, and the narrative structuring of texts. [email protected] 6 Brian Daizen Victoria M.A. in Buddhist Studies, Komazawa University, Ph.D. Temple University. Major writings include Zen At War (2nd, enlarged ed.); Zen War Stories; Gaijin de ari, Zen bozu de ari (As a Foreigner, As a Zen Priest; autobiographical); Zen Master Dōgen (coauthored with Prof. Yokoi Yūhō of Aichi-gakuin University); and a translation of The Zen Life by Sato Koji. He is currently a special lecturer at Sōtō Zen-affiliated Hōkyō-ji temple in Fukui Prefecture and a Research Fellow of the OCBS. [email protected] 7 Editorial Richard Gombrich While preparing this volume, I have had the pleasure of being sent the article by “Melody” Tzu-Lung Chiu on how – to what extent and in what spirit – Buddhist nuns in mainland China and in Taiwan are observing the precepts laid down in the ancient Vinaya canon which they have vowed to live by. She has personally interviewed face to face 35 nuns, 20 on the Mainland and 15 in Taiwan; they live at one of 7 nunneries on the Mainland and 4 nunneries in Taiwan, and Dr Chiu chose those nunneries to give the widest range of institutional type. (Dr. Chiu has built her knowledge of the Vinaya on the distinguished research of the scholar who supervised her doctorate at the University of Ghent, Ann Heirman, whose own thesis was published in 2002 as The Discipline in Four Parts, Rules for Nuns According to the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya. 3 vols. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass; and it gives us great satisfaction that in this same volume we can also publish an article in this area by Prof. Heirman.) Dr. Chiu’s article is full of interesting information on points of detail; but most interesting of all, to my mind, is the general attitude which the nuns display to living by the rules. Nearly every nun she interviewed spontaneously explained that what was essential was not the letter of the precepts but the spirit. They had learnt that the function of the rules was to achieve nirvana for themselves and all sentient beings. The rules acted as a constant reminder to be alert and so behave that their behaviour could cause no harm or annoyance to others. Changes in time, place and circumstance could greatly affect how one regarded the letter of the law, but once one had understood the Buddha’s intention when the precept was first promulgated, one could and should use one’s own judgment. One example must here suffice. There is a rule against eating garlic. The Buddha laid it down when nuns and their assistants responded to a donation of garlic by a layman by digging up his entire crop, leaving nothing. The spirit of the Buddha’s ruling, a nun told Dr Chiu, was that monastics should be concerned about their lay supporters’ economic condition. Nowadays this would mean, for instance, that if a layman promised to donate $100 every month for her support, that was acceptable; but she would transgress the precept against eating garlic if she asked the layman to give her $30,000, leaving him no money for himself. We students of Buddhism are well aware that when asked by villagers called the Kālāmas how to sort out the variety of advice and instruction they were given on how to behave, the Buddha told them that they should take no teaching on trust, but test it on the touchstone of their own experience. Here, however, we recall another of the Buddha’s most basic teachings. In the Alagaddūpama Sutta the Buddha preached with great emphasis that it was misguided to attach importance to his precise words: what counted was the message those words were intended to convey. (It is an irony that so many people have failed to understand that this is the message of his famous parable of the raft (kullūpama), which comes in this text.) Though this sutta was long ago translated into Chinese along with the rest of the Majjhima Nikāya = Madhyama Āgama, it is most unlikely that the Chinese nuns whom Dr Chiu interviewed know of it. But they do not need to know the words of that text, because they are steeped in the message they convey – and, more broadly, in the pragmatism that the Buddha constantly showed. It happened that I was teaching the Alagaddūpama Sutta to a Pali pupil in the same week as I copy-edited Dr Chiu’s article, and it struck me how textual study and anthropological fieldwork can complement each other and enhance our understanding of the Buddhist tradition. I suspect that Buddhism (as taught by the Buddha) is the only religion in the world in which every message is accompanied by another (a meta-message?) which says, “Don’t rush to take this message literally. Look at how it originated, and use your judgment.” We must be grateful to Dr Chiu and her informants for the reminder. 9 The Luminous Mind in Theravāda and Dharmaguptaka Discourses Anālayo I am indebted to Bhikkhu Brahmāli, Bhikkhunī Dhammadinnā, Michael Radich, Daniel Stuart, and Joseph Walser for comments on a draft version of this paper. Abstract With this article I examine Pāli discourse references to luminosity of the mind in the light of their parallels, with a view to discerning early stages in the development of a notion that has had a considerable impact on Buddhist thought and practice. Introduction The present paper stands in some degree of continuity with another article in which I examined fire miracles attributed to the Buddha in several discourses.1 Closer study brought to light instances of such miracles that can be identified as the effect of subsequent developments of the texts in question, quite probably resulting from metaphorical references to fire being interpreted literally. One example from a Theravāda discourse is the Pāṭika-sutta of the Dīgha- nikāya, where the Buddha departs by levitation after having attained the fire element and then emanates a flame as high as seven palm trees.