HRHS 8455 Topics in Buddhist Thought: Buddhism, Meat, and Vegetarianism [Or, Buddhism and Food] Spring 2016

HRHS 8455 Topics in Buddhist Thought: Buddhism, Meat, and Vegetarianism [or, Buddhism and Food] Spring 2016

Instructor: Lisa Grumbach [email protected] Skype: lisagrumbach

Overview: This class looks at the history of Buddhism in Asia through the lens of food. Although Buddhism is often thought of as espousing vegetarianism and eschewing alcohol, this view perhaps overly relies on textual sources and an orthodox approach to religion. By examining food practices—what monastics and laypeople actually do with food and drink—we will discover alternative representations of Buddhism that link the religion to agriculture, fertility, family, reproduction, defilement, and transgression. These aspects of life may be considered rather “non-Buddhist,” but in the various cultures of Asia it is through the mundane that one enters into the transcendent.

NOTE: This online course will use Skype for weekly discussions.

Student Learning Objectives: Students will recognize that much of what is taken for normative Buddhist practice is not necessarily what is practiced in Asia. Students will appreciate the profound impact of agriculture and food on the development of Buddhist thought and practice. Students will become aware of the gender issues involved in discussing food and religion. Students will understand how vegetarianism developed only in some (East Asian) traditions of Buddhism. Students will understand how food practices have played a role in the creation of discrimination in Asian societies, including ideas about religion and salvation. Students will leave the class with an appreciation of the diverse practices that Buddhists are concerned with, from fertility and family related practices, to meat and agricultural rituals, and even the embracing of drunkenness in some contexts.

Required Texts (3 texts): 1. Roel Sterckx, ed., Of Tripod and Palate: Food, Politics, and Religion in Traditional China (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005). 2. R.S. Khare, ed., The Eternal Food: Gastronomic Ideas and Experiences of Hindus and Buddhists (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992). 3. Alan Dundes, Two Tales of Crow and Sparrow (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997).

Required Assignments: Weekly class participation, paper

Grading: Participation 50% Paper 50%

HRHS 4556 Topics in Buddhist Thought: Buddhism, Meat, and Vegetarianism (Buddhism and Food) Spring 2016

TENTATIVE SYLLABUS

[C] = Copy available on the class Moodle site.

Week 1 Introductions Rice Pudding and the History of Buddhism

I. Theoretical Settings: Food, Body, Self, Purity/Transgression, Fertility, Transcendence, Immortality

Week 2 The Buddha Eats: Food, Sexuality, and Fertility in Buddhism — Eternal Food, Introduction and Ch. 1 “Food with Saints” — [C] “The Laywoman Sujata” from Strong, The Experience of Buddhism — Online versions of the Sujata story (for example, http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/awakening101/sujata.html)

Week 3 The Meanings of Eating and Not Eating in Asian Religions — Eternal Food, Ch. 7 “Annambrahman: Cultural Models, Meanings and Aesthetics of Hindu Food” — Eternal Food, Ch. 6 “Food Essence and the Essence of Experience” — [C] Katherine E. Ulrich, “Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain Dietary Polemics in South India,” History of Religions 46/3 (2007): 228–61.

II. Rice (Grains) and Meat in Buddhism and Asian Cultures

Week 4 Dāna: Rice and Meat Offerings in South Asian Buddhism — [C] Roy Hamilton and Thitipol Kanteewong, “Offering the New Rice to the Buddha in Mae Chaem, Northern Thailand,” in The Art of Rice: Spirit and Sustenance in Asia, Roy Hamilton, ed., (Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 2003), 176–183. — [C] Ruth Gerson, “The Ghost Festival of Dan Sai, Loei Province, Thailand,” in The Art of Rice, 184–199. — [C] Vu Hong Thuat and Roy Hamilton, “Tro Tram Festival and the Veneration of Ngo Thi Thanh in a Vietnamese Village,” in The Art of Rice, 216–239.

Week 5 Eating and Self-Cultivation: Food and the Way in China — Tripod and Palate Ch. 2, Sterckx, “Food and Philosophy in Early China” — Tripod and Palate Ch. 3, Graziani, “When Princes Awake in Kitchens: Zhuangzi’s Rewriting of a Culinary Myth” — Tripod and Palate Ch. 5, Campany, “Eating Better than Gods and Ancestors”

Week 6 The Regulation of Meat-eating in Chinese Religions — Tripod and Palate, Ch. 9, Kieschnick, “Buddhist Vegetarianism in China” — [C] John Kieschnick, “Food,” in The Eminent Monk: Buddhist Ideals in Medieval Chinese Hagiography, 22–28. — Tripod and Palate, Ch. 11, Goossaert, “The Beef Taboo and the Sacrificial Structure of Late Imperial Chinese Society”

Week 7 Feeding the Ancestors: The Monk as Family Man and Provider — [C] Stephen Taiser, The Ghost Festival in Medieval China (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988): Ch. 3 An Episodic History of the Ghost Festival, 43–82. Ch. 4 The Mythological Background, 113–139.

Week 8 Reading Week: no class

III. Tea and Alcohol

Week 9 The Drunken Monk: Alcohol and the Ideals of mastrāma (the intoxicated connoisseur), wuwei 無為 (spontaneity) and burei 無礼 (“without propriety”) — Tripod and Palate, Ch. 10, Benn, “Buddhism, Alchohol, and Tea in Medieval China” — [C] John Kieschnick, “The Meat-eating, Wine-drinking Monks,” in The Eminent Monk, 51–66.

Week 10 Tea and East Asian Buddhism — [C] John Kieschnick, “Tea” in The Impact of Buddhism on Chinese Material Culture, 262–275. — [C] H. Paul Varley and George Elison, “The Culture of Tea: From Its Origins to Sen no Rikyū,” in Warlords, Artists, and Commoners: Japan in the Sixteenth Century, edited by George Elison and Bardwell Smith (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1981), 187–222.

Week 11 The Japanese Tea Ceremony: Is It Related to Zen? — Herbert Plutschow, “An Anthropological Perspective on the Japanese Tea Ceremony,” Anthropoetics 5, no. 1 (1999), online: http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/ap0501/tea.htm — Selections from Kakuzo Okakura, The Book of Tea — Selections from A.L. Sadler, The Japanese Tea Ceremony — Selections from Sen Genshitsu, Sen Genshitsu Talks about the Enjoyment of Tea

IV. Leftovers (ucchiṣṭha) and the Theory/Theology of Category Formation (Marginality, Caste, Transgression, Transcendence)

Week 13 Defilement, God’s Leftovers (prasāda) and Buddhist Faith (prasāda) — Eternal Food, Ch. 5 “Pancamirtan: God’s Washings as Food” — Dundes, Two Tales of Crow and Sparrow, 1–55. — Optional: Eternal Food, Ch. 8 “Food for Thought”

Week 14 Food-defilement, Religion, Discrimination — Dundes, Two Tales of Crow and Sparrow, 56–137. — Harada Nobuo, “Niku no hitei to sabetsu no shingyō” 肉の否定と差別の信行, in Rekishi no naka no kome to niku: Shokumotsu to tenno, sabetsu 歴史の中の米と肉：食物と天皇・差別

Week 15 Papers due; students briefly share paper topics in class.