Virtual Symposium: Other Power III: “Other Power” in Tibetan, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese Buddhism
We are delighted to host this virtual symposium entitled:
Other Power III:
“Other Power” in Tibetan, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese Buddhism
About this Series
This virtual symposium is the third in a series of panels of scholars investigating various dimensions of the “Other Power” in Buddhism organized by Prof. Kenneth Tanaka. Links to the first two symposia as well as video recordings and text Q&A, may be found below.
About this Event
In this third panel in the series on “Other Power in Buddhism,” we expand our scope to include materials from Tibetan Buddhism while continuing to include new topics from the East Asian Buddhist sphere. The first presentation by Kenneth Tanaka will summarize the main points from the previous two panels, focusing on thematic issues related to Other Power. Next, Todd Lewis will expand the paradigm of Other Power by embracing broader Mahayana ritual practices that incorporate, for example, special words (mantra and dhāraṇī) that can generate both transcendental and pragmatic blessings. The third presentation by Richard McBride will analyze Other Power in Korean Buddhism within a larger exegetical context that includes the issues of the arousal of the aspiration to enlightenment (bodhicitta) and the objective of reaching a state of non-retrogression. The last presentation by Charles Jones will report on an international debate that took place on the “self-power vs. Other Power” controversy between Chinese and Japanese intellectuals in the early part of the 20th century.
Kenneth K. Tanaka, Professor Emeritus, Musashino University, Tokyo
Summarizing the Past Two Panels: Focusing on the Main Thematic Issues
The first panel, held in 2020, explored manifestations of Other Power in Indian, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese Buddhism, revealing the prevalence of “Other Power” throughout a wide spectrum of Mahayana Buddhism. These examples went beyond Pure Land Buddhism, which is often seen, incorrectly, by many to be the only school to promote Other Power. The second panel, held in 2021, was entitled “The Radical Other Power of Shinran (1173-1263): A Normative or an Outlier Position in Mahayana Buddhism?” For this panel, scholars examined some elements of the historical background that led to Shinran’s position as well as its manifestations in premodern and modern times. After summarizing the above points, I plan to set the stage for this year’s panel presentation by laying out some of the main themes of this Other Power series.
Kenneth Tanaka received his education at Stanford (B.A.), a temple in Thailand, Institute of Buddhist Studies, Berkeley (M.A.), Tokyo University (M.A.), and the Universiy of California, Berkeley (Ph.D.). After serving as Associate Professor and Assistant Dean at IBS for 11 years, and a resident priest for 3 years in a Shin temple in California, he taught at Musashino University for 20 years. He is the former President of the International Association of Shin Buddhist Studies (IASBS). His publications include The Dawn of Chinese Pure Land Buddhist Doctrine, Ocean: An Introduction to Jodo Shinshu Buddhism in America, and books in Japanese on Shin and American Buddhism. His books have been translated into Japanese, Chinese, and Portuguese. He is the 2017 recipient of the 27th Nakamura Hajime Eastern Study Prize, awarded by the Eastern Institute and the Indian Embassy, Tokyo.
Todd Lewis, Professor of Arts and Humanities at the College of the Holy Cross
Dharma as Power in Buddhist Tradition
In scholarly treatment of what constitutes “Dharma” as one of the three refuges (triśaraṇa) or three jewels (triratna) in the Buddhist tradition, the standard scholarly focus has been on its meaning as the Buddha’s “Teachings” or “Doctrines.” This habitual practice of restricting the interpretation of Dharma to doctrine only has had the effect of delimiting the understanding of what typical Buddhist householders characteristically took refuge in as devotees. This paper broadens the definitional range of what Dharma means by highlighting texts in which the Buddha speaks to reveal ritual practices. Prominent in this popular domain are paritta and rakṣā formuli disclosing special words (mantra and dhāraṇī) that, when chanted precisely, can generate both transcendental and pragmatic blessings. For most householders, who constituted the vast majority of adherents throughout the faith’s history, as well as for many monastics, rituals and recitations have been important resources; for them, taking refuge in the Dharma was less about embracing complex doctrinal beliefs and more about seeking protection from personal dangers to epidemics and other threats that recurrently struck communities in the pre-modern world. The refuge of mantra and dhāraṇī become even more prominent in Mahāyāna Buddhism, one factor underwriting the tradition’s extraordinary success in pan-Asian history. Stories abound of great monks using this “technology of the sacred” to cure or make it rain—pivotal acts that opened the door to Buddhism’s acceptance and expansion. This paper will examine how texts such as the Mañjuśrīmūlakalpa that specify complex ritual practices likewise highlight how the Dharma includes practical instructions on how good Buddhists can wield power in the universe through ritual. This configuration of Buddhist tradition is most clearly seen in Tibet and Nepal, and the paper will mention examples from them. The talk argues that extant ritual texts found in archives and libraries can serve as a metric of importance for properly characterizing Buddhism in praxis: the sheer number of manuscripts that were hand-copied (such as the Pañcarakṣā) support the proposition that rituals were at the center of Buddhism throughout history.
Todd Lewis is the Distinguished Professor of Arts and Humanities at the College of the Holy Cross. His primary research since 1979 has been on Newar Buddhism in the Kathmandu Valley and the history of praxis in Buddhism. Lewis has authored many articles on the Buddhist traditions of Nepal, and Popular Buddhist Texts from Nepal: Narratives and Rituals of Newar Buddhism) and the translation, Sugata Saurabha: A Poem on the Life of the Buddha by Chittadhar Hridaya of Nepal. His most recent publication, with Jinah Kim, is Dharma and Punya: Buddhist Ritual Art of Nepal (Brill 2019).
Richard D. McBride II, Professor and Chair of Asian and Near Eastern Languages at Brigham Young University
The Sinitic Buddhist Context of Wŏnhyo’s View of “Other Power”
How did the monk-exegete Wŏnhyo (617–686) of the Korean state of Silla understand the concept of “other power”? In contemporary scholarship, the concept of “other power” is almost exclusively associated with devotion for the Buddha Amitābha, with scholars hearkening back to the writings of Chinese Buddhist monks Tanluan (ca. 488–554) and Daochuo (562–645), who actively promoted the Amitābha cult in the sixth and seventh centuries. Although both Tanluan and Daochuo examined the concept of “other power” in their writings on Pure Land issues, their views must be analyzed within a larger exegetical context that includes the issues of the arousal of the aspiration to enlightenment (Skt. bodhicitta) and the objective of reaching a state of non-retrogression (Skt. avaivartika). This includes writings attributed to Nāgārjuna (ca. 50–150) and translated by Kumārajīva (343–413), as well as sūtras translated by Bodhiruci I (fl. 508–535). Although Wŏnhyo does not employ the term “other power” in his extant writings on Pure Land scriptures, his views on the topic can be inferred from his Doctrinal Essentials of the Larger Pure Land Sūtra (Muryangsu-gyŏng chongyo) and show a greater affinity to mainstream Sinitic scholarly views on the significance of arousing the aspiration to enlightenment.
Richard D. McBride II is Professor and Chair of Asian and Near Eastern Languages at Brigham Young University. He is the author of Domesticating the Dharma: Buddhist Cults and the Hwaŏm Synthesis (2008), Doctrine and Practice in Medieval Korean Buddhism: The Collected Works of Ŭich’ŏn (2017), and Aspiring to Enlightenment: Pure Land Buddhism in Silla Korea (2020). He is the author of numerous articles on Korean and Chinese Buddhism and early Korean history.
Charles B. Jones, Professor of Religion and Culture at The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC
This abstract was updated on Dec 07, 2022
A Debate Over Self-Power and Other-Power: The Nianfo yuantong of Ogurusu Kōchō and Yang Renshan’s Response
This paper explores part of a three-year controversy over Pure Land doctrine between a Japanese Jōdo Shinshū missionary to China named Ogurusu Kōchō (1831–1905) and the renowned lay Buddhist and publisher Yang Wenhui (or Yang Renshan, 1837–1911). Yang had received a copy of Hōnen’s Senchaku hongan nenbutusu shū (Anthology on the Nenbutusu of the Select Original Vow) as part of a cache of 300 Buddhist texts obtained from Japan. Finding its interpretation of Pure Land objectionable, he wrote some comments on it and sent it back to Japan, where it came to Ogurusu’s attention. Ogurusu defended Hōnen’s teaching with a work called Nianfo yuantong. Yang responded with a critique called Ping Xiaosuqi nianfo yuantong (Critique of Ogusuru’s Nianfo Yuantong). Ogurusu was by then too ill to respond further, so a fellow missionary, Ryūsen (1861–1931), took up Yang’s objections in a 1901 work called Nenbutsu entsū tudusen (Continuation of Nianfo Yuantong). With that the exchange ended. This paper presents a summary of the historical background of this controversy, reviews some of its arguments on self-power and other-power with specific reference to the generation of bodhicitta, and offers some conclusions.
Charles B. Jones is Ordinary Professor of Religion and Culture at The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. he earned his Ph.D. in History of Religions at the University of Virginia in 1996 with an emphasis on East Asian Buddhism. His dissertation became his first book, Buddhism in Taiwan: Religion and the State 1660-1990 (Hawaii 1999). Since then, he has researched and published in Buddhist-Christian Dialogue, the Jesuit Missions in late Ming dynasty China, and Pure Land Buddhism. His most recent publications include Chinese Pure Land Buddhism: Understanding a Tradition of Practice (Hawaii 2019), Pure Land: History, Tradition, and Practice (Shambhala 2021), and Taixu’s’’On the Establishment of the Pure Land in the Human Realm’: a Translation and Study (Bloomsbury Academic 2021).
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