This event is an online panel, and can be attended online via Zoom.
Virtual Symposium: Other Power V: The Final Words on its Prevalence in Buddhism
This event is made possible by the generous support of The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation, co-sponsored by the International Association of Shin Buddhist Studies (IASBS).
We are delighted to host this virtual symposium entitled:
Other Power IV:
Other Power: the Final Words on its Prevalence in Buddhism
About this Series
This virtual symposium is the fifth 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 four symposia as well as video recordings and text Q&A, may be found below.
About this Event
In this fifth and final gathering of the series of annual symposia that began in 2020, four of the leading scholars in their respective fields will share their views on the topic of Other Power. The topics addressed can be found in detail below.
These presentations will bring to consummation the growing recognition among scholars and laypersons that the dimensions of Other Power — contrary to the image — are prevalent throughout the Buddhist traditions.
About the Panelists and their Papers
Stephen Jenkins, Professor Emeritus, CalPoly Humboldt University
Other Power Paths of Faith to Radiant ‘Dharmalogical’ Lands of Bliss in Mainstream Abhidharma and Narrative Traditions
Through stūpa worship, buddhānusmṛti, love for Buddha, and “a single mind of faith to the marrow of one’s bones,” Ābhidharmikas such as Buddhaghosa aspired to rebirth in śuddha-āvāsa and sukha-vihāras ideal for receiving Buddhist teachings and attaining arhatship. Through devotion, one can overcome extreme bad karma and attain birth in such “happy lands” without the retrogression normally entailed by heavenly birth. The Buddha is presented as the ideal guide to such rebirth and the engine for such attainment, even for those without merit or having great sin [i.e. without self-power], was the merit-field of the Buddha. The Pali Suttas offer instruction on how to attain super longevity in radiant, pure, and “happy lands” through devotion and focused deathbed aspiration practices, strikingly resonant with East Asian rituals. Calling out “Namo Buddha” at the approach of death was a common practice meant to result in rescue or auspicious rebirth. This paper reveals parallels and antecedents in mainstream Buddhism for pure land traditions which became enduring core aspects of Indian Mahāyāna.
Other Power Paths of Faith to Radiant ‘Dharmalogical’ Lands of Bliss in Mainstream Abhidharma and Narrative Traditions
Through stūpa worship, buddhānusmṛti, love for Buddha, and “a single mind of faith to the marrow of one’s bones,” Ābhidharmikas such as Buddhaghosa aspired to rebirth in śuddha-āvāsa and sukha-vihāras ideal for receiving Buddhist teachings and attaining arhatship. Through devotion, one can overcome extreme bad karma and attain birth in such “happy lands” without the retrogression normally entailed by heavenly birth. The Buddha is presented as the ideal guide to such rebirth and the engine for such attainment, even for those without merit or having great sin [i.e. without self-power], was the merit-field of the Buddha. The Pali Suttas offer instruction on how to attain super longevity in radiant, pure, and “happy lands” through devotion and focused deathbed aspiration practices, strikingly resonant with East Asian rituals. Calling out “Namo Buddha” at the approach of death was a common practice meant to result in rescue or auspicious rebirth. This paper reveals parallels and antecedents in mainstream Buddhism for pure land traditions which became enduring core aspects of Indian Mahāyāna.
Stephen Jenkins is Professor Emeritus of Religion at CalPoly Humboldt University, received a doctorate from Harvard in 1999. His research centers on concepts of compassion, their ontological grounding and ethical implications. Recent examples include “Buddha in the Ring of Fire,” in Cambridge Companion to Religion and War, (2023) and “Compassion Blesses the Compassionate” in Buddhist Visions of the Good Life for All, (2021). Currently, he is writing a book on the Indic origins of pure land traditions. A preliminary publication from that project is “Heavenly Rebirth and Buddhist Soteriology,” in The Oxford Handbook of Buddhist Practice, (2022).
Jacqueline Stone, Professor Emerita, Princeton University
By the Power of the Lotus Sūtra: The Relational Nature of Buddhahood in Nichiren’s Thought
The Lotus Sūtra promises its devotees worldly benefits, security for the next life, and rapid realization of buddhahood. Lotus devotees across Asia have revered, enshrined, copied, and recited the sūtra as a source of soteriological power. The Japanese Buddhist figure Nichiren (1222-1282) understood that power as enabling ordinary persons (bonbu) to become buddhas. An ardent Lotus advocate and fierce critic of Pure Land teachings, Nichiren drew on nondual Tiantai/Tendai metaphysics and Lotus devotional traditions to frame the dynamics of Lotus Sūtra practice as neither self-power nor Other-Power but encompassing both. Activated by the practitioner’s faith—expressed in chanting the sūtra’s daimoku or title (Namu Myōhō-renge-kyō) —the power of the Lotus manifests both internally and externally. This understanding underlies Nichiren’s claim that the faith of Lotus practitioners would transform the outer world into a buddha land. Nichiren’s account of the daimoku seems to allow for its interpretation both as a form of “stimulus-response” (kannō dōkō), as when buddhas, bodhisattvas, or deities respond to petitionary prayers, and as a mode of contemplation for discerning the buddha in one’s mind; the ontological basis, in either case, is the same. This perspective invites a rethinking of an assumed divide between devotional and meditative practices.
By the Power of the Lotus Sūtra: The Relational Nature of Buddhahood in Nichiren’s Thought
The Lotus Sūtra promises its devotees worldly benefits, security for the next life, and rapid realization of buddhahood. Lotus devotees across Asia have revered, enshrined, copied, and recited the sūtra as a source of soteriological power. The Japanese Buddhist figure Nichiren (1222-1282) understood that power as enabling ordinary persons (bonbu) to become buddhas. An ardent Lotus advocate and fierce critic of Pure Land teachings, Nichiren drew on nondual Tiantai/Tendai metaphysics and Lotus devotional traditions to frame the dynamics of Lotus Sūtra practice as neither self-power nor Other-Power but encompassing both. Activated by the practitioner’s faith—expressed in chanting the sūtra’s daimoku or title (Namu Myōhō-renge-kyō) —the power of the Lotus manifests both internally and externally. This understanding underlies Nichiren’s claim that the faith of Lotus practitioners would transform the outer world into a buddha land. Nichiren’s account of the daimoku seems to allow for its interpretation both as a form of “stimulus-response” (kannō dōkō), as when buddhas, bodhisattvas, or deities respond to petitionary prayers, and as a mode of contemplation for discerning the buddha in one’s mind; the ontological basis, in either case, is the same. This perspective invites a rethinking of an assumed divide between devotional and meditative practices.
Jacqueline Stone is Professor Emerita in the Religion Department of Princeton University. Her chief research field is Japanese Buddhism. Much of her work focuses on the reception history of the Lotus Sūtra, particularly the Tendai and Nichiren Buddhist traditions. She is presently working on a book-length study of Nichiren. Stone is the author of Original Enlightenment and the Transformation of Medieval Japanese Buddhism (1999), and Right Thoughts at the Last Moment: Buddhist Deathbed Practices in Early Medieval Japan (2016). Currently she heads the Kuroda Institute for the Study of Buddhism.
Marcus Bingenheimer, Associate Professor, Temple University
Wang Rixiu’s Longshu jingtuwen (1162 CE) and the Pure Land tradition in East Asia
The “Essays on the Pure Land from Longshu” (Longshu Jingtuwen 龍舒淨土文) (1162 CE) by Wang Rixiu 王日休 (1105-1173) is one of the first extensive texts on Pure Land Buddhism by a layperson. Wang’s Essays have come to be seen as an orthodox presentation of Chinese Pure Land practice and for the last eight-hundred years have been widely cited and reprinted. Their influence can be seen in the rise of the Pure Land Schools in 13th century Japan as well as in the 20th century Pure Land revival centered on Yinguang, considered the most recent “patriarch” of Chinese Pure Land Buddhism.
We will trace the history of the text from its non-canonical beginnings in the 12th century, to its first inclusion in a canonical edition in the Wanli period and the continuation of extra-canonical editions until today. This enables us to identify the stemmatic relationship between editions as well as revealing the “best” and the “worst” available edition. We will argue for its pervasive influence on East Asian Pure Land Buddhism based on the spread of its editions, records of its use by leading Pure Land figures, and quantitative measures regarding textual reuse in later works. Finally, what was Wang’s understanding of Other Power and how does it relate to other understandings of Pure Land in his time?
Wang Rixiu’s Longshu jingtuwen (1162 CE) and the Pure Land tradition in East Asia
The “Essays on the Pure Land from Longshu” (Longshu Jingtuwen 龍舒淨土文) (1162 CE) by Wang Rixiu 王日休 (1105-1173) is one of the first extensive texts on Pure Land Buddhism by a layperson. Wang’s Essays have come to be seen as an orthodox presentation of Chinese Pure Land practice and for the last eight-hundred years have been widely cited and reprinted. Their influence can be seen in the rise of the Pure Land Schools in 13th century Japan as well as in the 20th century Pure Land revival centered on Yinguang, considered the most recent “patriarch” of Chinese Pure Land Buddhism.
We will trace the history of the text from its non-canonical beginnings in the 12th century, to its first inclusion in a canonical edition in the Wanli period and the continuation of extra-canonical editions until today. This enables us to identify the stemmatic relationship between editions as well as revealing the “best” and the “worst” available edition. We will argue for its pervasive influence on East Asian Pure Land Buddhism based on the spread of its editions, records of its use by leading Pure Land figures, and quantitative measures regarding textual reuse in later works. Finally, what was Wang’s understanding of Other Power and how does it relate to other understandings of Pure Land in his time?
Marcus Bingenheimer is Associate Professor of Religion at Temple University. He taught Buddhist Studies and Digital Humanities for six years in Taiwan, and held visiting positions at universities in Korea, Japan, France, Thailand, and Singapore. Since 2001, he has supervised numerous projects concerning the digitization of Buddhist culture. His main research interests are Buddhist history and historiography, early sūtra literature, and how to apply computational approaches to research in the Humanities. He has written and edited a handful of books and some sixty peer-reviewed articles.Currently he is working on the Longshu jingtuwen 龍舒淨土文, a 12th century Buddhist text and Buddhist temples in Southeast Asia. He is also trying to better understand and evaluate Machine Translation of Buddhist text.
James C. Dobbins, Professor Emeritus, Oberlin College, Ohio
The Convergence of Self-Power and Other-Power in the Thought of D. T. Suzuki
Daisetsu (Daisetz) Teitarō Suzuki (1870–1966) was a world-renowned interpreter and promoter of Buddhism in the mid-twentieth century. He published extensively in both Japanese and English, and became famous for spreading Zen to the West. He also developed a deep and enduring interest in Pure Land Buddhism. In his interpretations, Suzuki drew extensively from traditional Buddhist ideas, including self-power (jiriki) and other-power (tariki), as well as from Western concepts such as religious experience and mysticism. He treated self-power and other-power as objective analytical categories for classifying religion rather than as simple apologetic claims of the Pure Land tradition to defend its teachings and practices. He tended to apply self-power to Zen and other-power to Pure Land, as is common in Buddhist hermeneutics, but he went on to problematize this distinction by explicating the highest experience in each to be a state of “letting go” and passivity. In doing so, he also drew on Western themes common in the study of religion in the early twentieth century. This paper will explore and analyze Suzuki’s understanding of self-power and other-power, especially as they apply to Zen and Pure Land Buddhism.
The Convergence of Self-Power and Other-Power in the Thought of D. T. Suzuki
Daisetsu (Daisetz) Teitarō Suzuki (1870–1966) was a world-renowned interpreter and promoter of Buddhism in the mid-twentieth century. He published extensively in both Japanese and English, and became famous for spreading Zen to the West. He also developed a deep and enduring interest in Pure Land Buddhism. In his interpretations, Suzuki drew extensively from traditional Buddhist ideas, including self-power (jiriki) and other-power (tariki), as well as from Western concepts such as religious experience and mysticism. He treated self-power and other-power as objective analytical categories for classifying religion rather than as simple apologetic claims of the Pure Land tradition to defend its teachings and practices. He tended to apply self-power to Zen and other-power to Pure Land, as is common in Buddhist hermeneutics, but he went on to problematize this distinction by explicating the highest experience in each to be a state of “letting go” and passivity. In doing so, he also drew on Western themes common in the study of religion in the early twentieth century. This paper will explore and analyze Suzuki’s understanding of self-power and other-power, especially as they apply to Zen and Pure Land Buddhism.
James C. Dobbins is the Fairchild Professor Emeritus of Religion and East Asian Studies at Oberlin College in Ohio. He is the author of “D.T. Suzuki: A Brief Account of His Life” (The Eastern Buddhist, 3.2.2, 2022) and the editor of The Selected Works of D.T. Suzuki, Vol. 2: Pure Land (2015). His other works include Jōdo Shinshū: Shin Buddhism in Medieval Japan (2002), Letters of the Nun Eshinni: Images of Pure Land Buddhism in Medieval Japan (2004), and Behold the Buddha: Religious Meanings of Japanese Buddhist Icons (2020).
About the Organizer & Moderator
Kenneth K. Tanaka is Professor Emeritus of Musashino University, Tokyo. He 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.
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