Series Four Volume 6

Buddhist Poetics in Medieval Sri Lanka: The Muvadev-dā-vata Reconsidered

This article offers a close reading of the twelfth-century Muvadev-dā-vata, one of the earliest Sinhala-language poetic works to model itself on the Sanskrit kāvya. While earlier studies of the Muvadev-dā- vata have tended to criticize it as a flawed retelling of a Pāli-language jātaka, I argue that the poem instead represents an attempt to seriously grapple with rather serious Buddhological questions: When ought one renounce their worldly status…

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Series Four Volume 6

Transcendent Understanding: Rennyo’s Soteriology and Plotinus’ Dialectic in Dialogue

This is an eclectic and experimental comparative philosophical analysis of the soteriological thought of Rennyo Shōnin, the eighth monshu of the Honganji temple of Jōdo Shinshū Buddhism, and Plotinus, the founder of Neoplatonism. Both thinkers emphasize the necessity of an understanding that transcends mere intellectual knowledge in the liberative process. Rennyo’s soteriology, articulated through his “fivefold method,” underscores the importance of past good conditions…

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