This special section of Pacific World Journal is a continuation of the conversations held during a panel that I organized for the Buddhism Unit of the 2022 American Academy of Religion (AAR) conference. The panel, titled “Performing Time in Buddhist Literature: Creative Reimaginings of Past, Present, and Future,” included myself and co-panelists Shayne Dahl, Sinae Kim, and Adam Miller, with…
Year: 2023
Sutra as Speech Act: Shugendō Rivalries and the Heart Sutra in Northeastern Japan
In this article, I explore some of the ways that the Heart Sutra is used by mountain ascetics in Dewa Sanzan, a sacred mountain range in Yamagata Prefecture, Japan, where I conducted twenty-four months of intermittent ethnographic fieldwork between 2012–2019. Dewa Sanzan is comprised of Mount Haguro, Mount Gassan, and Mount Yudono. There is a longstanding historical conflict between Buddhist-oriented…
The Synchronicity of Preaching-Hearing- Enlightenment: Buddhist Preachers’ Performing “[At] One Time” (Yishi 一時) in Late Medieval China
This paper examines how Buddhist preachers in late medieval China expanded the meaning of the temporal register of an oft-used phrase “[at] one time” (Ch. yishi 一時, Skt. ekasmin samaye, Pāli ekaṃ samayaṃ) in the opening formula of Buddhist scriptures. Through an analysis of the “sutra lecture texts” (jiangjingwen 講經文) found in the Dunhuang manuscripts, this study explores how these…
An Uncommon Narrative Opening: Five Perfections in Tantra of the Sun
Shifting nidānas in Buddhist scripture signal different possibilities for what it means to embody the time of liberation, in short, buddhahood. This paper provides a close reading of the nidāna of an important, never-before studied Dzogchen Heart Essence (Tib. Snying thig) tantra called Secret Tantra of the Sun: Blazing Luminous Matrix of Samantabhadrī (Tib. Kun tu bzang mo klong gsal…
Guest Article: Richard K. Payne
In this issue of Pacific World: Journal of the Institute of Buddhist Studies, I’m happy to introduce a new feature, Guest Articles. In this section of the journal we highlight the work of scholars who have made significant contributions to the field of Buddhist studies. I can think of no better scholar to commence our first issue than Dr. Richard…
Buddhist Economics, and the Economics of Buddhism: Conceptual Categories and Epistemological Reflections toward a New Field of Study
This essay delineates a distinction between two fields of inquiry: Buddhist economics and the economics of Buddhism. The distinction is made on the basis that the former is a prescriptive and ethical project and the latter is a descriptive and academic one. In other words, Buddhist economics suggests how Buddhists should behave economically, and the economics of Buddhism examines how…
REVIEW: Monks, Money, and Morality, edited by Brumann, Abrahms-Kavunenko, and Świtek
Monks, Money, and Morality: The Balancing Act of Contemporary Buddhism. Edited by Christoph Brumann, Saskia Abrahms-Kavunenko, and Beata Świtek. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. 255 pages. $29.95 (paperback). ISBN 9781350213753. Religion and economics is an area of ever-increasing scholarship, particularly within studies of Buddhism, despite still being in its early stages. The first book-length entry to Buddhism and economics, Buddhism and…
REVIEW: Dogen: Japan’s Original Zen Teacher, by Steven Heine
Dogen: Japan’s Original Zen Teacher. By Steven Heine. Boulder, CO: Shambhala Publications, 2021. xxiii + 333 pages. $29.95 (paperback). ISBN 9781611809800. Steven Heine, full professor at Florida International University and editor of Japan Studies Review, is the author, editor, or co-editor of nearly three dozen books, nearly a dozen of which are about the thirteenth- century Japanese Zen monk and…
REVIEW: Hungry Ghosts, by Andy Rotman
Hungry Ghosts. By Andy Rotman. Somerville MA: Wisdom Publications, 2021. 224 pages + 8 color repro- ductions. $32.00 (paperback). ISBN 9781614297215. Andy Rotman is an acknowledged expert in Indian Buddhist narrative literature, and his two volumes of translations of Sanskrit stories from the Divyāvadāna have broadened and greatly enriched our understanding of early Indian Buddhism. We are lucky to have…
REVIEW: Conjuring the Buddha: Ritual Manuals in Early Tantric Buddhism, by Jacob P. Dalton
Conjuring the Buddha: Ritual Manuals in Early Tantric Buddhism. By Jacob P. Dalton. Columbia University Press, 2023. 334 pages. $35.00 (paperback). ISBN 9780231205832. In Conjuring the Buddha: Ritual Manuals in Early Tantric Buddhism, Jacob P. Dalton employs both material and textual archaeologies to illustrate a tantric Buddhist tradition in flux at various transitional points in its development. He does this…