February 23, 2022 | 4-4:30 p.m. | Online - Zoom Webinar
Speaker: Mark Blum, Professor, UC Berkeley
Moderator: Marta Sanvido, Shinjo Ito Postdoctoral Fellow in Japanese Buddhism, UC Berkeley
Center for Japanese Studies (CJS)
In the 18th century there were two separate movements in Japan that aimed to delegitimate the Mahāyāna sutras of Buddhism (the mainstay of institutional Buddhism since its arrival in the 6th century) as not actually deriving from the Buddha’s sermons in India. One was about advancing the discipline of critical historical scholarship, and the other was about resurrecting the ancient discipline of monasticism within the Buddhist clergy. The former came from a Confucian-trained scholar, the latter from Buddhist monks to bring more rigor to their communities. Both contributed to the anti-Buddhist hysteria (haibutsu kishaku) of the early Meiji period. But by the later Meiji period, a second wave of critical writing emerges that points to the same conclusions, but in this case the effort was aimed as modernizing Mahāyāna Buddhism in order to improve it. This latter effort arose in the context of the newly created academic field of Buddhist Studies, something born in Europe that was often swayed by the political agendas of nations in that part of the world. While both discourses led to a certain defensiveness among Buddhist institutions, the Edo-period effort was seen as polemic, while the Meiji-period scholarship was often seen as stimulating and challenging, forcing new, modern approaches to defining what Buddhism is, and ultimately leading to the conclusion that what may not be historically real may nonetheless be doctrinally true.
*Aspects of Japanese Studies showcases the research being done by members of the CJS community. Faculty, graduate students and alumni of CJS present a casual 15-minute online talk on their current work or key research topics in Japanese Studies. Talks are followed by questions and answers.