Theravāda Meditation: The Buddhist Transformation (Winston King)

Pacific World, 2021

Institute of Buddhist Studies Kate Crosby's new work makes available the results of years of very important research into the tradition of esoteric meditation in Southeast Asia. Crosby recovers what had been the most widespread form of Buddhist meditation in Southeast Asia prior to the modern period. In her introduction, Crosby explains that she uses the phrase the "old meditation" (borān kammaṭṭhāna) because the kind of meditation practice that she is examining existed prior to those promoted during the "revival period" that began in the nineteenth century, such as vipassanā or insight. The sequence of topics begins with an examination of attitudes during the colonial period, that is, the presumptions that affected the way in which Buddhism was understood. These were not only influential at the time, but continue to affect the perceptions of Southeast Asian Buddhism today. The "colonial gaze" trivialized and dismissed all kinds of meditation practice. Also important at this historical juncture was the introduction of a Cartesian style of dualism into the intellectual discourses in Southeast Asia. In the early modern period this led to a convergence of modernist styles of meditation with Western notions of a "mind science." 1 This Western conception of the power of the mind was itself rooted in an increasingly dualistic perspective in Western discourse during the nineteenth century, an "axiomatic separation of body and mind, or between physis and psyche…. For modernist

Hualin international journal of Buddhist studies, 2023

2015

A Less Traveled Path brings to light unique textual evidence of an important transitional moment in Indian Buddhism. In this book, Daniel Stuart introduces the recently discovered Sanskrit manuscript of a third- or fourth-century Buddhist Sanskrit text, the Saddharmasmṛtyupasthānasūtra, which sheds light on the so-called “Middle Period” of Indian Buddhism. The book argues that meditative practice, rhetoric, and philosophy were intimately tied to one another when the Saddharmasmṛtyupasthānasūtra was redacted, and that it serves as an important historical touchstone for understanding the development of Buddhist mind-centered metaphysics. The text offers perhaps the clearest available evidence for the process in which philosophical developments grew organically out of specific meditation practices rooted in the early canonical Buddhist tradition. It also evidences an emergent historical ideology of cosmic power, one that ties ethical conduct, contemplative knowledge, and literary practice to a spiritual goal of selfless cosmographical sovereignty. This development is historically significant because it marks a major shift in Indian Buddhist religious practice, which conditioned the emergence of fully developed Mahāyāna path schemes and power-oriented tantric ritual traditions in the centuries that followed the text’s compilation. The study includes a critical edition and translation of the text’s second chapter based on the recently discovered manuscript, the first installment of a series of critical editions of the chapters of the Saddharmasmṛtyupasthānasūtra. https://verlag.oeaw.ac.at/a-less-traveled-path-saddharmasmtyupasthnanstra-chapter-2

Master's thesis at the University of Colorado Boulder, 2017 This thesis examines the role of translation and the formation of Vajrayāna Buddhist subjects in religious transmission through an analysis of the tantric Buddhist ritual practice, the Sādhana of Mahāmudrā (SOM). Reported to be revealed as a Mind treasure (དགོང་གཏེར་) by the Tibetan reincarnate teacher Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche (ཆོས་རྒྱམ་དྲུང་པ་; 1940-1987) while on retreat in Bhutan in 1968, and subsequently translated into English by Trungpa Rinpoche and his student Richard Arthure (1940- ), the SOM played an important role in the early process of the transnational transmission of Vajrayāna Buddhism to the ‘West.’ Nevertheless, after more than fifty years of practice by individuals and communities around the globe, the role of the SOM in this process has yet to be studied. Moreover, scholarship on the role of Vajrayāna rituals in contemporary religious transmission is also in its nascency. In this thesis, I aim to address this lacuna through a study of the revelation of this text, its strategic translation, and its role in the making of Vajrayāna Buddhist subjects. Given that the SOM emerged at a pivotal moment as Trungpa Rinpoche re-evaluated how to best teach the buddhadharma in the ‘West,’ I argue that its partially domesticating translation was a strategic means of inducting ‘Western’ students into a foreign ritual world. As such, I argue that the SOM was a skillful method to introduce ‘Western,’ non-Buddhist students to the Vajrayāna through an iterative process of ritual enactment and training in a subjectivity both described and prescribed within the text. As such, in this thesis I analyze the important role that the SOM played in the early formation of Vajrayāna subjectivities as Vajrayāna Buddhism came to North America and in preparing the ground for the later teachings that Trungpa Rinpoche would introduce to his students. This thesis informs my broader research question: how are new subjectivities created in the process of religious transmission across radically different cultural contexts? More generally, it contributes to emergent conversations around performativity in Buddhist ritual practice and will also prove relevant to those working on the intersection of ritual practice and religious transmission in other traditions.

Journal of Global Buddhism, 2021

This special section celebrates the twenty-fifth anniversary of Charles Hallisey's groundbreaking 1995 essay, "Roads Taken and Not Taken in the Study of Theravāda Buddhism," which offered both an incisive assessment of the history of Theravada studies and a generative blueprint for its future. Hallisey's introduction of the term "intercultural mimesis" and his emphasis on the local production of meaning resonated across Buddhist studies and beyond, shaping an entire generation of scholarship on South and Southeast Asia. This introductory essay first surveys "Roads Taken and Not Taken" and its impact on Theravada studies over the past quartercentury. We then explore how the three junior scholars whose essays are featured in this section take Hallisey's prescriptions in new directions. In closing, we reflect on emerging themes and voices in Theravada studies not represented here and where the field may be headed over the next quarter century.

Bulletin of The School of Oriental and African Studies-university of London, 1991

2015

The book provides an in-depth study of one of the earliest Tibetan text collections of the Bka' brgyud school of Tibetan Buddhism, which contains many special teachings on Mahamudra meditation and yoga practice. The contents of the Dags po'i bka' 'bum corpus are mostly attributed to the Buddhist master Sgam po pa Bsod nams rin chen as his oral teachings. The first part of the present book introduces Bsod nams rin chen's special Mahamudra teaching (phyag rgya chen po), being a unique Tibetan contemplative doctrine of mysticism. The book's second part provides an analysis of early biographies on Bsod nams rin chen's life. The third part provides an extensive mapping and summary of the entire textual corpus, including numerous annotations on terms, doctrines, and practices. The printed book can be purchased directly from the publisher at http://www.icabs.ac.jp/publication/2-7-2.html

Contemporary Buddhism, 2019

H-Buddhism, H-Net Reviews, 2014