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- Convenor:
-
Fabio Rambelli
(University of California, Santa Barbara)
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- Stream:
- Religion and Religious Thought
- Location:
- Torre A, Piso 0, Sala 03
- Sessions:
- Thursday 31 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
Short Abstract:
Intense transformations in the Esoteric Buddhist discourse on the body-mind complex took place in the Muromachi period, such as their diffusion among performers and practitioners in the provinces, their incorporation in the martial arts, and the gradual shift towards elements of Chinese thought.
Long Abstract:
The Muromachi period saw intense developments and transformations in the Esoteric Buddhist discourse on the body-mind complex. On the one hand, the growing importance of non-esoteric Buddhist traditions, such as Zen and Pure Land, and the formation of Shinto discourses that were largely based on Neo-Confucian and Daoist thought, relativized the weight of Esoteric Buddhism among the intellectual elites. On the other hand, Esoteric Buddhist constructs and practices, originally part of a secret body of knowledge, spread outside of a small circle of priests and aristocrats and reached large numbers of performers and practitioners in the provinces; at the same time, the growing importance of the samurai resulted in the incorporation of Esoteric Buddhist body-mind discourse into the martial arts. Finally, the gradual shift away from Buddhism towards non-Buddhist Chinese thought also affected fields such as medicine and military techniques. The three papers in this panel address some central aspects of the Esoteric Buddhist discourse on the body-mind in the Muromachi period by focusing on different bodies of texts and related practices. The first paper discusses a type of saimon ritual texts, known as gogyō saimon (saimon of the five shapes), that incorporatedinto kagura theory and performance Kakuban's correlative ideas of the body-mind and Tendai musical theory. The second paper explores the vastly understudied field of military secret texts from the Ogasawara-ryū and Jigen-ryū and related veterinary books on horse health and highlights the Esoteric Buddhist elements present in them. The third paper discusses three representative texts of so-called military techniques (hyōhō) and traces the shift away from Esoteric Buddhism toward Chinese texts such as the Sunzi (The Art of War) and Yijing (Book of Changes), with their different visions of the body-mind complex, one that would become more important in the Edo period.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 31 August, 2017, -Paper short abstract:
This paper explores medieval military techniques (hyōhō) from the Kamakura to the late Muromachi periods, in particular the transformation in their constructs of the body-mind complex from a dominance of Esoteric Buddhism to classical Chinese thought (especially, the Sunzi and the Yijing).
Paper long abstract:
Beginning in the Muromachi period, intellectual systems alternative to Buddhism began to spread and acquire growing importance. Newly imported ideas from China, together with a re-evaluation of texts already present in Japan, were at the basis of this development. Ideas about the body-mind complex were also affected in various ways. This paper explores a discursive field that is seldom subject to scrutiny from the point of view of religious and intellectual history, namely, medieval military techniques (hyōhō). The increasing power and status of the samurai was associated with a growing relevance of military-related discourses. Even a cursory look at the available sources indicates a massive shift away from Buddhism toward Chinese thought. Kamakura-period military texts are essentially collections of mantras to be deployed in battle. In contrast, later texts show a predominance of tactical and strategic suggestions, many of which were based on the Chinese classic Sunzi (The Art of War); subsequently, the Yijing (Book of Changes) came to play an important role, opening the way for a radical reconfiguration of the field in the Tokugawa period as "military studies" (heigaku) framed in Neo-Confucian thought.
This paper discusses some representative texts from late medieval Japan: the Shikyō ruijū (Collected personal teachings), the Hyōhō hijutsu ikkansho (Secret arts of military techniques in one fascicle), and the Yoshitsune hyakushu (Hundred poems by Yoshitsune), which together outline the shift away from Esoteric Buddhism in late medieval Japanese military discourse (Buddhism was later re-included in some military texts of the Edo period, such as those by Miyamoto Musashi and Suzuki Shōsan, but with only an ancillary role to Confucianism). In particular, this paper focuses on the different visions of the mind-body complex that these texts expound, and suggests some larger cultural trends that took place between the late Muromachi and the early Edo periods.
Paper short abstract:
An analysis of body-mind conceptions from exo-esoteric Buddhism (derived from Shingon's mandala of the five organs and Tendai's meanings of the five sounds ) in late medieval saimon ritual texts used in special ceremonies to ward off evil spirits and eliminate illnesses.
Paper long abstract:
Saimon are ritual texts that constitute the core of kagura performances. These texts spread all over Japan between the end of the middle ages and the early Edo period. Among them there are so-called gogyō saimon (saimon of the five forms) used in special ceremonies to ward off evil spirits and eliminate illnesses. These texts articulate and unify the human body by bringing together series of five elements (gogyō) and Chinese ideas on yin-yang and the Esoteric Buddhist doctrine of the five cosmic elements, under the assumption that mastery of these concepts would cause the desired effect.
Gogyō saimon are based on elements of medieval exo-esoteric (kenmitsu) Buddhism, such as the Shingon esoteric contemplation of the mandala of the five internal organs (gozō mandara) and the Tendai meditative doctrine of the meanings of the five sounds (gozō ongi). It is now clear that these two conceptual systems came to play an important role thanks to twelfth-century works such as Gorin kujimyō himitsushaku by Kakuban and Kangen ongi by Ryōkin. The work by Kakuban, in particular, presents a body-mind monism centered on the five internal organs, according to which the practitioner could envision and experience his/her own "becoming a Buddha in this very body" (sokushin jōbutsu). These ritual texts employed in religious practices produced a religious view of the body-mind complex that became dominant in the middle ages.
This paper will discuss a number of gogyō saimon and elucidate their relations with these Buddhist contemplative works.
Paper short abstract:
A discussion of Oyashiro kanjō, a little known form of Shinto consecration ritual that was related to a unique set of secret teachings, such as Shingon embryology and visualization of the five organs, waka kanjo (knowledge on Kokin wakashu), military techniques, and even horse veterinary.
Paper long abstract:
Shintō kanjō (Shinto consecration rituals) are rituals belonging to various lineages of medieval Buddhist Shinto (Ryōbu Shinto, Sannō shinto, etc.) that were performed in occasion of transmission of secret teachings and secret texts; several types existed, such as Reiki kanjō, Nihongi kanjō, Ise kanjō, and Oyashiro kanjō. The actions and visualizations in these rituals are deeply related to Esoteric Buddhist teachings about the body-mind complex such as the visualization of the five organs (gozōkan) and the five stages of the development of the embryo (tainai goi). This influence, however, comes only in part directly from Shingon Esoteric Buddhist texts; instead, it is often inspired by contemporary medieval arts such as poetry (kadō) and military techniques (archery, horse riding), which incorporated organ visualization and ideas about embryo development and turned them into secret teachings.
This paper focuses in particular on a late medieval ritual, the Oyashiro kanjō, and explores its connections with the Esoteric Buddhist discourse on the body-mind complex on the one hand, and - much less predictably - with waka kanjō (the secret transmission of Kokin wakashū poetry collection), the secretly transmitted teachings of military techniques in Ogasawara-ryū (archery) and Jigenryū (which developed in Satsuma), and the secret teachings of horse veterinary on the other hand. By doing so, it aims at outlining the extension of Esoteric Buddhist discourse of the body-mind complex in medieval religion and the arts.