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Translating Buddhism Across Imperial Contexts

Submitted to Program Units
1: Buddhism in the West Unit

Caroline Starkey, University of Leeds, Presiding

Abstract for Online Program Book (maximum 150 words)

Buddhist Studies has increasingly attended to what Helen Jin Kim characterizes as the “transpacific turn,” namely the transoceanic cultural flows through which Buddhist identities and communities are constructed. In situating their subjects within multiple transoceanic imperial contexts, these papers orient contemporary Buddhists within modernist frameworks that disrupt a simple West/East binary. Paper 1 re-examines the fault lines of the disciplinary boundaries of Buddhism in the West to draw out various subaltern Buddhist modernities. Paper 2 utilizes an ecological and colonial studies framework to consider the ecological consequences and neocolonial limitations of Tibetan nāga practice in North America. Paper 3 situates Shaku Sōen’s discussions on Buddhist notions of social equality within anti-colonial solidarity and imperialist projects

Papers

  • Stephan Licha, University of Chicago

    Blending the Rivers, Loosing the Flavor – American Legacies of Japanese Buddhist Discourses on Caste, Race, and Empire

    Abstract

    This paper explores the historically and ethically ambiguous nature of Buddhist notions of social "equality." The Japanese-American True Pure Land priest Yemyo Imamura (1867–1932) identified Buddhism's supposed commitment to caste equality as crucial to its flourishing in a multi-ethnic democracy. The paper focuses on the experiences of Zen master Shaku Sōen (1860–1919) on Sri Lanka under British colonial rule to investigate the genealogy of Imamura's claim. Sri Lankan Buddhism, Sōen argued, fostered inequality along lines of race and caste, undermining social cohesion and abetting the colonial regime. Japanese Mahāyāna Buddhism, in contrast, was predicated on equality and provided the basis for a liberatory anti-colonial politics. Ironically, Sōen's Mahāyāna was based on the apologetics of Singhalese Christians such as James de Alwis (1823–1878), and soon declined into ideological support of Japan's own colonial ambitions. This history throws into doubt Buddhism's capability of generating a robust notion of "equality."

  • Upayadhi Luraschi, University of Chicago

    In Search of a Generative Problem Space for Buddhist Studies

    Abstract

    While the Buddhism in the West Unit of the AAR may at this juncture be tempted to re-brand as a Global Buddhism(s) Unit, fittingly inspired by the capacious intellectual space created by the esteemed *Journal of Global Buddhism*, there is a risk of glossing over important fault lines and subsuming our usual “problem space” (to borrow from the anthropologist David Scott) into the same framework, simply enlarged. There are indeed dynamic delineations in the Buddhist world that are worth thinking through, such as majority/minority religion and caste/casteless/subaltern Buddhism, all of which intersect in creative ways with socio-economic status, issues of inter-generational transmission or lack thereof, and, of course, geographical contexts saturated with history. Building on prior scholarship, I draw out the distinctively subaltern modernism of Black Buddhists in the U.S. and the U.K., and suggest that India is in fact the site of a paradoxical “Wild West” of contemporary Buddhism.

  • Colin Simonds, University of Alberta

    Nāgas in North America: Ecology, Colonialism, and the Limits of Tibetan Buddhist Practice in Diaspora

    Abstract

    Despite their localized nature, North American Tibetan Buddhist communities have begun adapting indigenous Tibetan mountain deity (yul lha) and nāga (Tib. klu) practices to the American landscape. This article will explore some of the potentials and limitations of transplanting place-based religious practices through two lenses: ecology and colonialism. It will begin by analyzing several examples of how Tibetan Buddhists in North America are adapting these practices yul lha and nāga practices to the North American landscape. It will then think through some of the positive ecological consequences of North American nāga pūjās and consider how indigenous Tibetan approaches to sustainability may be imported alongside these religious practices. Finally, this article will think through the complicated dynamics of a diaspora community populating their new landscape with imported religious deities and consider the neocolonial limitations of nāga practice in its ability to work towards socioecological justice.

Business Meeting
Adeana McNicholl, Vanderbilt University, Presiding
Caroline Starkey, University of Leeds, Presiding
Audiovisual Requirements

Resources

LCD Projector and Screen

Full Papers Available

No
Program Unit Options

Session Length

90 Minutes

Schedule Preference

Saturday, 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM
Schedule Info

Sunday, 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM

Tags

#Buddhism #Equality #Democracy #Japan #America #Caste
#Ambedkar
#Buddhism
#subaltern
#BlackBuddhists
#modernism
#hermeneutics
#multiplemodernities
#Dalit Theology
#BuddhistStudies

Session Identifier

A24-402