Browsing by Author "Jaffe, Richard M"

This dissertation examines the modern transformation of orthodoxy within the Otani denomination of Japanese Shin Buddhism. This history was set in motion by scholar-priest Kiyozawa Manshi (1863-1903), whose calls for free inquiry, introspection, and attainment of awakening in the present life represented major challenges to the prevailing orthodoxy. Judging him a principal player in forging a distinctively modern Buddhism, many scholars have examined Kiyozawa's life and writings. However, it is critical to recognize that during his life Kiyozawa remained a marginal figure within his sect, his various reform initiatives ending in failure. It was not until 1956 that Otani leaders officially endorsed and disseminated Kiyozawa's views. Taking my cue from Talal Asad's critique of Clifford Geertz's definition of religion, I move beyond interpretation of the "meaning" of Kiyozawa's life and writings to the historical study of how they came to be invested with authority, impacting the lives of millions of sect members and influencing the perception of him among scholars.

I approach this history on three levels. On an individual level, I examine the lives and writings of Kiyozawa, his followers, and his critics, as revealed in their books, journal articles, newspaper articles, diaries, and letters. On an institutional level, I examine the transformation of the Otani organization's educational, administrative, and judicial systems, as documented in institutional histories, denominational by-laws, official statements, and administrators' writings. Finally, on a national level, I examine the effect of major political events and social trends on Kiyozawa's followers and the Otani organization.

This study reveals that one critical factor in the transformation of Otani orthodoxy was the strategic use of a discourse of "empiricism" by Kiyozawa's followers. As the Otani organization's modern university gradually came to supercede its traditional seminary, Kiyozawa's followers positioned themselves as authoritative modern scholars. At the same time, this study shows that the transformation of Otani orthodoxy was contingent upon broader historical developments far outside the control of Kiyozawa's followers or Otani leaders. Specifically, the state's persecution of Communists, war mobilization policies, and the post-war context of democracy building all shaped the views and fortunes of Kiyozawa's followers. I argue that by better acknowledging and examining the contingent nature of religious history, scholars can approach a more realistic view of how religions are formed and reformed. Specifically in regard to modern Buddhist studies, I also argue that more attention should be paid to how sectarian institutions continue to grow and evolve, shaping all aspects of Buddhist thought and practice.

This dissertation examines the social and financial activities of Buddhist nuns to demonstrate how and why they deployed Buddhist doctrines, rituals, legends, and material culture to interact with society outside the convent. By examining the activities of the nuns of the Daihongan convent (one of the two administrative heads of the popular pilgrimage temple, Zenkōji) in Japan’s early modern period (roughly 1550 to 1868) as documented in the convent’s rich archival sources, I shed further light on the oft-overlooked political and financial activities of nuns, illustrate how Buddhist institutions interacted with the laity, provide further nuance to the discussion of how Buddhist women navigated patriarchal sectarian and secular hierarchies, and, within the field of Japanese history, give voice to women who were active outside of the household unit around which early modern Japanese society was organized.

Zenkōji temple, surrounded by the mountains of Nagano, has been one of Japan’s most popular pilgrimage sites since the medieval period. The abbesses of Daihongan, one Zenkōji’s main sub-temples, traveled widely to maintain connections with elite and common laypeople, participated in frequent country-wide displays of Zenkōji’s icon, and oversaw the creation of branch temples in Edo (now Tokyo), Osaka, Echigo (now Niigata), and Shinano (now Nagano). The abbesses of Daihongan were one of only a few women to hold the imperially sanctioned title of eminent person (shōnin 上人) and to wear purple robes. While this means that this Pure Land convent was in some ways not representative of all convents in early modern Japan, Daihongan’s position is particularly instructive because the existence of nuns and monks in a single temple complex allows us to see in detail how monastics of both genders interacted in close quarters.

This work draws heavily from the convent’s archival materials, which I used as a guide in framing my dissertation chapters. In the Introduction I discuss previous works on women in Buddhism. In Chapter 1, I briefly discuss the convent’s history and its place within the Zenkōji temple complex. In Chapter 2, I examine the convent’s regular economic bases and its expenditures. In Chapter 3, I highlight Daihongan’s branch temples and discuss the ways that they acted as nodes in a network connecting people in various areas to Daihongan and Zenkōji, thus demonstrating how a rural religious center extended its sphere of influence in urban settings. In Chapter 4, I discuss the nuns’ travels throughout the country to generate new and maintain old connections with the imperial court in Kyoto, confraternities in Osaka, influential women in the shogun’s castle, and commoners in Edo. In Chapter 5, I examine the convent’s reliance upon irregular means of income such as patronage, temple lotteries, loans, and displays of treasures, and how these were needed to balance irregular expenditures such as travel and the maintenance or reconstruction of temple buildings. Throughout the dissertation I describe Daihongan’s inner social structure comprised of abbesses, nuns, and administrators, and its local emplacement within Zenkōji and Zenkōji’s temple lands.

Exploring these themes sheds light on the lives of Japanese Buddhist nuns in this period. While the tensions between freedom and agency on the one hand and obligations to patrons, subordination to monks, or gender- and status-based restrictions on the other are important, and I discuss them in my work, my primary focus is on the nuns’ activities and lives. Doing so demonstrates that nuns were central figures in ever-changing economic and social networks as they made and maintained connections with the outside world through Buddhist practices and through precedents set centuries before. This research contributes to our understanding of nuns in Japan’s early modern period and will participate in and shape debates on the roles of women in patriarchal religious hierarchies.

Nearly half a century ago, acclaimed jazz musician Alice Coltrane (1937-2007), marital partner of saxophonist John Coltrane, began disseminating Hindu (Vedanta) teachings and jazz-inflected bhajans (songs of praise) in her predominately Black, though multiracial, spiritual community in Southern California. Despite all her accomplishments–becoming the first African American guru, authoring two revelatory sacred texts, composing fifteen devotional albums (many on major record labels), and founding and directing a Vedantic center and quasi-monastic community for over thirty years–the highly acclaimed Alice Coltrane is overlooked by scholars of religion, especially of Asian religions. Similarly, Cleveland-born, Princeton graduate Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950-2005)–who initiated hundreds of disciples across North America, Africa and Eastern Europe into a Hindu religious tradition (Gaudiya Vaishnavism), authored nineteen books, and acted as a consultant to several world leaders–has also passed away hardly noticed. Since at least the 1960s, Black Americans have made lifelong religious commitments to Vedantic teachings and South Asian religious practices such as performing kirtans and bhajans. Despite this, their presence and contributions remain virtually invisible to scholars. My dissertation seeks to disclose Black Americans’ presence and influence in Hinduism since the 1960s as well as raise an urgent ethical and theoretical question for the study of religion: Can a Hindu be Black?

Through intellectual and aesthetic artifacts, literary publications, and twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with Black Americans across several U.S. Hindu communities, my doctoral research illustrates Black Americans’ participation in Hinduism since the 1960s through the charismatic leaders Alice “Swamini Turiyasangitananda” Coltrane, John “Bhakti Tirtha Swami” Favors, Clarissa “Krsnanandini Devi Dasi” Jones, and a successive generation of Black practitioners. Thus, my study answers the above question affirmatively; yet, building on recent scholarship on the racialization of religion and genealogies of religion, my study also provokes an indispensable examination of race, ethnicity, and geography in academic constructions of ‘Hindu’ and ‘Hinduism,’ assessing how theory and discourse have, at times, foreclosed the possibility of a Black Hindu.

In this dissertation, I examine the development of lay Rinzai Zen in modern Japan, a transformation that entailed a large-scale opening of Zen practices to non-clerics and eventually contributed to Zen’s worldwide spread. I detail the historical shift between 1868 and 1945, which saw the emergence of hundreds of lay Zen groups throughout Japan, the proliferation of literature targeting a popular audience, and a new paradigm of practice amidst imperial Japan’s changing zeitgeist. Although Rinzai Zen was only one of thirteen Buddhist schools in Japan at the time, lay Rinzai Zen became disproportionately significant through its dissemination among educated, relatively elite young men, and through the success of its popularizers in associating modern lay Rinzai Zen with “traditional” Buddhism and Japanese culture itself.

In order to investigate this phenomenon, I conducted archival research, focusing on the following genres: contemporaneous periodicals and books aimed at a popular Zen audience, and the publications of lay Zen groups, such as their commemorative histories that included detailed activity logs, personal testimonials, and institutional histories. In my analysis, I integrate the dimensions of intellectual and social history (e.g., situating modern lay Rinzai Zen practitioners in imperial Japan) with religious and doctrinal concerns (e.g., situating modern Rinzai Zen in traditional Zen narratives). Although I consider teachers’ prescriptions for ideal Zen practice, I emphasize the perspective of ordinary practitioners from a variety of practice contexts in order to examine the nature of Rinzai Zen’s popularization in modern Japan: the emergence of lay groups, the religious practices in which practitioners engaged, the ways in which lay practitioners articulated their motivations, and how such motivations reflected the historical context.

My conclusions include the following: First, the scale of the lay Rinzai movement in modern Japan was far larger than research until this point suggests, in terms of numbers of groups and practitioners and the amount of popular literature. Given the diversity among the emerging Rinzai lay groups, I propose a typology to highlight the groups’ qualitative differences, ranging from more “traditional” to more radically divergent from normative Rinzai. Second, I found that even while the lay Zen audience expanded to an unprecedented level in Japan, the average lay Rinzai practitioner was educated and relatively elite; therefore, Rinzai Zen’s popularization did not amount to full democratization. Moreover, students and other youth played a sizable and significant role in modern lay Rinzai. Third, I show that despite divergent ideology and rhetoric among modern lay Rinzai Zen groups and figures, a specific pattern of activities became standard among nearly all such groups. This pattern centered on sitting meditation, kōan practice, encountering the master one-on-one, dharma discourses, and practice intensives, with far less emphasis on aspects that have been historically important in Rinzai monastic training, such as ritual, liturgy, manual labor, and literary study in advanced kōan practice. This new lay Rinzai pattern functioned to increase an emphasis on personal experience and kōan practice. Finally, in contrast to idealized notions about pursuing Zen primarily for the sake of enlightenment, most modern lay Rinzai practitioners examined here pursued Zen for this-worldly benefits, such as improved health, improved swordsmanship abilities, or as a means of strengthening the Japanese nation. Such goals were particularly expressed following 1905, amidst the nationalism and interest in personal cultivation movements that surged after Japan’s victory in the Russo-Japanese War. Moreover, for many practitioners, there was a convergence among lay Rinzai practice, nation-protecting self-cultivation movements, “way of the warrior” rhetoric, and modern Japanese ideals of masculinity: a convergence that likely attracted many practitioners but was inherently at odds with Zen’s rhetoric of equality.

This study examines the contemporary debate over proposals to revise the Japanese "Peace Constitution" from the perspective of its meaning to the Soka Gakkai. To the present, the LDP's chief target for revision has been the war- and military renunciation clauses of Article 9. In connection with its argument that Article 9 undermines Japan's national security, the LDP has made the specification of collective self-defense a prime focus of its efforts to produce a draft for a new Japanese Constitution. During the last decade the LDP's best chance to date to achieve this goal arose by the convergence of a number of domestic and international circumstances. However, in the end, the LDP was prevented from realizing its revision aims on account of opposition from its coalition partner, the Komeito, which itself sought to preserve Article 9 at the behest of its core constituent, the Soka Gakkai. After having been excommunicated from the Nichiren Shoshu in 1991 Gakkai leaders prioritized activism on behalf of Article 9 as the pivotal component of an innovative hermeneutical strategy devised to evince that the movement had retained its legitimacy through the split. By contextualizing this hermeneutical strategy within the Soka Gakkai's overall historical development and analyzing the streams of activity put into motion thereby until their eventual intersection (via the Komeito) with the LDP's reform agenda, it has been revealed that the chance to impact the Constitutional revision process has served a critical function in enabling the Soka Gakkai to demonstrate its legitimacy as a wholly independent lay religious movement, and thus to remain a viable factor within today's Japanese religious landscape.

What do Buddhist monks really know about Buddhism? How do they imagine their religion, and more importantly, how does their understanding of their tradition differ from the one found in our typical introduction to Buddhism textbooks? In order to address these fundamental questions, this dissertation concentrates on the educational programs and curricular canons of Korean Buddhism. It aims to find out which part of their enormous canonical and non-canonical literature do Korean Buddhist professionals choose to focus on as the required curriculum in their training (and what do they leave out), why is it chosen and by whom, and how does this specific education shape their understanding of their own religion and their roles within it. It tracks down the 20th-century invention of the so-called `traditional' Korean monastic curriculum and delineates the current 21st-century curricular reforms and the heated debates surrounding them. Ultimately, it illustrates how instead of Buddhist academics learning from the Buddhists about Buddhism, it is actually often the Buddhists in their monasteries who end up simulating the educational agendas of Buddhist studies.

Research for this work involved diverse methodologies. Multiple-sited ethnographic fieldwork in monasteries was supplemented by archival digging in the Chogye Order's headquarters in Seoul and textual analysis of historical records, Buddhist media reports, and online blogs. I have visited the current official 17 monastic seminaries in Korea, as well as many of the new specialized monastic graduate institutes and lay schools, interviewed teachers and students on site, and inspected classrooms and schedules. During winter 2013-4 I have conducted a full-scale participant observation attending the Buddhist lay school of Hwagyesa, during which I engaged some of my classmates with in-depth interviews, and distributed a written attitude survey among the class.