Genealogies of Mahāyāna Buddhism

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Genealogies of Mahāyāna Buddhism: Emptiness, Power and the Question of Origin

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Descriptionངོ་སྤྲོད།

Genealogies of Mahāyāna Buddhism offers a solution to a problem that some have called the holy grail of Buddhist studies: the problem of the “origins” of Mahāyāna Buddhism. In a work that contributes both to a general theory of religion and power for religious studies as well as to the problem of the origin of a Buddhist movement, Walser argues that that it is the neglect of political and social power in the scholarly imagination of the history of Buddhism that has made the origins of Mahāyāna an intractable problem. Walser challenges commonly-held assumptions about Mahāyāna Buddhism, offering a fascinating new take on its genealogy that traces its doctrines of emptiness and mind-only from the present day back to the time before Mahāyāna was “Mahāyāna.” In situating such concepts in their political and social contexts across diverse regimes of power in Tibet, China and India, the book shows that what was at stake in the Mahāyāna championing of the doctrine of emptiness was the articulation and dissemination of court authority across the rural landscapes of Asia.

(Source: Routledge)

Citation

Walser, Joseph. Genealogies of Mahāyāna Buddhism: Emptiness, Power and the Question of Origin. New York: Routledge, 2018.

Publisher Link

https://www.routledge.com/Genealogies-of-Mahayana-Buddhism-Emptiness-Power-and-the-question-of/Walser/p/book/9781138955561

Table of contents

• Acknowledgements xi

• Part I: Genealogies of Mahāyāna 1

• • 1 Introduction: On Origins and Genealogies 3

• • 2 Mahāyāna in Retrospect: From My House to the Dalai Lama (looking back from 2017 – 1930) 11
    • Assessing the Essence 20
    • Tibet as Buddhist: Tracing the Lines of Power 21
    • Emptiness and the Analytic of Power 25
    • Inculcating Dispositions to Authority: the Kālacakra 31

• • 3 Mahāyāna in the Republic, Mahāyāna in the Empire: Tracing "Religion” from Republican China to the Early Qing Dynasty (1920’s – 1723) 40
    • Religion vs. Superstition in 20th Century East Asia 41
    • The Fin de Siècle Turning Point 44
    • The Qing Imperium and the Usefulness of Mahāyāna 48
    • The Yonghegong Temple in Beijing and the Political Work of Monuments 48
    • Emperor Qianlong: the Tantric Initiate and the Tantric State 53
    • Tantra, Emptiness and the Reincarnate Emperor/Lama, or why it’s never too late to have a venerable past. 57
    • Yongzheng Emperor and the Great Ming Debate 60

• • 4 The Image of Emptiness across the Landscape of Power (China: 11th Cent. B.C.E – 15th Cent. C.E.) 72
    • The Ancestor Image 75
    • The Image of Emptiness: Di, Space and the Celestial Pole 76
    • The Image of the Earth and control of the cults 85
    • Exorcism and the State: When possession is nine-tenths 88
    • Religion in the Service of Taxation 90
    • Buddhist Exorcism and the Heart of Mahāyāna 91
    • Conclusion 93

• • 5 Buddha Veda: an Indian Genealogy of Emptiness (20th century – 6th century CE.) 99
    • Emptiness and Power in Orissa: From Mahima Dharma Sampradāya to Jagannātha of Puri 100
    • Buddhism and Brahmanism in Maitrīpa (ca. 1010-1097 CE) 105
    • Bhāviveka’s 6th Century Mahāyāna 111
    • Bhāviveka, Mahāyāna and Yogācāra 116
    • Bhāviveka, Mahāyāna and Brahmanism 118
    • Preliminary Conclusion 123

• Part II: The Genealogy of the Perfection of Wisdom 127

• • 6 What did the text of the Perfection of Wisdom look like? 129
    • The Versions 129
    • The Quest for the Ur-Sūtra 130
    • The Core Pericope 134
    • The Ending 137
    • Subhūti’s Non-Apprehension 138
    • The Mindlessness Section 143
    • The Message of the Original Perfection of Wisdom 149
    • Mahāyāna 151
    • Bodhisattvas 152
    • What’s missing? 154

• • 7 Mahāyāna Sūtra as Palimpsest: Discerning Traces of the Tripiṭaka 158
    • Beyond "origin" as mere event 158
    • Heteroglossia and Textual Rationale 160
    • Intertextuality and Adaptation in Buddhist Literature 162
    • The Non-Apprehension section and its Intertexts 163
    • Sermon on Selflessness? 164
    • Nominalism? 166
    • Cessation of Cognition 168
    • Selflessness… but differently 170
    • The Perfected as Untraceable 172
    • Fearlessness 177
    • Abhidharma echoes 181
    • Conclusion: The Perfection of Wisdom 183

• • 8 Palimpsest Part Two: Brahmanical Writings on the Tripiṭaka 190
    • The Importance of Incoherence 190
    • The Context of Abhidharma Literature? 192
    • The Context of Other Schools? 195
    • The Context of Luminous Thought and Varieties of Unaware Thought 195
    • The Context of Acitta Neither Existing nor Not Existing as Anti-Brahmanical Dependent Origination 198
    • The Context of Absence of Mental Construction (avikalpa) 200
    • Nirvikapla 202
    • Brahmanical Intertexts and their Implications 205

• • 9 Placing Early Mahāyāna 222
    • Placing the Perfection of Wisdom in the Early Mahāyāna Suite 223
    • Mañjuśrī’s Inquiry Concerning the Office of the Bodhisattva 226
    • Placing the Early Perfection of Wisdom 229
    • Mistaken Sounds 232
    • Subhūti’s Araṇavihāra: Preaching or Penetration? 234
    • Emptiness, Brahmin Nuns, Tulkus and the Power of Possession 238
    • Putting it together 240
    • Conclusion 242

• • 10 On Sites and Stakes: Meditation on Emptiness and Imperial Aspirations 246
    • Shifting Interpretations 248
    • The Uṇṇābhabrāhmaṇasutta and the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upanișad on cosmic foundations 251
    • The Horse Sacrifice 256
    • Piling the Fire Altar and Legitimation Regress 259
    • Buddhist Brahmins 262
    • On Power and Reproduction 263
    • Sovereign Echoes: on Manhood and Celibacy; On thrones and Crowns 265
    • Buddhist Brahmodya as court debates 268
    • The Mahāyāna Genealogy from The Vedas to the Sutras to Tantra to Zen 269

• Bibliography 274
• Index 289

Interconnections

Works related to this item

Mahāyāna - Mahāyāna, or the Great Vehicle, refers to the system of Buddhist thought and practice which developed around the beginning of the Common Era, focusing on the pursuit of the state of full enlightenment of the Buddha through the realization of the wisdom of emptiness and the cultivation of compassion. Skt महायान  Tib ཐེག་པ་ཆེན་པོ།  Ch 大乘  

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Śūnyatā - The state of being empty of an innate nature due to a lack of independently existing characteristics. Skt शून्यता  Tib སྟོང་པ་ཉིད་  Ch 空;空門  

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Kālacakra - Can refer to either the Kālacakra Tantra and its derivative texts or to the systematic tantric tradition based on these texts, as well as the deity Kālacakra upon which the associated practices are centered. Skt कालचक्र  Tib དུས་ཀྱི་འཁོར་ལོ།  Ch 時輪  

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Tantra - Tantra, when juxtaposed with Sūtra, generally refers to the scriptures and texts which discuss esoteric topics. While the term is used to refer to texts on other topics, it is mostly used to refer to the genre of scriptures and texts on themes and topics associated with Vajrayāna Buddhism. Skt तन्त्र  Tib རྒྱུད།  Ch 密宗  

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Yogācāra - Along with Madhyamaka, it was one of the two major philosophical schools of Mahāyāna Buddhism. Founded by Asaṅga and Vasubandhu around the fourth century CE, many of its central tenets have roots in the Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra and the so-called third turning of the dharma wheel (see tridharmacakrapravartana). Skt योगाचार  Tib རྣལ་འབྱོར་སྤྱོད་པ་  Ch 瑜伽行派  

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Sūtra - Sūtras mainly refer to the discourses delivered by the Buddha and his disciples, and the Sūtra corpus is one of the three main sets of teachings which form the Buddhist canon. Skt सूत्र  Tib མདོ།  Ch 佛经  

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Bodhisattva - A person who seeks enlightenment for the sake of others. In Mahāyāna Buddhism, a bodhisattva is a compassionate being who is training on the path to buddhahood and aspires to eliminate the suffering of all beings and take all sentient beings to the state of enlightenment. The Mahāyāna sūtras including those on buddha-nature generally have bodhisattvas as the main audience or interlocutors for the Buddha's discourses. Skt बोधिसत्त्व  Tib བྱང་ཆུབ་སེམས་དཔའ།  Ch 菩薩  

Go to the page with the definition of 'Bodhisattvas'

Bodhisattva - A person who seeks enlightenment for the sake of others. In Mahāyāna Buddhism, a bodhisattva is a compassionate being who is training on the path to buddhahood and aspires to eliminate the suffering of all beings and take all sentient beings to the state of enlightenment. The Mahāyāna sūtras including those on buddha-nature generally have bodhisattvas as the main audience or interlocutors for the Buddha's discourses. Skt बोधिसत्त्व  Tib བྱང་ཆུབ་སེམས་དཔའ།  Ch 菩薩  

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Abhidharma - Abhidharma generally refers to the corpus of Buddhist texts which deals with the typological, phenomenological, metaphysical, and epistemological presentation of Buddhist concepts and teachings. The Abhidharma teachings present a metaknowledge of Buddhist sūtras through analytical and systemic schemas and are said to focus on developing wisdom among the three principles of training. The Abhidharma is presented alongside Sūtra and Vinaya as one of the three baskets of the teachings of the Buddha. Skt अभिधर्म  Tib ཆོས་མངོན་པ།  Ch 阿毗达磨  

Go to the page with the definition of 'Abhidharma'

Bodhisattva - A person who seeks enlightenment for the sake of others. In Mahāyāna Buddhism, a bodhisattva is a compassionate being who is training on the path to buddhahood and aspires to eliminate the suffering of all beings and take all sentient beings to the state of enlightenment. The Mahāyāna sūtras including those on buddha-nature generally have bodhisattvas as the main audience or interlocutors for the Buddha's discourses. Skt बोधिसत्त्व  Tib བྱང་ཆུབ་སེམས་དཔའ།  Ch 菩薩  

Go to the page with the definition of 'Bodhisattva'

Bodhisattva - A person who seeks enlightenment for the sake of others. In Mahāyāna Buddhism, a bodhisattva is a compassionate being who is training on the path to buddhahood and aspires to eliminate the suffering of all beings and take all sentient beings to the state of enlightenment. The Mahāyāna sūtras including those on buddha-nature generally have bodhisattvas as the main audience or interlocutors for the Buddha's discourses. Skt बोधिसत्त्व  Tib བྱང་ཆུབ་སེམས་དཔའ།  Ch 菩薩  

Go to the page with the definition of 'Bodhisattva'