East Asian Buddhism SymposiumCommunities of Memory: Reimagining and Reinventing the Past in East Asian Buddhism

23. Mai 2014

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The symposium presentations explore the multivalent processes and complex issues involved in the remembering, recording, and reconfiguring of the past in East Asian Buddhism. Each presenter examines how at different historical junctions Buddhist writers and adherents constituted historical narratives by selectively remembering or reimagining their tradition's past, often in response to specific institutional developments or changing socioreligious predicaments. The traditions of Buddhist historiography — which played important roles in the demarcation of orthodoxy and the forming of religious identities — were thereby as concerned with legitimizing the present and reshaping the future, as they were with formulating accurate accounts of past events. By exploring the provenance, character, and function of traditional historical narratives, the symposium explores how the larger historical trajectories of East Asian Buddhism can be construed as series of creative interpretative refractions or distortions, which can be construed both as expressions of religious piety and tools of ideological dominance.

Convener and organizer
Mario Poceski, University of Florida & University of Hamburg

Venues (Universität Hamburg)
Keynote lecture: Room 221 ESA-East, Asien-Afrika-Institut, Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1
Presentations & Discussions: Akademischer Senatssaal, Main Building, Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1

Participants

Mario Poceski (University of Florida)
Wendi Adamek (University of Calgary)
Stefania Travagnin (University of Groningen)
Jörg Plassen (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)
Jinhua Chen (University of British Columbia)
Imre Hamar (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest)
Marek Zemanek (Charles University, Prague)
Jörg Quenzer (University of Hamburg)
Steffen Döll (University of Munich)
Michaela Mross (University of Gottingen)
Carl Bielefeldt (Stanford University)

Sponsors

Numata Center for Buddhist Studies, University of Hamburg
Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

Schedule

May 22 (Thu)

6:15 pm Keynote lecture: Wendi Adamek, "Traces of the Three Levels Movement at Baoshan: Deliberately Covert or Merely Ambivalent?"

May 23 (Fri)

9:00 am Introductions
9:30 am Jörg Plassen, “Some Remarks on the Construction of Chinese Huayan”
10:45 am Imre Hamar, “Formation of a Patriarchal Lineage in the Huayan School”
2:30 pm Jinhua Chen, “This Dharma is not That Dharma: An Episode in the Evolving Legend of Bodhidharma”
3:45 pm Mario Poceski, “Reimagining Patriarch Ma and Rewriting Chan History”
4:45 pm Coffee break
5:15 pm Stefania Travagnin, “Imaging History: Discursive Identity, Cross-Strait Lineage Construction, and a Taiwanese Pagoda”

May 24 (Sat)

9:30 am Marek Zemanek, “Samguk Yusa and the Buddhisation of Korea: Refiguration of the Religious Landscape”
10:45 am Steffen Döll, “Doctrinal Classifications and Hagiographical Narratives in Medieval Japan: Kokan Shiren, Genkou shakusho, and Buddhist Historiography”
2:30 pm Michaela Mross, “Remembering Keizan Jōkin and the History of the Sōtō School: Founder Worship, Institutional Identity, and Temple Rivalries”
3:45 pm Jörg Quenzer, “Legitimization in the Age of the Declining Dharma: Hagiographies and Egodocuments in Early Medieval Japan”
5:15 pm Final discussion