Buddhist Literature as

PHILOSOPHY,
Buddhist Philosophy as
LITER ATURE

Edited by
RAFAL K. STEPIEN

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 Contents

Acknowledgments xi

A Note on Languages xiii

Introduction: Philosophy, Literature, Religion: Buddhism as

Transdisciplinary Intervention 1
Rafal K. Stepien

Part I: Buddhist Literature as Philosophy

Chapter 1
Transformative Vision: Coming to See the Buddha’s Reality 35
Amber D. Carpenter

Chapter 2
Jātakas and the Abhidhamma: Practical Compassion and
Kusala Citta 61
Sarah Shaw

Chapter 3
Panegyric as Philosophy: Philosophical Dimensions of
Indian Buddhist Hymns 85
Richard F. Nance

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 viii Contents

1 Chapter 4
2 Of Doctors, Poets, and the Minds of Men: Aesthetics and
3 Wisdom in Aśvaghos.a’s Beautiful Nanda 113
4 Sonam Kachru
5
6 Chapter 5
7 Buddhist Literary Criticism in East Asian Literature 145
8 Francisca Cho
9
10 Chapter 6
11 The Green Bamboo Is the Dharmakāya: Waka Poetry and the
12 Buddhist Imagination in Heian Japan 169
13 Ethan Bushelle
14
15
16 Part II: Buddhist Philosophy as Literature
17
18 Chapter 7
19 The Scandal of the Speaking Buddha: Performative Utterance
20 and the Erotics of the Dharma 197
21 Natalie Gummer
22
23 Chapter 8
24 The Original Mind Is the Literary Mind, the Original Body
25 Carves Dragons 231
26 Rafal K. Stepien
27
28 Chapter 9
29 On Resolving Disputes between Literary (Wenzi) and
30 Nonliterary (Wuzi) Approaches to Expressing Zen Buddhist
31 Philosophy 261
32 Steven Heine
33
34 Chapter 10
35 Where “Philosophy” and “Literature” Converge: Exploring
36 Tibetan Buddhist Writings about Reality 285
37 Yaroslav Komarovski
38

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 Contents ix

Chapter 11 1
The Repa and the Chan Devotee: Hagiography, Polemic, 2
and the Taxonomies of Philosophical Literature 309 3
Massimo Rondolino 4
5
Chapter 12 6
The Autobiographical No-Self 339 7
C. W. Huntington Jr. 8
9
Contributors 361 10
11
Index 365 12
13
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 1
2
3
4
5
Contributors 6
7
8
9
10
11
Ethan Bushelle is an assistant professor in the Department of Global 12
Humanities and Religions at Western Washington University. Bushelle 13
received his PhD in Japanese Religions and Literature from Harvard 14
University, and was then awarded a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard’s 15
Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies. Bushelle also completed an MA 16
at Harvard and his BA at Macalester College. His doctoral research was 17
undertaken at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies in 18
Kyoto, as well as at Rikkyō and Waseda Universities in Tokyo, where he 19
was a Fulbright Graduate Research Fellow and Junior Visiting Researcher, 20
respectively. He is presently working on a book entitled Buddhism and 21
the Making of Medieval Japan. 22
23
Amber D. Carpenter is associate professor at Yale-NUS College. She works 24
in ancient Greek philosophy, primarily publishing on Plato’s ethics, broadly 25
conceived; and in classical Indian Buddhist philosophy. Her book Indian 26
Buddhist Philosophy appeared in 2014. She writes increasingly on Greek 27
and Indian Buddhist philosophy together, focusing usually on the ethical 28
implications and underpinnings of metaphysical and epistemological argu- 29
ments. She currently leads an international project on Buddhist-Platonist 30
philosophy; previously she has held fellowships with the Beacon Project 31
(Templeton Religious Trust), and the Einstein Forum. 32
33
Francisca Cho is professor of Buddhist Studies at Georgetown University 34
and the author of numerous works on the aesthetic expression of Bud- 35
dhism in East Asia. Her books include Embracing Illusion: Truth and 36
37
38

361

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 362 Contributors

1 Fiction in the Dream of the Nine Clouds (1996), Everything Yearned For:
2 Manhae’s Poems of Love and Longing (2005), and Seeing Like the Buddha:
3 Enlightenment through Film (2017).
4
5 Natalie Gummer is professor of religious studies at Beloit College in Be-
6 loit, Wisconsin, where she has taught since 2001. Her research, published
7 in several journal articles and book chapters, examines textual practices in
8 premodern Mahāyāna Buddhist literary cultures, especially ritual uses of
9 texts, oral performance, and translation. She also explores how Mahāyāna
10 literature might offer us critical purchase on a range of contemporary ethical
11 and and philosophical debates. She is currently completing a monograph
12 on performativity and embodiment in Mahāyāna sūtras.
13
14 Steven Heine is professor of religious studies and history and director
15 of Asian Studies at Florida International University. Author or editor of
16 three dozen volumes on the history of Chan/Zen thought in addition to
17 nearly one hundred articles, Heine’s recent work focuses on the role of
18 gongan/kōan collections in Song dynasty Chinese and medieval Japanese
19 sources, including Chan Rhetoric of Uncertainty in the Blue Cliff Record:
20 Sharpening a Sword at the Dragon Gate. Recipient of the Order of the
21 Rising Sun award from the Japanese government in 2007, Heine has
22 received many grants from Fulbright, the U.S. Department of Education,
23 Japan Foundation, National Endowment for Humanities, Freeman Foun-
24 dation, Association for Asian Studies, and American Academy of Religion.
25
26 C. W. Huntington Jr. (1949–2020) was professor of religious studies at
27 Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York. He held an MA in linguistics
28 and a PhD in Buddhist Studies from the University of Michigan. Hun-
29 tington was a specialist in early Indian Madhyamaka and published articles
30 on Buddhist philosophy and meditative practice in a number of books
31 and peer-reviewed academic journals. He was the author of two books:
32 The Emptiness of Emptiness: An Introduction to Early Indian Mādhyamika
33 (University of Hawaii Press), and a work of Buddhist narrative philosophy
34 titled Maya: A Novel (Wisdom Publications).
35
36 Sonam Kachru is assistant professor in the Department of Religious
37 Studies, University of Virginia. He holds a PhD in philosophy of religions
38

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 Contributors 363

from the University of Chicago, and works on the history of philosophy 1

and literature in South Asia, with special emphasis on the history of 2
Buddhism. His first book, on the Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu, 3
More and Less Than Human, is forthcoming with Columbia University 4
Press. In recent work, he has been focusing on the metaphysics, norms, 5
practices, and poetics of attention. 6
7
Yaroslav Komarovski (PhD University of Virginia, 2007) is professor 8
of religious studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He conducts 9
research on Tibetan interpretations of Madhyamaka and Yogācāra Buddhist 10
views on the nature of reality and related epistemological, philosophical, 11
and contemplative issues. In particular, he focuses on writings of the 12
Tibetan Buddhist thinker Shakya Chokden (1428–1507), who articulated 13
a startlingly new reconsideration of the core areas of Buddhist thought 14
and practice, such as epistemology, ethics, tantric rituals, and the relation- 15
ship between philosophy and contemplation. Komarovski’s publications 16
include Radiant Emptiness: Three Seminal Works by the Golden Paṇḍita 17
Shakya Chokden (Oxford University Press, 2020), Tibetan Buddhism and 18
Mystical Experience (Oxford University Press, 2015), and Visions of Unity: 19
The Golden Paṇḍita Shakya Chokden’s New Interpretation of Yogācāra and 20
Madhyamaka (SUNY Press, 2011). 21
22
Richard F. Nance is associate professor in the Department of Religious 23
Studies at Indiana University, where he teaches courses on Buddhist phi- 24
losophy, rhetoric, and ritual. He is the author of Speaking for Buddhas: 25
Scriptural Commentary in Indian Buddhism (Columbia University Press, 26
2012), and has published work in various journals, including the Journal 27
of the American Academy of Religion, the Journal of Indian Philosophy, the 28
Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, Religion Compass, 29
and Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines. He is currently at work on a translation 30
of Vasubandhu’s Vyākhyāyukti and a monograph on the transmission of 31
Buddhist traditions in India. 32
33
Massimo Rondolino is associate professor of philosophy at Carroll 34
University in Wisconsin. His first book, Cross-Cultural Perspectives on 35
Hagiographical Strategies (Routledge, 2017) is a cross-cultural comparative 36
study of religious communities’ dynamics of legitimation, with a focus 37
38

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 364 Contributors

1 on the hagiographical traditions of the medieval Christian St. Francis of

2 Assisi and the Tibetan Buddhist Milarepa. For this work, he received the
3 2018 Frederick J. Streng Book Award for Excellence in Buddhist-Christian
4 studies. Presently he is leading two related collaborative projects on the
5 cross-cultural study of hagiographical sources: one on the intersection be-
6 tween hagiographical rhetoric and patronal dynamics, and the other on the
7 use of hagiographical narratives for the construction of monastic identity.
8
9 Sarah Shaw read Greek and English literature at Manchester University,
10 where she completed her doctorate in nineteenth-century English fiction.
11 Her research now is on early Buddhist texts, meditation teachings, chant,
12 and narrative. She is a fellow of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies,
13 and is a member of the Faculty of Oriental Studies and Wolfson College,
14 University of Oxford. She writes and lectures on Buddhist subjects, and
15 has recently become the Khyentse Foundation Reader in Buddhist Studies,
16 University of South Wales, UK. Publications include studies of Jātakas
17 and meditation texts for Yale University Press, Penguin, Shambhala, and
18 Silkworm Press.
19
20 Rafal K. Stepien is assistant professor in comparative religion at Nanyang
21 Technological University in Singapore. He holds degrees from Oxford,
22 Cambridge, and Columbia Universities, and has pursued further studies
23 at Harvard, Peking, Bologna, Esfehan, Damascus, and numerous other
24 universities worldwide. Stepien was the inaugural Cihui Foundation Fac-
25 ulty Fellow in Chinese Buddhism at Columbia, the inaugural Berggruen
26 Research Fellow in Indian Philosophy at Oxford, and a Humboldt Research
27 Fellow in Buddhist Studies within the Karl Jaspers Centre for Advanced
28 Transcultural Studies at Heidelberg University. The bulk of his scholarship
29 concerns Indian and Chinese Buddhist philosophy and literature, though
30 a prior avatar remains fascinated with Persian mystical poetry.
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