 Hi everyone. My name is Lucia Dolce and I'll be talking to you today as the convener of the Amai Buddhist studies here at ZOAS. Maybe I thought I'd say a few words about myself to start with. I'm a scholar of Buddhism, in particular East Asian Buddhism and currently the Nomata Professor of Japanese Buddhism here in the Department of History, Philosophy and Religions. I thought I would organize today's event with a bit of introduction about what it means Buddhist studies, and then I'd like to give you an example, drawing on my own research on the topic that you'll see on the screen. Buddhist bodies are transient and the performance of liberation. And I'll make sure to leave a little bit of time at the end to speak a bit about the program since in previous years students have been keen to ask questions that were more relevant for the program and the structure, the organization of the problem. I'll start with my excuses. I have a very bad voice today despite a lot of tea. You'll see that it's a bit strained, so apologies for this. So let me start straight away. I like to think about the meaning of Buddhist studies as a field of inquiry with you, and especially thinking about how we study Buddhism here at ZOAS. There are especially two aspects of this field that is important to take into account. One that is an interdisciplinary field, which means that it's not a discipline itself but can be approached from different disciplinary perspectives. We have Buddhist studies from a historical point of view, from a philosophical point of view, textual criticism, ritual studies, art, material culture, and many of these approaches are represented in one of the other modules that we teach, often also within the same module to offer you an overview of the possibilities of learning about Buddhism. The second very important point is a critical approach, which means to look at Buddhism as an object to study, and to look at how the study of Buddhism has developed through the centuries, not only in the West, in Europe, and the rest of the Western world, but also in the places where Buddhism was originated and developed. And I'm particularly keen to highlight the importance of the input of Asian scholarship in shaping the field of Buddhist studies. This is particularly relevant for me because the input of a Japanese scholarship has been foundational, and one cannot do Buddhist studies without taking the, let's say, Asian perspective into account. So these two main methodological questions have framed the way in which we learn about Buddhism, so as, first of all, we are not a vocational department, we're not even in the department of theology. So our appreciation of Buddhism is that as a living religion that is rooted in specific cultural and political traditions. The teaching is based on research and primary sources and first hand knowledge of the field, which means that we are very sensitive and very much affected by the specific features that Buddhism has taken in its journey across Asia and in the world of time beyond Asia. So what does this mean in practice? These are some points that I think are important for us to reflect in terms of not only methodology but also objects of attention. Religion is a very diverse religious tradition historically and geographically. Geographically, it is at the same time a transnational religion, a translational form of thought, a system of thought to some people would say, and at the same time is characterized by specific local forms. This dynamic between transnational and local aspects has given a race to ambiguities and sometimes contradictions as if two different forms of Buddhism were playing one against the other. So we speak about Buddhist studies and maybe in the mind of someone, of some of you, maybe people come to the field from outside of it, you think of Buddhism and the singular. The one thing that appears very quickly when you have a close look at the sources of Buddhism and the practices of Buddhism is that we need to use Buddhism in the plural to speak of Buddhism, if we can say so. The multiplicity of ideas and practices that make up Buddhism make it almost compulsory to look at the features of Buddhism, not only the level of ideas of philosophical outcomes, philosophical thinking, but also to look at what we can call the political issues of Buddhist societies, Buddhist cultures. And I use here political in a very broad sense, in the sense of a lot of the word, including theories of liberation that we can consider in a sense that more strictly belonging to the scholastic, the trinal philosophical context, but also the engagement with the political world of Buddhism as a living religion has been across history and still is in some country a state religion. So what does that mean for the way in which Buddhism has developed or Buddhist ideas have developed. It's important to think about the agents of Buddhist, and he had the construction of gender, for instance, becomes fundamental, and the understanding of the environment. There are some of the areas that show as the diversity of Buddhism, the diversity of the products, cultural products that we call today, Buddhist, and the multiplicity of methodologies that are necessary to understand each of these aspects of the tradition. Now let me give an example of more details, looking at a specific topic within Buddhist studies that has come perhaps more to the attention of scholars in recent times. That is, how we can define the aims and the modes of Buddhist practice, focusing on a, an element that is very close to us, and at the same time, has been an object of much thinking by Buddhist across periods in geographical areas. And it is the body. So I like to think how we can articulate or how we as representing the Buddhist world in its multiplicity can articulate ideas of liberation and with this term I include in this term. Other, any aspect of the outcome of Buddhist practice or the ideal of Buddhist inspiration, aspiration that can be called enlightenment can be called salvation can be called nirvana. So all these different expressions of, of the attainments that can be achieved through Buddhist practice I call liberation. Now I would like to look at how these ideas of liberation have been articulated by using a, an object, such as the body, the human body that present itself as the opposite of a liberated body as presented self as a transient entity that is firmly rooted in time and place. So we can say that the body in Buddhism has an ambiguous position that stands at the crossroads of apparently contrasting conceptual stances. It is a finite entity. If you think of a body that is born and dies. So it has temporal affinity. And at the same time, it is presented in some Buddhist sources in many Buddhist sources in fact, as the object of that transformation of the finite into the absolute into the non finite that is the goal of Buddhist. So, let's look at the diversity of these ideas of the body. And I will start with negative news of the body that we find in some tradition that reject the body as a symbol of the suffering of sentient beings. And these traditions draw attention to the physical constituents of the body that determine pain, not understood only in terms of physical pain of individual pain in terms of karmic pain. There are all sorts of obstructions that the body poses to liberation, and that are not limited to the individual existence of one body in one life, but are inherited by multiple existence that's what we understand as the karmic cycle. The body is a symbol of suffering because it incorporates it and bodies we could say that chain of birth and death of life and death that Buddhism in its very early expressions is set to overcome. And what really makes this entity which we call body problematic is the fact that it embodies the duality of the world, the duality of language. This one body is different from another body. It poses a subject and a object we would say in Western philosophical terms as different and therefore dual. It brings to the fore the oppositions between things between elements of the world that we see around us, what is called the Buddhism the conventional world or maybe we can say the phenomenal world. In all its being whether it's physical or whether it's ritual actions that the body performs. You can see that sources that to look at the body as something negative and we have a great number of in the Tibetan sources that start the inquiry into the origin of human life by emphasizing the negativity of being born. In these sources, for instance, we will see represented the suffering of the fetus to the origin of human life in very concrete terms you could say. And the fetus is represented as something that as an entity that is constrained by the fact of, of growing in a place, the place of conception, the room, the human, the famous room especially that is conceived as filthy as as dirty and as narrow and in other words all those constraints that are both physical and emotional, we could say. To be liberated in this context to achieve enlightenment, Buddhahood realization, again, the variety of terms of which liberation can be articulated means to go out of the chain of continuous rebirth of continuous reincarnation into another fetus. Not human reincarnation or in other beings that are deemed to die. And that is what we call what these traditions called Nirvana. And many sources that things in negatively about the body think of Nirvana is something that happens can happen only after, after death, the ultimate attainment can happen after the constraints of the physical constraints of the human body have been left. Next to this, maybe represented better by the East Asian tradition, but not exclusively but especially the station tradition, we have a positive emphasis on the body as a site of salvation as the very expression of Buddhist attainment. And therefore the pre-eminent vehicle for overcoming the finitude that characterizes it. We see here a very different perspective that looks at the elimination of the chain of multiple rebirth, not in a future, outside the finitude of the world, but within the world itself. And the fuel that these Buddhist communities pursue is attaining liberation now and here. So with the body that you have been endowed, let's say they, and this is what they, how they express it, the flesh body that you have been given by mother and father. The expression that very often is understood to represent these ideas comes from from the station traditions and says attaining Buddhahood with one's own body, so that the multiplicity of rebirth is, not just the dismissed, is there as a foundation of Buddhist thinking but is not relevant anymore. So what happens in a system that thinks that the body as it is, as finite, can be the ultimate expression of Buddhist attainment. Just because the body is understood as this liminal space, this one liminal sense that it exists on the border between what I've called the Western times time and eternity, finite time and infinite time, we could say, the concept of eternity is expressed, maybe slightly different than it is expressed in Western sources, when you speak about Buddhist expressions, but anyway, just let's think of the body as this liminal space, this exactly this liminal space that allows the body to become a site of transformation. So Buddhist sources that engage the body in this terms, interestingly, highlight both its duality, in fact, all those dual aspects that I mentioned earlier on, but also the contiguity between the two conditions that the body is assumed, the temporal condition and the potential for a infinite absolute dimension. So in this case, practices of the body, practices that have the body at its center are meant to resolve the duality that it embodies and to resolve them virtually by performative actions that allow the practitioner, practitioner being used as a general term for a Buddhist, let's say, Buddhist follower who is practicing Buddhism, right, and aim to transform the ordinary being into the thus come the Buddha. So we can say that this finite body of human beings, in this case the practitioners, managed to actualize in itself that condition of non duality that is considered the ultimate goal of Buddhist practice. And this means that Buddhahood, that is the essence of the aim, very aim of a Buddhist, so the being of the Buddha, Buddhahood in that sense, is articulated as a cognitive process that passes through the body. And this is interesting, the body, you think of the body in Western terms, you think immediately of the opposition between body and mind, between physical characteristics and mental processes. But what happens in the system so that to speak of the body in more absolute terms, if I'm allowed this expression is that the mental functions and the physical characteristics of the body are joined are always interacting and cannot exist one without the other. And this is really an important way that is underpinned, a way of thinking about the body that is underpinned by specific conception of reality, and by the very understanding of what the form of the Buddha is. And if we can say what are the bodies of the Buddha, and what are the possibilities, the potentialities of sentient and even non sentient beings, non sentient beings are those who do not speak, we could say we do not think, who do not feel so traditionally would be said who have no mental functions. How also these beings can be understood as part of the Buddhist work. So in other words, the ideas of these positive ideas of the body as an entity that intrinsically is endowed with the potential and the possibility to achieve a condition that is that of the Buddha need to be related to a metaphysical we want to use philosophical terms from the Western context, a metaphysical, and even perhaps an ontological understanding of reality, in which the Buddha is not a separate being from human beings. But it is perhaps partaking of the duality of human beings in the same and because of that, sentient beings, I prefer to use sentient beings because that's what the text to use the Buddhist think about the simple human beings. So sentient beings, at the same way, partake of the non duality of the Buddha. So these are very complex concepts we can go to each of these things but I thought I will give you an example in practice. How can, what kind of ritual can transform the body into the practitioner's body into a Buddha body. And I thought I will take an example where to actually but let's start with one. An example from archival material that has been discovered recently in, in temporal kinds medieval Japanese temporal guys that happened to have worked more closely on. And it is interesting because it's not only a, these are not only treatises, so philosophical articulations of this concept, but are illustrated by diagrams by sketches by more properly colored images that give you much more the, the sense of what was happening, how, how these ideas were applied to, to, to practice, to complete practice. And, and these are visualization practices that were aimed at recreating the body of the practitioner as the body of a Buddha in this case, in the case of this work that I've put here this little diagram that puts you on the screen. We're talking about Buddha was not the historical Buddha, but is one of the many Buddhas that were, that were created in, in the, the branch of Buddhism that is called Mahayana Buddhism. This Buddha is called the Mahavarachana and sounds great. It's a Chinese in Japanese, so it's a, is a Buddha that is characterized that, but it's kind of the protagonist you could say that the, the, the center of tantric systems. What happens in, in these practices is that the practitioner with his mind, with his mouth, so with his voice, and with gestures. Visualizes actors, the names of Buddhas that constitute a mandalic body. The body of the Buddha represented as a mandala multiple let's say a mandala is a kind of cosmogram made of different entities so that if that represents the Buddha body, that is a multiple body. Or a body that incorporates multiplicity we could say so in this visualization practices. The practitioner concentrate on the names, the images of these duties and visualizes them on specific parts of his own body. In other words, mark, the practitioner marks his own body by inscribing it with letters with deities, and in so doing, in a ritual context, transform it into the body of the mandala. And this body is defined the body that is so from the origins. In other words, not the body that is born, that has entered the chain of life and death, but the body of the Buddha that is ever, that is forever that has always been that is the expression in Buddhism is very often that that has no beginning and no end. And I'd like to show you another example very quickly, in which the physicality of the human body is used as a model for conceiving of the practices of transformation into non-jewel beings. That is in a Buddha like existence. And this is another diagram, again, from another archive. And these are mostly 13th century images to see here. And in this case, these five forms that we see here, very strange forms here that end up with the with the aspect of a Buddha, of a Buddha sitting in meditation. Are meant to represent the process of gestation of ascension being. And the, you know, the glosses here I will say really that there is a moment in which the fluids of mother and father encounter each other and that produces a being that grows little by little with, you know, two forms and here you have like the arms and the head, and then becomes becomes this image here is a stupa stupa five elements is called, which means that the body is endowed of all the physical constituents of the universe. It's a complete body, but that body, then at the moment of being released from the mother's womb, so the moment of being born is in the shape of a Buddha. So it's what is conceived in this womb that in other tradition was considered filthy and was considered something to get out as soon as possible becomes the moment of the transformation the place of the transformation of the dualistic existence of the practitioner into the non dual perfected body of a Buddha, but all this happens, or at least is conceived to happen within the the physical limited body of the practitioner himself. So dualities at the same time and knowledge and continuously overcome. And another it is interesting that by looking at these kind of charts of diagrams of the of the practice of transformation of the Buddhist practitioner as a process of gestation. Is it interesting to see how much of knowledge that you wouldn't call exactly Buddhist, so that it doesn't come from an articulation of what is the teaching of the Buddha is inserted and is reused. And in fact, in order to explain the development of a practitioner. These texts use a lot of medical knowledge that was being created this is actually medical knowledge transmitted from India throughout the Asian continent through Buddhist text. And we see the extent to which the articulation of the aim of Buddhist liberation can take different shapes, depending on the cultural context in which these things these ideas are developed and in a relation to systems of knowledge that seem to be external to this proper. I think I will stop here. I've taken a little bit more time that I should have properly. And maybe I'll ask questions if any. And then maybe have a bit of time to speak about the problem. Thank you. Any question any comment that you want to have was it maybe a little bit cryptic kind of introduction to Buddhist. Anyone. Oh, yes, I see that there is a question here from Brahmi Roya. Yes. Are you saying that Buddhism is cultural relative. Buddhism in Sri Lanka is culturally different to Buddhism in Tibet. Yes, I'm saying that. Absolutely. There are differences that are due to the type of Buddhist so there's not just Buddhism but there are types of Buddhism that developed historically so just taking example from the two traditions so you are mentioning here. Sri Lankan Buddhism is a mainly represented by what we call them, call it in different ways, again, politically sensitive terminology, what has been called the Theravada Buddhism or early Buddhism, whereas Tibetan Buddhism is mainly Mahayana Buddhism. So these are the two largest types of Buddhist. But what I wanted to say is that the differences are even more simple that even within the Mahayana context, for instance, that is the context I was talking about, you have very different ideas of what is liberation and how to achieve it. And you have an incredible variety of expressions to indicate certain aims. Another question here that says, do you think the question is from Grace, do you think there is a change in the views of women and their place in Buddhism dependent on the branch of Buddhism beliefs? Or whether birth is positive or a negative process or does this viewpoint concerning the womb not extend to women as individuals? This is a very interesting question and is a question that I have actually even addressed in this work of mine I was drawing from. There are, so the specific kind of conservation rituals, the visualization ritual I was talking about seemed to me to use women as more a focus to represent duality, so the opposite of male, you could say more as a sort of polarity, polarities. But there are different, but when we speak about views of women in Buddhism, that is a very large topic that embraces partly what I was quoting, for instance, the polluting dimension of the womb and especially of the act of being born, the bloody affair of being born. That is a very important aspect of the, we can say the biological nature of women that was taken over in Buddhism is an element of discrimination of, we could say even biological discrimination, but which will become later on even a ritual discrimination. So for instance, traditionally, again, to give you an example that I know better than others in Japanese narratives, you will very often read that women who are polluting should not enter the sacred presence of temples. And still today, some sacred mountains are, well are forbidden to women, if you think of them in ritual terms, the access to the innermost sacred areas is considered to be too sacred for beings such as women who are who have hindrances, this is the term that is used in Buddhism, that may be connected just to their biological being. So again, it's a very large topic and we can think about what women do, what they've done throughout history, what they do in different places to counteract these ideas. So women, in particular Buddhist women, but women who are interested in maintaining their identity as Buddhist, and at the same time, you know, being seen maybe as even as equal beings. So there is an interesting, very interesting movement of feminist Buddhists, both in the West and in Asia, that interprets in different ways, both the, inside the canonical statements of the scriptures, with regard to the inferiority of women, the historical practices of women, and even more broadly, Buddhist communities, monastic and lay communities, to overcome that, well, those statements, let's say. There's a follow up then from Rami that says, if Buddhism in general preaches modesty, how come there are monuments and grandiose display of worship of the Buddha across Asia, like the gold statues of him, doesn't that defeat the purpose of Buddhism as a whole? I'm not sure that, again, you speak of Buddhism in the singular, where is Buddhism preaching modesty? If you think that the historical development of Buddhism depended on the sponsorship of the elites, we could say, and even of rulers, and the fact that Buddhism always provided legitimation to political power and often social order, then it's very difficult to think that Buddhism is about modesty. I mean, I'm not sure what you mean about it, but certainly something like monuments, displays of worship or golden statues do not defeat the purpose of Buddhism, but they open up the, you know, what else the Buddhists, we could say, they open up the possibility of identifying with the Buddhists, for instance, the Buddha is represented in sutras, especially Mariana, the Buddha is represented as, well, at the center of us and these major different beings, and that was a very useful symbol of a universal sovereign that could be taken over by rulers who became Buddhists, who helped the spread of Buddhism, who also used Buddhism to legitimize their own authority. So I think, I think, I mean, I don't know where your question comes from, but it seems to be a very idealistic feeling of Buddhism that seems to dismiss the fact that Buddhism was a religion, it is a religion in many countries and therefore has very important social aspects. Yeah, I should go, there are a few more questions and we have very little time. Yang, or Chen, I don't know, three names, here asks, the reason I'm saying in China, like Buddhism is like water, while different cultures are like bottles with different shape, it is like put the water in different bottles, the water is still the water, but it is in different shapes. Thank you, that's a fantastic symbol as, well, the shape of water is a trope in many cultures, maybe we can say, but there is another saying in East Asia that is about the waves and the ocean, it says that the ocean is one, but waves are all different, one from the other, and they go ashore or clash against the rocks in different ways, producing different shapes, and yet the water is always the same. So yes, Buddhism is, there is a core, there are a number of Buddhist tenets, maybe we can call it, and even practices that are, that are there, across different expressions. But we cannot forget the expressions, the individual, the historically and cultural determined expressions of a religion and system of thought that after all is made of individuals who were different in historical periods and in geographical areas. So the idealistic representation of Buddhism in the singular is something that has been preached by, you know, the historical Buddha, the Buddha that we call Shakyamuni, is a pretty limited view of what Buddhism was, and what was across a very large extent of territory that is, that is Asia, and in modern times, outside Asia as well. Grace says, thank you for answering my question, it was an interesting lecture, and I'm intrigued to look into this more as a translation student. Now this is really interesting, we have this here in the MA Buddhist Studies, a student from China, who is also interested in translation theories and has been applying translation theories to the way in which we engage with Buddhist text, which is a field that still needs a lot of attention. Okay, thank you Rami for asking your questions, and many people seem to be have to leave, some people seem to be have to leave here, so maybe we should stop here. And if you have any questions about the program that I had hoped to find some time to speak about, please do not hesitate to come back to me. I know most of the information you have, you would like to have this on our website, but do feel free to email me.