Events

CHAIRPERSON

Dr Wu Keping, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore.

ABSTRACT

The shift of the Buddhist center from India to China is a significant event in global history and in Buddhist history. Recent studies suggest that this shift occurred in Tang China (618-907). These studies look at the shift from the viewpoint of Sino-Indian diplomatic and commercial relations as well as from the cosmopolitan zeitgeist of the Tang Dynasty. In this study, I suggest that the shift occurred one hundred years earlier. Around 510, a Central Asian monk who witnessed the pageant of the Buddha’s birthday in Loyang, the Chinese capital, acknowledged that the land of the contemporary Western Wei Dynasty was a Buddha Land.

I use two contrasting terms, pratyanta-janapada (borderland) and madhyadeśa (middle land or heartland), to investigate the shift of Buddhism from India to China. These terms are metaphorical in Mahayana Buddhism. Mahayana Buddhists often use them to describe current situations. The former term refers to a place where the Buddha’s Dharma cannot be discerned. The latter term refers to a place where the Buddha’s Dharma prevails and where a person can easily acquire liberation. By examining the usage of these two terms in Chinese Buddhism in the early fourth century and in the early sixth century, I explain how Chinese Buddhists changed their conception of China from borderland to heartland at the same time as Buddhist doctrines developed.

Three scriptures, the Prajnaparamita, the Lotus, and the Mahaparinirvana, are particularly examined. They were probably popular in Central Asia. Beginning in 450, nomadic tribes devastated Buddhism in Central Asia. Between 445 and 450, Emperor Taiwu of the Northern Wei Dynasty also cruelly suppressed Buddhism in China. However, the subsequent revival of Buddhism prompted a great monk, Tangyao, to make five huge caves to house five gigantic Buddha-statues to represent five past emperors in Capital. Then, together with the widely performed confessions which promised anyone, monastic or lay, male or female, attainment of the nirvanic state, the Chinese imperial patronage of Buddhism eventually actualized into the physical world the Buddha Land which the scriptures had described. In this way, Mount Grdhrakata, where the Buddha had preached the Dharma, was moved to China.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Chou Po-kan is Senior Research Fellow of the Religion and Globalization Research Cluster at the Asian Research Institute at the National University of Singapore. Previously, he taught at National Taiwan University and Foguang University. He was also visiting scholar at the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy, Academic Sinica. Born in Taipei, Taiwan, he was educated in Classic Chinese literature, Confucianism, Chinese history, Chinese religion and Buddhism, ancient Chinese palaeography and hybrid Buddhist Chinese in the National Taiwan University. He subsequently earned his doctoral degree at the University of Chicago, where he studied Indian civilization and Sanskrit and also broadened his views on Chinese Buddhism and religions from the various perspectives of Western religious and cultural studies.

REGISTRATION

Admission is free. We would greatly appreciate if you RSVP Mr Jonathan Lee via email: jonathan.lee@nus.edu.sg