April 18 & 19, 2009 Conference on "Buddhist Training in Japan"

In case you are interested:

The University of Toronto/McMaster University Numata Buddhist Studies Program
invites you to a conference on

"Buddhist Training in Japan"

University of Toronto
Trinity College, 6 Hoskin Avenue, Combination Room

April 18-19, 2009

This conference will explore the issue of Buddhist training in Japan. “Training” will be taken in its broadest sense, including, but not limited to, formal monastic training, sectarian University education, ascetic practices, growing up in a temple, parishioner study groups, and meditation retreats. We will consider a variety of texts and practices across a wide range of historical periods with an aim to move past categorical distinctions such as elite/popular, doctrine/practice, text/ritual, and monk/layperson. For example, in the formal and informal training of a Japanese priest in the present day, we can see the ways that doctrine is “practiced” as well as the specific texts that form the basis of that practice. A focus on training provides an excellent opportunity for comparative work both within Buddhist studies and within the larger field of Religious Studies. Participants will be encouraged to consider aspects of training that could be seen as uniquely Buddhist and those that would be more fruitfully viewed in broader cultural and political contexts.


CONFERENCE SCHEDULE

Saturday April 18

Breakfast 8:30 - 9:15

9:20 - 11:00 Panel One - Codification, Orthodoxy, and Training

Michel Mohr (University of Hawai'i) - Spiritual Energy in Action: The Dynamics of Training According to Tōrei

Mark Blum (SUNY at Albany) - Revisionism or Revitalization? The Rebirth of Jōdoshū Samādhi Training in the Edo & Meiji Periods

John LoBreglio (Oxford Brookes University) - Standardizing Lay Training in Meiji Sōtō Zen

Discussant: Duncan Williams (UC Berkeley)

11 - 11:15 Coffee Break

11:15 - 12: 30 Panel Two - Training as Context and the Context of Training

Heather Blair (Stanford University) - Burying the Dharma in the Southern Mountains

David Quinter (University of Alberta) - The Mother of Awakening and Buddhist Training: An Investigation of Jōkei’s and Eison’s Monju kōshiki

Discussant: Juhn Ahn (University of Toronto)

12:30 - 1:30 Lunch

1:30 - 2:45 Panel Three - Monastic Regulations, Training, and Identity in Japan

Gina Cogan (Boston University) - The ‘Kanbun 4 Regulations:’ Morals and Manners at a Seventeenth-Century Imperial Convent

Paul Groner (University of Virginia) - Jitsudō Ninkū (1307-1388) and the Education of Monks through Debate

Discussant: Griffith Foulk (Sarah Lawrence College)

2:45 - 3:15 Coffee Break

3:15 - 4:30 Panel Four - Buddhist Training and the Marginal

Mikael Adolphson (University of Alberta) - Menial Workers or Monks? Dōshu in Japanese Medieval Monasteries

Lori Meeks (University of Southern California) - Women’s Monastic Training at Thirteenth-Century Hokkeji

Discussant: Ian Reader (Manchester University)


Sunday, April 19th

Breakfast 8:30 - 9:15

9:20 - 11:00 Panel Five: Education and Buddhism in Modernity

Steve Covell (Western Michigan University) - Training Little Buddhas? Buddhist Kindergartens in Japan

Mark Rowe (McMaster University) - Producing Expertise in Post-War Japanese Buddhism

George Tanabe (University of Hawai'i) - Training for America, Americans in Training: Priests and Ministers in Japanese-American Buddhist Temples

Discussant: Victor Hori (McGill University)

11 - 11:10 Coffee Break

11:10 - 11:30 Concluding Remarks

Helen Hardacre (Harvard University)


Event Organizers: Juhn Ahn, University of Toronto; Mark Rowe, McMaster University

Event Hosts: Juhn Ahn, University of Toronto; Mark Rowe, McMaster University; Frances Garrett, University of Toronto; Amanda Goodman, University of Toronto; Neil McMullin, University of Toronto (Emeritus); Shayne Clarke, McMaster University


For more on the Numata Buddhist Studies Program, see http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/buddhiststudies/numata/index.html

For more on Buddhist Studies at the University of Toronto, see http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/buddhiststudies/

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