[above image: Shunjo, one of the monks that will be discussed]
Speaker: Paul Groner (University of Virginia)
Time: 5 pm, Monday, October 23, 2017
Venue: UBC, Asian Centre, Room 604
Sponsor: This lecture is sponsored by Liuzu Temple with support from the SSHRC funded project “From the Ground Up: Buddhism and East Asian Religions”
Abstract:
The Japanese monk Shunjō 俊芿 (1155–1227) traveled to China and studied Tiantai, Pure Land and the precepts for thirteen years. When he returned to Japan, he brought back one of the largest collections of Chinese texts from the Song Dynasty and practices that radically differed from those used by Japanese Tendai monks. Although he enjoyed great success in many ways, he had limited success in influencing Tendai monastic discipline. In this lecture, I look at how an eminent Japanese scholar Ninkū 仁空 (1309–1388) responded to some of Shunjō’s challenges.
About the Speaker:
Dr. Paul Groner has had a long career as a professor in the department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. In addition to numerous articles on various aspects of Japanese Buddhism, he is the author of Saichō: The Establishment of the Japanese Tendai School, Ryōgen and Mount Hiei: Japanese Tendai in the Tenth Century, and has translated Akira Hirakawa’s History of Early Indian Buddhism into English.