Revisiting the Zen Monastic Experience: Papers Presented to Honor Robert Buswell

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel

Abstract

Some of Robert Buswell’s (UCLA) landmark research in the area of Zen (C. Chan, K. Sŏn) studies includes the life and works of Chinul (1158-1210), the practice of kōan (C. gong’an, K. kong’an) introspection, apocryphal Buddhist literature, and Sŏn Buddhist monasticism in Korea. The principal theme of this panel is to explore social, intellectual, historical, and material approaches to establishing authority in the early modern and contemporary Korean, Japanese, and Chinese Zen traditions by expanding upon and providing significant nuance to a matter of tremendous importance to Robert Buswell: the lived experiences of Zen Buddhism. The papers presented in this border-crossing panel are delivered by several of Buswell’s students whose research encompasses Zen studies in Korea, Japan, and China. The papers accomplish far more than simply paying tribute to a great teacher. Park and Riggs consider how precepts within contemporary Korean and early modern Japanese Zen movements—Chogye and Sōtō Zen—contributed to discourses of institutional authority. Nathan and Poceski consider kōan discourse in contemporary East Asia. Poceski’s paper discusses how a particular kōan case—Nanquan ‘Kills a Cat’—has been reinterpreted through successive narratives in China and Japan, as well as within contemporary global discourses about Zen practice. Nathan reconsiders kanhwa sŏn practice within monastic and lay contexts in Korea. The panelists’ papers provide a wealth of information about Zen ideas and practices, and provoke important questions about the nature of Zen and its place in modern East Asian life that bridge temporal, chronological, sectarian, intellectual, and national boundaries.

Area of Study

• Interarea-Border Crossing

Session Organizer

• George Albert Keyworth, University of Saskatchewan

Individual Presentations

• Beyond the Zen Monastic Experience: Ethnographies of Buddhist Practice in Contemporary Korea - Mark A. Nathan, University at Buffalo

• Sŏn Master Sŏngch’ŏl (1912-1993) and the Remaking of the Chogye (Jogye) Order in Post-Liberation Korea - Pori Park, Arizona State University

• Killing Cats and Other Flights of Imagination: Features and Contexts of Chan Exegesis - Mario Poceski, University of Florida

• Taking the Precepts: A Beginning or the Seal of Awakening? - David Riggs, Independent Researcher

Discussant

• Robert E. Buswell Jr., University of California, Los Angeles