Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

From the introduction: On the occasion when the great master came to Pao Lin, the Prefect Wei Chu of Shao Chou and his officials came o the mountain and invited the master to come down to the lecture hall of the Ta Fan Temple in the heart of the city so that an opportunity will be open to all to hear him speak about the Dharma.

Notre analyse porte sur la notion d’éveil au sein du Sûtra de Vimalakîrti. Premièrement, nous présentons et comparons les modèles d’éveil exposés dans ce texte, soit la figure du bouddha et – surtout – celle du bodhisattva; nous analysons leurs deux grands traits caractéristiques, c’est-à-dire la connaissance transcendante et les méthodes habiles, puis élaborons leur rôle par rapport à l’éveil. Il apparaît d’emblée que la connaissance transcendante est une connaissance non discursive de la réelle nature de toute chose et qu’elle est une condition nécessaire à l’éveil, alors que les méthodes habiles – aussi appelées expédients salvifiques – constituent la myriade de moyens rusés et provisoires conçus et employés par les bouddhas et bodhisattva dans le but d’amener les êtres ignorants à l’éveil et d’ainsi les libérer de l’attachement et de la souffrance. Dans le second chapitre, nous caractérisons l’état de conscience de l’éveillé à l’aide de notions telles la non-dualité, la non-discrimination et la non-pensée, puis présentons la conception de la pratique méditationnelle soutenue dans notre sûtra. Nous montrons que l’état d’éveil est un état de conscience non discriminateur au sein duquel l’identité personnelle et les phénomènes – ou la dualité sujet-objet – sont reconnus comme étant des illusions ou, plus précisément, des constructions mentales et langagières. Ainsi, la méditation apparaît comme étant une méthode habile provisoire dont les buts sont essentiellement la déconstruction du paradigme dualiste de la pensée discursive et la réalisation qu’il n’existe, ultimement et paradoxalement, aucune réelle entrave à l’éveil et aucune pratique méditationnelle nécessaire à l’expérience de l’éveil. / Our analysis pertains to the notion of awakening in the Vimalakîrti Sûtra. Firstly, we present and compare the models of awakening exposed in this text, namely the figure of the buddha and – especially – that of the bodhisattva; we analyze their two major characteristic traits, that is to say transcendent knowledge and skillful means, and elaborate on their relation to awakening. We quickly find that transcendent knowledge is a non discursive knowledge of the real nature of all things and that it is a necessary condition to awakening, whereas skillful means – also called salvific expedients – constitute the myriad of clever and merely provisory means conceived and used by buddhas and bodhisattva in order to bring all ignorant beings to awakening and thus to liberate them from attachment and suffering. In the second chapter, we characterize the state of consciousness of the awakened through notions such as non-duality, non-discrimination and no-mind, and present the conception of meditational practice upheld in our sûtra. We show that the state of awakening is a non discriminating state of consciousness in which personal identity and phenomena – or the subject-object duality – are recognized as illusions or, more precisely, as mental and linguistic constructions. Meditation thus appears to be a provisory skillful mean, the goals of which are the deconstruction of discursive thought’s dualist paradigm and the realization that, ultimately and paradoxically, there exist no real obstacles to awakening and no necessary meditational practice to the experience of awakening.

Notre analyse porte sur la notion d’éveil au sein du Sûtra de Vimalakîrti. Premièrement, nous présentons et comparons les modèles d’éveil exposés dans ce texte, soit la figure du bouddha et – surtout – celle du bodhisattva; nous analysons leurs deux grands traits caractéristiques, c’est-à-dire la connaissance transcendante et les méthodes habiles, puis élaborons leur rôle par rapport à l’éveil. Il apparaît d’emblée que la connaissance transcendante est une connaissance non discursive de la réelle nature de toute chose et qu’elle est une condition nécessaire à l’éveil, alors que les méthodes habiles – aussi appelées expédients salvifiques – constituent la myriade de moyens rusés et provisoires conçus et employés par les bouddhas et bodhisattva dans le but d’amener les êtres ignorants à l’éveil et d’ainsi les libérer de l’attachement et de la souffrance. Dans le second chapitre, nous caractérisons l’état de conscience de l’éveillé à l’aide de notions telles la non-dualité, la non-discrimination et la non-pensée, puis présentons la conception de la pratique méditationnelle soutenue dans notre sûtra. Nous montrons que l’état d’éveil est un état de conscience non discriminateur au sein duquel l’identité personnelle et les phénomènes – ou la dualité sujet-objet – sont reconnus comme étant des illusions ou, plus précisément, des constructions mentales et langagières. Ainsi, la méditation apparaît comme étant une méthode habile provisoire dont les buts sont essentiellement la déconstruction du paradigme dualiste de la pensée discursive et la réalisation qu’il n’existe, ultimement et paradoxalement, aucune réelle entrave à l’éveil et aucune pratique méditationnelle nécessaire à l’expérience de l’éveil. / Our analysis pertains to the notion of awakening in the Vimalakîrti Sûtra. Firstly, we present and compare the models of awakening exposed in this text, namely the figure of the buddha and – especially – that of the bodhisattva; we analyze their two major characteristic traits, that is to say transcendent knowledge and skillful means, and elaborate on their relation to awakening. We quickly find that transcendent knowledge is a non discursive knowledge of the real nature of all things and that it is a necessary condition to awakening, whereas skillful means – also called salvific expedients – constitute the myriad of clever and merely provisory means conceived and used by buddhas and bodhisattva in order to bring all ignorant beings to awakening and thus to liberate them from attachment and suffering. In the second chapter, we characterize the state of consciousness of the awakened through notions such as non-duality, non-discrimination and no-mind, and present the conception of meditational practice upheld in our sûtra. We show that the state of awakening is a non discriminating state of consciousness in which personal identity and phenomena – or the subject-object duality – are recognized as illusions or, more precisely, as mental and linguistic constructions. Meditation thus appears to be a provisory skillful mean, the goals of which are the deconstruction of discursive thought’s dualist paradigm and the realization that, ultimately and paradoxically, there exist no real obstacles to awakening and no necessary meditational practice to the experience of awakening.

This essay is a try to present the Trikāya doctrine in Māhāyāna Buddhism as a model for a transcending theology that can help those who are living with a “dual Buddhist-Christian religious identity” to overcome conflicts between Buddhism and Christianity. By the Trikāya doctrine we can reach a deeper understanding of the mystical awakening to “Buddha beyond Buddha” (or “God beyond God” as some of the mystics tried to explain); i.e. the transpersonal Dharma and the transpersonal Logos beyond the limited individuals of Gautama and Jesus who both fully realized God as spiritual qualities in body, speech, actions and mind. The point is that we do not need to choose between the Buddha or Christ; instead we can look at them both as living examples of the realization of what Paul Tillich called the “Ultimate Concern” and “Being”.  And probably we can use this model for most religions.

Following several successful military expeditions against the Mongols in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Manchu rulers of Qing China (1644-1911) met an unprecedented challenge as they incorporated culturally different subjects into their growing empire. After doubling in territory and tripling in population, how did the multicultural Qing operate? How did the new imperial subjects receive and reinterpret Qing state policies? What have been the ramifications of the eighteenth-century political innovations in modern China? In this dissertation, I address these questions by examining the encounters of the expanding Qing empire with Tibetans and Mongols in Inner Asia. Central to the analysis is Tibetan Buddhism, to which Mongols and Tibetans have adhered for centuries. Recent decades have seen a growing volume of research attending to Tibetan Buddhism within the context of the Qing’s imperial policies, but key questions still remain with regards to the perspective of these Inner Asian communities and the reasons for their participation in the imperial enterprise. The inadequate understanding of the Qing’s interaction with Tibetan Buddhism is predicated upon the assumption that Qing emperors propitiated the belligerent Mongols by patronizing their religion. While this premise acknowledges Tibetan Buddhism’s importance in the Qing’s imperial formation, it simultaneously deprives those practicing the religion of agency. The purpose of this dissertation is to analyze how the empire was ruled from the viewpoint of the governed. The project draws evidence from Tibetan-language biographies and monastic chronicles, letters in the Mongolian language, as well as local gazetteers, artisanal manuals, and court statutes in Chinese and Manchu, the two official languages in the Qing era. These textual sources are supplemented by Tibetan Buddhist artifacts housed in museums and libraries in North America and Asia. Through an examination of the wide array of source materials, I argue that the Qing imperial rulers capitalized on the religious culture of Inner Asian communities, which in turn gave rise to a transnational religious network that was centered on Tibetan Buddhist epistemology. The religious knowledge system remained strong well past the formative eighteenth century. Its enduring impact on Qing political and social history was felt even as the empire worked towards creating a distinctive cosmopolitan Qing culture. The dissertation consists of four chapters, each of which locates a space within the context of the symbiotic growth of the Qing and the Tibetan Buddhist knowledge network. This dissertation revolves around Tibetan Buddhist scholars, institutions, rituals, and objects, as they traveled from Tibet to Qing China’s capital and eastern Mongolia, and finally entered the literary realm of intellectuals in eighteenth-century China. Chapter One brings into focus Tibetan Buddhist reincarnation—a dynamic practice that redefined the institutional genealogy of individual prestige—as the Qing imperial power increased its contact with Inner Asian communities from the 1720s in the strategic border region of Amdo between Tibet and Qing China. I discuss how local hereditary headmen refashioned themselves into religious leaders whose enduring influence could transcend even death so as to preserve their prestige. Yet, their impact reached beyond the imperial margin. Chapter Two traces the role of these religious leaders in transforming an imperial private space into the largest Tibetan Buddhist monastery in the Qing’s imperial capital. This monastery—Beijing’s Lama Temple (Yonghegong 雍和宮)—not only became a site that manifested Qing imperial devotion to Tibetan Buddhism, but also served as an institutional outpost for the increasingly transnational Tibetan Buddhist network to the east. The Lama Temple was not the only outpost of the growing religious network, and Chapter Three explores another major nodal point within this network at a contact zone in southern Mongolia. It was here that two massive Tibetan Buddhist monasteries were constructed, owing to the mutual efforts undertaken by the imperial household and Tibetan Buddhists from Inner Asia. The final chapter returns to the imperial center but shifts its focus to a discursive space formed by Tibetan Buddhist laity who also occupied official posts in the imperial court. Two Manchu princes and one Mongolian Buddhist composed or were commissioned to compile texts in multiple languages on Tibetan Buddhist epistemology. Their writings reveal the fluidity and extent of the religious network, as well as its symbiotic growth with the imperial enterprise as the Qing empire took shape territorially and culturally. This dissertation concludes by addressing the nature of the Qing’s governance and that of the transnational power of the Tibetan Buddhist network, and it aims to deconstruct the dominant discourse associated with imperial policies in the Inner Asian frontier. My findings offer insight into how Tibetan Buddhism had a lasting impact on the Qing’s imperial imagination, during and after the formative eighteenth century.

This dissertation explores how Chan Buddhists made the unprecedented claim to a level of religious authority on par with the historical Buddha Śākyamuni and, in the process, invented what it means to be a buddha in China. This claim helped propel the Chan tradition to dominance of elite monastic Buddhism during the Song dynasty (960-1279), licensed an outpouring of Chan literature treated as equivalent to scripture, and changed the way Chinese Buddhists understood their own capacity for religious authority in relation to the historical Buddha and the Indian homeland of Buddhism. But the claim itself was fraught with complication. After all, according to canonical Buddhist scriptures, the Buddha was easily recognizable by the “marks of the great man” that adorned his body, while the same could not be said for Chan masters in the Song. What, then, distinguished Chan masters from everyone else? What authorized their elite status and granted them the authority of buddhas? According to what normative ideals did Chan aspirants pursue liberation, and by what standards did Chan masters evaluate their students to determine who was worthy of admission into an elite Chan lineage? How, in short, could one recognize a buddha in Song-dynasty China? The Chan tradition never answered this question once and for all; instead, the question broadly animated Chan rituals, institutional norms, literary practices, and visual cultures. My dissertation takes a performative approach to the analysis of Chan hagiographies, discourse records, commentarial collections, and visual materials, mobilizing the tradition’s rich archive to measure how Chan interventions in Buddhist tradition changed the landscape of elite Chinese Buddhism and participated in the epochal changes attending China’s Tang-to-Song transition.

This dissertation examines Japanese conceptions of and devotional attitudes toward Śākyamuni (the historical Buddha) during the twelfth to fourteenth centuries. It focuses in particular on a new interest in Śākyamuni that arose in the twelfth century, and argues that this interest was a response to two developments: the appearance of the belief that the world had entered Buddhism’s final age, and the increasingly acute sense that Japan existed at the periphery of the Buddhist world. These two developments evoked in some clerics a sense of distance from the origins of Buddhism and a feeling of helplessness since the final age was a time when soteriological progress was thought to be particularly difficult. Japanese Buddhists were thus faced with a problem: how to proceed given these disadvantageous circumstances? Some clerics found comfort in theories about the Buddha Amida’s ability to take humans away from this world to his pure land, while others turned instead to the Mahāyāna Buddhist idea that humans are born enlightened (and thus need not worry about their personal salvation after all). The monks and texts at the center of my research instead looked to Śākyamuni in an attempt to reconnect with the source of the Buddhist tradition, thereby countering the inevitable decline of Buddhism by linking themselves to, and in some cases recreating, the imagined golden age that Śākyamuni and his Indian environs represented.

No description available.

In this philosophical work I explicate Nishida Kitaro's dialectics vis-à-vis Mahayana non-dualistic thought and Hegel's dialectical philosophy, and furthermore in terms of a "chiasmatic chorology." Nishida's work makes ample usage of western philosophical concepts, most notably the terminology of Hegelian dialectics. Nishida himself has admitted affinity to Hegel. And yet content-wise the core of Nishida's thinking seem close to Mahayana Buddhism in its line of thought traceable to the Prajñaparamita sutras. The point of my investigation is to clarify in what regard Nishida's dialectic owes allegiance to Hegel and to Mahayana and wherein it diverges from them. Moreover to what extent is Nishida's appropriation of Hegelian terminology adequate in expressing his thought? The work explicates the distinctive aspects of Nishida's thinking in terms of a "chiasmatic chorology" to emphasize the inter-dimensional and placial complexity of the dialectic. In summary two overarching concerns guide the work: 1) The relation of Nishida's dialectic to its forebears -- Mahayana non-dualism and Hegelian dialectics --; and 2) The distinctness of that dialectic as a "chiasmatic chorology." The work concludes that while Nishida, in his attempt to surmount the dualism of Neo-Kantianism, was led to Hegel's dialectic, the core ideas of his dialectic extend beyond the purview of Hegelianism. Contentwise his dialectic is closer in spirit to Mahayana. While Nishida admits to such commensurability with key Mahayana doctrines, his thought nevertheless ought not to be confined to the doctrinal category of "Buddhist thought" both because of its eclectic nature that brings in elements drawn from western and eastern sources, thereby constituting his work as a "world philosophy"; and because of its creative contributions, such as the formulation of basho and its explication in dialectical terms. What cannot be expressed adequately in terms of Hegelian dialectics is the concrete chiasma of what Nishida calls his "absolute dialectic." Moreover its founding upon the choratic nature of basho not only escapes the grasp of Hegel's self-knowing concept but extends beyond previous formulations within Buddhism. / Religion