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Revisiting Past and Present Approaches to “Universality”: From the Case of a Young Japanese Monk Traveling to India to the Contemporary Landscapes of Japanese and Taiwanese Buddhist Traditions Presented by Michel Mohr, Ph.D. Department of Religion Abstract This presentation intertwines two narratives separated by more than a century. It examines how East Asian Buddhists searched for universality in radically different contexts, in India and Japan during the early twentieth century, and then in contemporary Taiwan. In spite of significant variations related to these two periods of time and to their respective cultural environments, both topics reflect common endeavors marked by a response to globalization and to challenges faced by the monastic tradition. First, I discuss the dramatic story of a Japanese monk, Hori Shitoku (1876– 1903), who traveled to Bengal with Okakura Tenshin and fervently studied Sanskrit before succumbing to tetanus. Secondly, I focus on the issue of “universality,” which laid at the center of unprecedented religious and philosophical debates in Asia since the end of the nineteenth century. I will then examine the contrast between contemporary Taiwanese Buddhism and its Japanese equivalent. One of my working hypotheses is that the contemporary Taiwanese religious landscape offers an ideal terrain to investigate the feasibility of attempts to overcome sectarian and linguistics limitations, in particular because since the 1970s it had to redefine its own identity with a stronger involvement in the social fabric. This implies a skillful capacity to adjust to the needs of followers, and a formidable ability to mobilize volunteers, contributing to what I call the “symbiosis” between lay and monastic Buddhist communities.