Download 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

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.