University of Heidelberg

International Symposium "Imagining the Feminine in East Asian Religions and Medicine", Nov 5–7, 2010 - Abstracts

Anna Andreeva (Heidelberg)

“Women, Healing, and Esoteric Kami Worship: The Miwa-ryu Rituals for Pregnancy and Birth”

Abstract

Placed within the context of development of esoteric knowledge about body, gender and embryology, the rituals for women produced by the esoteric Shinto lineage of Miwa, the Miwaryû 三輪流, emerge as a part of a larger discourse on medicine and healing strategies. My paper will deal predominantly with practical ritual prescriptions for women, regarding infertility, conception, pregnancy, easy or complicated birth and safe child rearing. This case study will investigate the combinatory nature of such rituals and explain the epistemological effort behind the construction of esoteric elements in these rare examples of ritual perscriptions for women. Of particular interest will be the use of Siddham letters, mantras and mudras during childbirth, removal of placenta and complications during birth as well as practical prescriptions for falling pregnant.

Brigitte Baptandier (CNRS)

“Women’s Bodies as Mandalas. Three Levels of Representation of the Feminine: A Significant Cross-checking”

Abstract

This paper will focus on ethnological fieldwork data (Fujian, China) to consider
women’s bodies according to three levels of representation: real, imaginary and symbolic/women in the patriline, mythological ritual theatre, and the mandala.
On a more general level of analysis, I shall refer to two texts : « Le réel, l’imaginaire et le symbolique » by J. Lacan ; and a chapter from Structural Anthropology that inspired Lacan on the subject : « L’efficacité symbolique », by C. Lévi-Strauss about the therapeutic services offered by (Cuna) shaman to a woman about to give birth.

James Benn (McMaster)

“Yin, Buddhism, and Medicine: Multiple Aspects of Tea in Eisai's Kissa Yojoki”

Abstract

In this paper I examine some of the ways in which the Japanese monk Eisai (1141–1215) extols the consumption of tea and its benefits in his Kissa yojoki (A Record of Drinking Tea and Nourishing Life).  I trace back the textual sources upon which he draws and explore his novel construction of tea within the overlapping realms of health, longevity, five agents theory, and Buddhist cosmology.  I seek to understand this document within the larger context of medieval Chinese writings about tea.

George Clonos (Stanford)

“Secret Traditions Amidst the Mountains: Embryology and Landscape in Tokugawa Period Shugendo”

Abstract

 Embryology was prominent along the Okugake practice route on the Omine mountain range, where the entire landscape was conceived as a womb from which the practitioner emerged reborn.  The Buchu hiden, a seventeenth-century text authored by Gakubu Ungai, is an itinerary text of the Okugake.  Through the use of Esoteric Buddhist doctrine embryology was embedded onto the landscape and the Shugendo doctrine of “practice within the womb” acquired a body composed of natural elements (rocks, rivers, and caves) from which the female physical body was absent.

Michael Como (Columbia)

“Urbanization, Disease, and the Ghosts of Heian Japan”

Abstract

Although the topic of Buddhism and medicine in ancient Japan has received considerable attention in recent years, the vast majority of studies have focused on the role of religious professionals in transmitting Indian and Chinese ritual practices and conceptions of the body and mind to the Japanese islands. This orientation, combined with the overwhelming bias of the sources towards court and ecclesial elites, has meant that we still know very little about the healing practices of lay people who lived not in temples or shrines, but rather in dwellings in the capital and countryside. In this paper, I hope to suggest a possible first step in addressing these issues by viewing the Buddhist tradition not simply as a source of healing technologies, but also as an important vector for the transmission of disease itself. I shall argue that during Japan’s Nara and early Heian periods, successive waves of Buddhist-inspired temple and capital building resulted in an ecological disaster across much of Central Japan that in turn precipitated profound upheavals in the islands’ religious landscape. As massive famines swept over the land with almost metronomic regularity, the newly built road networks that connected the nation became littered with improperly buried dead. I will suggest that among the most important by-products of this process was the production of a wide variety of Buddhist and non-Buddhist rites of purity and spirit-pacification that were undertaken in residences and on the roadways of the Heian capital. I shall further examine admittedly fragmentary evidence that suggests that, to a surprising degree, these rites were associated not only with male religious professionals, but also with female householders and healers familiar with a broad array of Buddhist and non-Buddhist spirit-quelling practices.  

Catherine Despeux (INALCO, CRCAO)

“La grossesse de l’adepte taoïste et l’identité sexuée”

Abstract

Dans les techniques d’alchimie intérieure du taoïsme, l’adepte forme et développe en lui un shengtai 聖胎, «foetus sacré» ou «foetus de sainteté» . Nous examinerons les origines de cette notion, ce qu’en disent les textes sur les pratiques pour les hommes et pour les femmes, et ce que l’on peut en déduire ou poser comme hypothèse sur la façon d’imaginer l’identité sexuée et le féminin.

In Daoist alchemy, adepts must create and develop in their bodies a shengtai 聖胎, "sacred foetus." We will examine the origins of this notion in alchemical sources, consider how they distinguished between practices for men and for women, and attempt to reach a conclusion about how they imagined sexual identity and the feminine.

Lucia Dolce (SOAS)

“The Embryonic Generation of the Ritual Body: Tantric Practices from Medieval Japanese Material”

Abstract

A variety of Japanese mediaeval ritual texts produced in Tantric contexts include cryptic “embryonic diagrams” that describe the actions by which a Tantric practitioner attains perfect identity with the Buddha as the embryological growth of a foetus. These visual exegeses draw from Indian medical knowledge and from classical Chinese notions of yin-yang and wuxing, and re-read these systems in terms of Tantric doctrine. All seem to emphasise the moment of sexual intercourse that starts the reproductive process, and the construction of a perfect body that yet maintains the characteristic of a biological body. Probably because of such sexual overtones, most of these documents have so far remained unexplored in Japanese temple archives, and regarded as heretical and marginal. Yet the circulation of these diagrams across lineages suggests that the embryological discourse represented a main trend in medieval Tantric hermeneutics, and one which would remain and be popularised in later Japanese culture. This paper will attempt to reconstruct such discourse exploring a number of images produced in different lineages. 

Grégoire Espesset (CRCAO)

“Procreation, Life Cycles, and Prenatal Infancy Regained in Great Peace Beliefs”

Abstract

On the assumption that the ideas expressed in the Great Peace (Taiping) corpus and Weft Writs fragments reflect ideologies located on the margins of the official ideology but sharing with it a common, cultural worldview, this paper surveys a cluster of textual occurrences related to the process of human impregnation, the symbolism of gestation, prenatal infancy and birth, the imagery of cosmic cycles, and the practice of reversion to prenatal condition.

Charlotte Furth (USC)

“Nüdan (Female Alchemy) in China”

Abstract

Inner alchemy for women (nüdan) was a relative late-comer to the Daoist textual tradition.  It reflected an emerging willingness to engage issues of bodily difference in the religious thought of late imperial society. This paper provides a brief genealogy of nüdan writings, and considers two possible impulses behind their development. The first is literati concern to guide female Daoist piety along respectable paths compatible with Confucian kinship and social norms.   The second is women’s interest in religious practices that bypassed formal authority and offered a path for individual spiritual accomplishment. In a final section the paper discusses the 20th century emergence of a nüdan canon, a “reinvention of tradition” accommodating new gender and religious identities and serving as a resource for “qigong” and “kundao” in the PRC. Both traditional and modern versions of the Daoist nüdan “feminine” highlight some general  problems in Daoism. First, it has been dependent upon forms of popular religious expression that the guardians of religious orthodoxy did not entirely trust. Second, as a belief system teaching transcendence through the body, it has had to affirm while somehow also containing the religious significance of sexuality.

Matsumoto Ikuyo (Yokohama City University)

“Parturtion Rituals Related to the Medieval Japanese Empresses: The Protection of Women’s Bodies in Esoteric Buddhism”

Abstract

In medieval Japan there were many customs and religious rites for safe childbirth. The rituals of esoteric Buddhism, which were much focused on the protection of the Tenno, and flourished during the Sekkan period (mid-10th to mid-11th century), included practices concerned with the safety of the consorts and empresses during labour. These rites may be considered an extension of efforts to protect the emperor. In this presentation, I interpret these parturition rites as an aspect of imperial protection, and while considering the fact that the issue of birth was being dealt with by esoteric practice, examine rites concerned with women’s bodies as part of the workings of medieval esoteric Buddhism. Through textual investigation, I will be examining, in particular, the issue of esoteric interpretations of the female body, and clarifying the reasons why such interpretations were necessary. Furthermore, I will try to understand the event of birth by an empress in terms of its meaning as an opportunity for esoteric ritual protection of the female body. Finally, by examining such an event in this context, it can be said that the woman’s body was posited in the esoteric interpretation as one half of a whole, with the Tenno as the other half, and so the parturition rituals can be further viewed in terms of concepts about the protection of kingship.

Christine Mollier (CNRS, CRCAO)

"Conceiving the embryo of immortality: 'seed-person' and sexual rites in early Taoism"

Abstract

In this presentation, I propose to examine the ideological background of the sexual rites of early Daoism. These rituals, which aimed at conceiving an embryo of immortality through the intercourse of initiated adepts, were linked to the notion of chosen people or « seed-people ». We will see that the idea of generating perfect human beings came to be exploited by Daoist sectarian movements for elitist and even eugenic goals.

Fabrizio Pregadio (McGill)

“From the Inner Gods to the Internal Elixir: Daoist Views of the Embryo and the Infant”

Abstract

James Robson (Harvard)

“Maladies of the Mind:  Women, Guanyin/Kannon and Mental Illness in East Asia”

Abstract

In recent years there has been increasing attention paid to the relationship between medicine and its cultural context in China and Japan.  Yet, despite the many advances in a number of subfields and in some very substantial studies there remains a paucity of studies on the intersection between religion and mental illness. Throughout the history of the Buddhist tradition in China and Japan one finds many records of monks who specialized in therapeutic practices aimed at dealing with people beset with demonic afflictions or possession.  In this talk I will explore the history of some of the specific ways Buddhism articulated a discourse about mental illness and addressed mental illness in practice and will interrogate the curious role of female deities and the fact that many of the "patients" were also women. I will attempt to give some sense of the surviving textual record and the problems associated with studying that corpus.  I will also adopt a cross-cultural perspective and discuss the intriguing history of the development of one particular site in Japan, the Jissoin (an independent Tendai Temple founded in 1229 by Joki, located in Iwakura, in northern Kyoto), and its relationship to the many mental hospitals that grew up around it and still exist today.

Gaynor Sekimori (SOAS)

“Foetal Buddhahood: From Theory to Practice—Sexual Symbolism in the Autumn Peak Ritual of Haguro Shugendo”

Abstract

Ritual leaders of the annual Autumn Peak (Akinomine) ritual, the identifying practice of Haguro Shugendo both past and present, customarily explain the symbolism imbued in the ritual procedure as “death and rebirth in the womb of the mountain through the ten realms”. Though the trope of foetal enlightenment is central to the rationale, it is severely underplayed in the modern practice, where the theme of the ten realms of rebirth is emphasized. This tendency has become even more attenuated following the filming of the practice in 2005 and its stress on the rituals associated with the ten realms through the use of the imagery of the Kumano Kanjin Mandara. This paper studies the sexual symbolism of the Autumn Peak analysing both the written sources and the ritual procedure, both historical and contemporary. The oldest extant sources only date from 1649, but a comparison with the early sixteenth century compilations of Shugendo kirigami made by Sokuden show sufficient similarities to suggest that the Haguro sources reflect a middle-to-late medieval situation at the very least. These sources deal extensively with the symbolism of the clothing shugenja wear but less so with ritual interpretations. I have compiled every reference to sexual intercourse and foetal development in the set of Haguro texts, and applied them to the ritual as it is performed today. In doing so I have attempted a thorough and autonomous analysis of the Akinomine in terms of the trope of conception, gestation and birth. My objective is not purely analytical and descriptive, for I want to suggest that medieval Shugendo (and by extension its modern descendent) was part of a broad swathe of Buddhist sects that consciously employed sexual imagery and symbolism in their doctrines and rituals.  It remains an open debate whether or not actual sexual intercourse occurred among them (this accusation has been leveled at the so-called Tachikawa-ryu) but it was certainly implied. I would like to propose that Shugendo deliberately ritualized this sexual symbolism and that its “performance” links the doctrinal theories of priestly scholarship with a new discourse and vocabulary that was then penetrating culture at a more popular level.

Dominic Steavu (Heidelberg)

“Situating the Center: Taiyi as Embryo in Daoist Visualization Practices”

Abstract

As a foundational pillar of the Daoist Canon, The Sanhuang (Three Sovereigns) tradition is typically associated with the divinatory talismans that constitute its core text, the Sanhuang wen (Writ of the Three Sovereigns). However, remnants of the Sanhuang corpus attest to a rich legacy of self-cultivation and healing techniques that find little or no use for talismans. Meditations on guarding the One (shouyi) figure prominently among these. This paper closely examines a contemplation practice from the fourth-century Sanhuang sanyi jing (Scripture of the Three Sovereigns on Guarding the Three Ones) that is closely related to the lost third- or second-century Huangren jing (Scripture of the Sovereign). The handful of fragments that survive as quotations in other Daoist sources confirm the Huangren jing ranked among the earliest Daoist materials to describe the visualization of inner gods. Moreover, the Huangren jing method from the Sanhuang sanyi jing describes the generation of an infant (ying’er), or “inner embryo,” in the lower cinnabar field (dantian), thereby marrying visualizations of the inner pantheon with elements of inner alchemy (neidan). This presentation will reconsider the role of texts like the Sanhuang sanyi jing in the formulation of inner alchemy, a tradition hitherto regarded as the outgrowth of exegetical trends of the early Tang period. It will attempt to situate the Sanhuang tradition and its meditation practices against the backdrop of negotiations in cosmological discourse and in the larger context of the epistemic shifts that marked the Six Dynasties period.

 

Katja Triplett (Marburg)

"Views of the Female Body in the Medico-ritual World of Japanese Early and Medieval Buddhism"

Abstract

When a new creed and a new set of ideas entered China, Korea and Japan, namely Buddhism, Indian and Central Asian ideas of healing and medicine were transferred to East Asian cultures and societies and were adapted there. Scholarly studies vary greatly as to the determination of the actual processes and the extent of the adaptation. Introducing findings in my current research on medical and ritual knowledge transfer and the formation of Japanese religious culture in the 6th to the 13th centuries I will sketch the adaption process of medico-ritual knowledge on healing ailments suffered by women, in the context of Japanese Buddhist institutions and activities. The focus of this paper is on images and views of the female body found in selected texts.

Hendrik van der Veere (Leiden)

“Mi mo kokoro mo: Curative Rituals for the Enlightened Body and Mind”

Abstract

In Shingon esoteric Buddhism both mind and body as well as the visible and visible worlds are construed as mandara, which map the space of the Dharma-world based on lineage defined parameters which are deployed by the ritual specialist based on esoteric lore. Rituals carried out with the explicit purpose of healing are deemed effective, as other rituals, due to the power-wielding specialist who engages the Buddha-domain through the process of kaji and who instils esoteric meaning through shuji, mostly expressed through shittan-script, which may become a power in itself. Allowing for a large influence from incantation- and curative rituals recorded in China, I will address the issue of how esoteric syllables as signs and symbols within the lay-out of the mandara world are applied to matters both animate and inanimate to reveal their true nature as defined in the theory of the six Great Elements proposed by Kukai. I assume that any action by which the priest may acquire power is through successful control of esoteric language expressed through the Shittan writing-system. Instances of the integration of darani such as the Butcho sonsho darani, considered especially powerful when written in Shittan script, as part of curative rituals will be set off to the application of syllable-visualization to act protectively against contamination in the daily life of the priest when he takes a bath or visits the toilet. Further, I will show that the successful conclusion of rituals addressing diseases of the intestines, through the   gozo-sanmaya-kan ) or “the withering illness” (tuberculosis?) (Denshibyo–hiden) is dependant on the ability of the priest to project or recognize the true content of phenomena as esoteric units of shuji and thus to his knowledge of the Dharma-world couched in Shittan. He takes Kukai’s words literally that Shittan-signs are reality and by his understanding of their true nature and the various ways these can be actualized to eliminate distorted perceptions, he wields their power through the Taizo-kai and Kongokai-mandara configurations to guarantee the effectiveness of the ritual. The employment of Shittan in this way carries in it a continuation of associative word-play by which Yakushi Nyorai and Kongo Yakusa (Yaksa) are credited with healing-power through the character for medicine in their name, but the syllables themselves in Kukai’s definition are absolute entities that provide the ritual specialist with the means to immerse and embed himself in the mandara-world.