Valedictory Lecture - On Manuscripts, Rituals and Curious Images: A Journey through the Ruptures of Japanese Buddhism
Key information
- Date
- Time
-
5:30 pm to 7:00 pm
- Venue
- Russell Square: College Buildings
- Room
- Djam Lecture Theatre (DLT)
About this event
This lecture reflects on a scholarly journey that has sought to challenge conventional narratives of Japanese Buddhism through a ritual and visual approach to Buddhist epistemic practices.
Central to this reassessment is attention to tantric Buddhism and the implementation of its frameworks across Japanese medieval culture. I shall present a case study that documents a new discourse on the body, creatively developed though a web of conceptual and performative connections to seemingly separate intellectual traditions. I draw on a range of manuscript sources unveiled during the last decade in medieval temple archives. These demonstrate the fluidity of ritual knowledge and point to possible links of Japanese practices to continental Tantric traditions. At a broader level, my analysis argues for the value of non-discursive, embodied language in the articulation of philosophical positions.
Registration
This event is free, open to the public, and held in person only.
Organiser
This event has been organised by the SOAS School of History, Religions and Philosophies and SOAS Japan Research Centre.
About the speaker
Lucia Dolce currently holds the Numata Chair in Japanese Buddhism at SOAS, where she has also been Chair of the Centre for the Study of Japanese Religions and the Centre of Buddhist Studies.
Her work combines archival research, textual analysis and fieldwork to explore hermeneutical practices of Japanese Buddhism and the performative and visual dimension of religion in Japan, with a focus on the medieval period. She has published in English and in Japanese on distinct Buddhist traditions, from the Lotus Sutra and its Tendai and Nichiren interpretations to Tantric Buddhism, and on Shinto-Buddhist combinatory cults and ritual iconography.
Her current research project draws on unpublished documents that have recently been uncovered in Japanese temples to map out the Buddhist discourse on ritual body, namely, how medieval monks articulated a fundamental Buddhist notion, duality and its overcoming, by re-conceptualizing the human body in ritual and visual terms.
