1 00:00:03,150 --> 00:00:13,610 But currently, she has two major public, the first priority in political life in the northern A.C. 360 sports. 2 00:00:13,610 --> 00:00:18,020 Where is the second project analyses the Palin's emotional state of transformation? 3 00:00:18,020 --> 00:00:28,520 There is not an endless tests within the context of the content of this issue in early April Typekit. 4 00:00:28,520 --> 00:00:46,960 But. Communities. 5 00:00:46,960 --> 00:00:52,540 And here in Sydney, we've got here and energy heroes. 6 00:00:52,540 --> 00:01:05,490 You don't seem to be muted, but we're not hearing anything. With your microphones not bolted down? 7 00:01:05,490 --> 00:01:09,020 Can you hear me now? Yeah, that's right. Thank you. OK, perfect, perfect. 8 00:01:09,020 --> 00:01:16,120 OK. Great. Sorry about that, one of those technical difficulties we all fear right now. 9 00:01:16,120 --> 00:01:20,060 So I had just said thank you to the organisers for putting this together. 10 00:01:20,060 --> 00:01:25,030 I really appreciate the opportunity to participate from from Los Angeles. 11 00:01:25,030 --> 00:01:32,920 And it's been a rich and wonderful conference even. I mean, definitely worth getting up very early in the morning to to be here. 12 00:01:32,920 --> 00:01:42,190 So this morning I'm. Let me just give a little disclaimer, which is that I find the kind of Zoom interface personally kind of difficult. 13 00:01:42,190 --> 00:01:47,290 So I'm going to try to be unscripted and speak kind of as lively as I can. 14 00:01:47,290 --> 00:01:57,100 So please forgive me any mistakes I make as I kind of talk through this material really kind of might feel a bit wild or rough and ready, let's say. 15 00:01:57,100 --> 00:02:02,140 OK, so we're going to talk about the future of the Unsullied worthy girl. 16 00:02:02,140 --> 00:02:10,660 And if you're interested in in the future, beyond my talk today, I've got a translation of it in the most recent version. 17 00:02:10,660 --> 00:02:17,680 The most recent journal of Chinese Buddhist studies, which Dr. Heller edited guest edited for us so you can follow up. 18 00:02:17,680 --> 00:02:26,770 And I've also asked that in the chat, there's a link to a Dropbox that has my all, my citations in it because I'm going to go through some stuff. 19 00:02:26,770 --> 00:02:34,090 And so if you want to follow up with my specific citations, please go check that Dropbox link and you can find the translation link in there. 20 00:02:34,090 --> 00:02:36,400 OK. So let's start with the suture. 21 00:02:36,400 --> 00:02:43,570 The on solid where the girl because I love the suture and I think it deserves a lot more attention for a whole bunch of reasons. 22 00:02:43,570 --> 00:02:46,510 And so I'm going to go through this suture with you guys, 23 00:02:46,510 --> 00:02:53,230 and then I'm going to kind of read around the suture and talk about why I think it's so interesting beyond what it actually says and where it 24 00:02:53,230 --> 00:03:02,080 fits into the social worlds of of mediaeval China and kind of try to create some open ended generative kind of conversation from this suture. 25 00:03:02,080 --> 00:03:09,400 OK, so let's start with the suture of the the where the girl so she who is she? 26 00:03:09,400 --> 00:03:14,680 What's the text about? That's what we're going to start with. So I'm going to kind of explain the narrative to you here. 27 00:03:14,680 --> 00:03:21,730 So basically, the text begins like, like many my a text and this big audience where the butt is about to preach, 28 00:03:21,730 --> 00:03:25,720 there's a pregnant woman in the audience, and there's also lots of other women in the audience. 29 00:03:25,720 --> 00:03:27,460 There's lots of wives, there's lots of learnt women. 30 00:03:27,460 --> 00:03:35,170 There's all kinds of women in this audience, but particularly the pregnant woman is the one that we need to pay attention to. 31 00:03:35,170 --> 00:03:42,430 So then what happens is that any reader who is in the in the assembly and who is known for his Abel, 32 00:03:42,430 --> 00:03:47,410 seeing his ability to see things he is able to see into the womb of this pregnant woman. 33 00:03:47,410 --> 00:03:55,420 And he sees a little girl sitting in the womb and she's sitting with her hands clasped, her feet crossed, and she's listening to the Buddha. 34 00:03:55,420 --> 00:04:01,180 OK, so then this whole image really kind of makes him very happy, I guess. 35 00:04:01,180 --> 00:04:03,640 And he smiles, and the Buddha asks him why. 36 00:04:03,640 --> 00:04:09,250 And so he tells the Assembly what it is that he's able to see and and how that has filled him with such joy. 37 00:04:09,250 --> 00:04:17,290 And the Buddha basically says, like, Oh great, it's wonderful that you can see that now the the vision of the Buddha is even way better than that, 38 00:04:17,290 --> 00:04:20,840 and everybody in the audience is kind of dubious and doesn't really believe him. 39 00:04:20,840 --> 00:04:31,420 So then what the Buddha does is kind of shines this great light across the assembly so that everybody can see everything. 40 00:04:31,420 --> 00:04:34,870 So everybody in the assembly is able to see into all of the different worlds, 41 00:04:34,870 --> 00:04:43,300 and the text says that it's like looking into a mirror so they can see across into different kinds of worlds everybody can. 42 00:04:43,300 --> 00:04:50,770 So when when everybody in the assembly is looking with this vision of the Buddha that they have now attained, what they see is that in fact, 43 00:04:50,770 --> 00:04:55,870 in all of these rooms of all different kinds of beings all over our world and in other worlds, 44 00:04:55,870 --> 00:05:01,270 there's all kinds of babies sitting with their arms crossed in all kinds of different wombs. 45 00:05:01,270 --> 00:05:06,160 So that's the kind of discussion of this in the text is quite quite cute. 46 00:05:06,160 --> 00:05:14,860 Actually, we have like cows with calves in their rooms who are sitting with their bare feet kind of cooked listening to the Buddha. 47 00:05:14,860 --> 00:05:21,020 And we have like snakes whose bodies are kind of curled into bowls inside the wombs with their heads up listening to the Buddha. 48 00:05:21,020 --> 00:05:25,420 So it's all pretty. It's all pretty fun, I think. 49 00:05:25,420 --> 00:05:30,100 And then what happens is the Aniruddha is like, really overcome with all of this. 50 00:05:30,100 --> 00:05:35,740 And he asks why all of these beings are listening to the Buddha from their rooms. 51 00:05:35,740 --> 00:05:41,050 And what happens is very strange. All of the beings in the wombs, actually, 52 00:05:41,050 --> 00:05:47,920 it says all of the girls in the womb say that they've come to listen to the sutra to help those who are lost, 53 00:05:47,920 --> 00:05:54,820 basically to encourage the Buddhist teaching to learn the Buddhist teaching assumedly so that these two can teach it. 54 00:05:54,820 --> 00:05:59,140 And I think it's interesting here that it's all the girls in the wombs that answer this question because 55 00:05:59,140 --> 00:06:05,230 it kind of presupposes what's going to come later about the gendered conversation in this text. 56 00:06:05,230 --> 00:06:10,810 And it also reminds me there's a small little place in the Perry Nirvana intro where there's a group of women. 57 00:06:10,810 --> 00:06:17,960 In the audience who is said, we're chose to be born in women's bodies because they're more effective vehicles for teaching. 58 00:06:17,960 --> 00:06:27,520 OK, so any ruder than is kind of overcome by the miracle of these babies who are committed to spreading the Buddhist teaching. 59 00:06:27,520 --> 00:06:33,310 And he he proclaims that his sort of learning to that point is deficient and 60 00:06:33,310 --> 00:06:37,390 that he vows to be born into the house in order to kind of follow their model, 61 00:06:37,390 --> 00:06:45,460 but to save help beings. And that this would be a far superior life to that of the are hot at this point. 62 00:06:45,460 --> 00:06:49,600 The Unsullied, where the girl is then born from the side of her mother, just like a Buddha. 63 00:06:49,600 --> 00:06:52,840 So it presupposes or or shows you the kind of being that she is. 64 00:06:52,840 --> 00:06:57,280 She is a highly attained bodhisattva in this text she's referred to as the female body sat 65 00:06:57,280 --> 00:07:01,810 throughout the whole text the earthquakes and shakes like it does at the birth of the Buddha. 66 00:07:01,810 --> 00:07:06,880 And a sort of kind of another Buddha related theme is that all of the other babies 67 00:07:06,880 --> 00:07:11,780 from all of the other rooms are born in a kind of succession that follows her birth. 68 00:07:11,780 --> 00:07:18,520 So this kind of reminds me a bit of the birth of the Buddha and the birth of the condoles that Reiko Numa has discussed in her work. 69 00:07:18,520 --> 00:07:26,770 So we have this setup that she's clearly a very advanced being. So then what happens is there's a bunch of discussion about her body. 70 00:07:26,770 --> 00:07:33,340 So she's born, she's newly born, but she takes on the body of about a two year old or something like that. 71 00:07:33,340 --> 00:07:37,120 And and she's naked, of course, because she's nearly born. 72 00:07:37,120 --> 00:07:45,970 And then Indra comes into the scene, and Indra is very uncomfortable with the fact that she's naked and and tries to put clothes on her, 73 00:07:45,970 --> 00:07:53,140 tries to get her some clothes, and also gets clothes for everybody else who was newly born in the assembly. 74 00:07:53,140 --> 00:08:01,300 But she has a sort of longish back and forth with Indra, in which she rejects not only the clothing but the entire idea of clothing, 75 00:08:01,300 --> 00:08:11,140 and says that there's, you know, there's nothing wrong with her body and that from the perspective of the Mahayana, there's no male and female. 76 00:08:11,140 --> 00:08:16,690 OK, so this this is also related to and he really comes back into this discussion here, 77 00:08:16,690 --> 00:08:23,550 and he can't understand why this really learn a teacher has taken on a female body. 78 00:08:23,550 --> 00:08:28,440 Now, she says she says this that in the lot of the great vehicle, there's neither male or female. 79 00:08:28,440 --> 00:08:32,850 The Buddha comes in at this point and supports her and tells everybody. 80 00:08:32,850 --> 00:08:41,310 Her backstory says that she is from another brutal land, that she studied Buddhism for countless aeons and that she is a highly attained being. 81 00:08:41,310 --> 00:08:49,410 And he actually kind of lectures Indra here, and he says to Indra that if Indra had the kind of advanced vision of a Buddha or a bodhisattva, 82 00:08:49,410 --> 00:08:56,410 what he would see when he looked at her body would be the body of the body, not the naked body of a female. 83 00:08:56,410 --> 00:09:03,070 So then eventually, it's kind of back and forth the where the girl does, except clothing that comes down from the heavens and she comes down, 84 00:09:03,070 --> 00:09:09,490 she's kind of on a lotus throne that generates spontaneously out of the ground as she worships the feet of the Buddha. 85 00:09:09,490 --> 00:09:16,690 And then all of the mothers in the assembly moved by this whole miracle declare their intention for salvation. 86 00:09:16,690 --> 00:09:21,340 They all venerate the Buddha. And then in a kind of interesting part of the text, 87 00:09:21,340 --> 00:09:27,490 all of these women who have come to venerate the Buddha all stand in front of the Buddha, and they all take on male bodies. 88 00:09:27,490 --> 00:09:33,520 So our girl, however, our protagonist, remains female, and the Buddha likens her to a target, and he speaks. 89 00:09:33,520 --> 00:09:38,290 The Sutra says the name of it, everyone's happy. That's the end of the text. 90 00:09:38,290 --> 00:09:41,080 OK, so it's like you're kind of 10 minute narrative set up. 91 00:09:41,080 --> 00:09:45,250 I love this text so much because I think that the scene that it puts out is just so remarkable. 92 00:09:45,250 --> 00:09:48,970 All these babies being born, all these different kinds of babies being born, 93 00:09:48,970 --> 00:09:56,830 a kind of all over the place in this really explicit discussion about birth and bodies and what that looks like in our Buddha land. 94 00:09:56,830 --> 00:10:03,550 OK, so this this is what the text brings a question that I want to talk about for the rest of my my time, 95 00:10:03,550 --> 00:10:10,090 which is whether or not one needs to change the body if one is born as a female or indeed a non-human or an animal. 96 00:10:10,090 --> 00:10:13,780 Does one need to change the body in order to become a Buddha? 97 00:10:13,780 --> 00:10:23,710 And the reason why I want to talk about this is because it seems to me in looking at the kind of development of the Mahayana tradition in East Asia. 98 00:10:23,710 --> 00:10:28,000 This is an important question. Know people are constantly asking about this question. 99 00:10:28,000 --> 00:10:31,660 There are a lot of texts written trying to interpret this question. 100 00:10:31,660 --> 00:10:41,110 And I would say just as a as a B side, I guess that as a scholar who works on this question, I get a lot of questions emailed to me about this. 101 00:10:41,110 --> 00:10:47,710 So it's still an active question. People still want to know the answer about whether or not they need to change the female body. 102 00:10:47,710 --> 00:10:54,370 Okay, so the answer in our text is really it depends. We've got one suture with two possibilities, essentially. 103 00:10:54,370 --> 00:10:58,690 We've got the Unsullied worthy girl in the suture who doesn't change her sex. 104 00:10:58,690 --> 00:11:03,160 She stays female. The whole text at the end of the text. 105 00:11:03,160 --> 00:11:12,970 In the last line of the text, she's still referred to as a female boy. Now, all of the other women in the text change into a take on male bodies. 106 00:11:12,970 --> 00:11:20,830 And not only that, also all of the animals in the text take on human bodies and kind of goes down the line. 107 00:11:20,830 --> 00:11:26,740 So there's this kind of like transformation on the karmic radiation that goes sort of all 108 00:11:26,740 --> 00:11:31,780 the way down the line for all of these beings that have just been born in this assembly. 109 00:11:31,780 --> 00:11:40,930 So here we get this kind of instability. In the tradition, we've got two possibilities in one sutra that seem to be somewhat at odds with each other. 110 00:11:40,930 --> 00:11:47,860 And so where do we go from here? How do we sort of interpret this difference? 111 00:11:47,860 --> 00:11:53,920 So I would say in reading through this text and reading around text that kind of are in communication with this text. 112 00:11:53,920 --> 00:11:58,600 One of the explanations is that different bootlegs have different conditions, 113 00:11:58,600 --> 00:12:02,530 or maybe where you're where you're born predicts where you go or something like that. 114 00:12:02,530 --> 00:12:10,420 So in this text, we're told that the Unsullied, where the girl comes from a different Buddha land, what that borderland is is is uncertain. 115 00:12:10,420 --> 00:12:13,630 But she's not from here. Everyone else is born here. 116 00:12:13,630 --> 00:12:20,560 And so I think how the text tries to talk about this is they're bound by the laws of our brutal land. 117 00:12:20,560 --> 00:12:27,850 We're checking the names. But now I'm kind of inspired by the work of Paul Harrison on the cover. 118 00:12:27,850 --> 00:12:35,110 Dear Amitabh is pure land and also of John Nazir, who's worked on Abbey Road to Yorkshire purulent and have discussed how gender 119 00:12:35,110 --> 00:12:40,250 operates differently in different lands or different woodlands in particular, 120 00:12:40,250 --> 00:12:45,520 and Abbey Arati, where visual acuity also hails the women. 121 00:12:45,520 --> 00:12:52,360 There's no the women there don't suffer the same kinds of problems associated with womanhood in art our world. 122 00:12:52,360 --> 00:12:58,600 So womanhood is known totally differently in Abbey Rati and notably the molecular tea comes from erotic. 123 00:12:58,600 --> 00:13:01,360 Come and listen to the different Buddhas in the different Buddha lands, 124 00:13:01,360 --> 00:13:06,220 and that's very much like what the Unsullied worthy girl does here in our text. 125 00:13:06,220 --> 00:13:12,610 So we've got kind of two possibilities based on where you're born and what, what's your sort of practise of the Mahayana? 126 00:13:12,610 --> 00:13:17,470 It's actually throughout these texts. So but we aren't the only ones who are confused. 127 00:13:17,470 --> 00:13:26,650 I mean, reading through this textual material is is confusing, and this is just like this text I've given you is just like one bit of that confusion. 128 00:13:26,650 --> 00:13:31,450 So the text you've just been reading is in the title kind of number five sixty two. 129 00:13:31,450 --> 00:13:37,690 So sixty five sixty two. So we know that she's a female body type, but till the very end. 130 00:13:37,690 --> 00:13:41,650 But there's all of this transformation of other beings in the text. 131 00:13:41,650 --> 00:13:50,350 This text to five sixty two has another translation in the title canon to five sixty three, which is the suture hurt by the girl in the womb. 132 00:13:50,350 --> 00:13:54,990 It's basically narratively the same set up the same story. It's less. 133 00:13:54,990 --> 00:13:58,260 It as an alternate translation of the same text in mediaeval catalogues, 134 00:13:58,260 --> 00:14:02,880 although there's a number of texts that when you study them, are probably not all the same text. 135 00:14:02,880 --> 00:14:10,320 Now, the big difference between five sixty two and two five sixty three is that A. five sixty three the word the girl does change your sex, 136 00:14:10,320 --> 00:14:16,440 and she does so in a very weird spot in the sutra. So basically, we've gone through all of the same narrative material. 137 00:14:16,440 --> 00:14:23,070 And then in the penultimate sentence, so the sentence just before the suture is named and everyone's happy kind of stock sentence, 138 00:14:23,070 --> 00:14:29,730 there's just a one line sentence that says, and then the the word the girl changed her sex and became a man. 139 00:14:29,730 --> 00:14:38,730 So you have this kind of weird add on, which feels to me a bit like translator interpretation into the text, what it does, whatever it is doing there. 140 00:14:38,730 --> 00:14:44,190 It points to confusion and kind of instability in this textual tradition. 141 00:14:44,190 --> 00:14:51,750 And I'll just very quickly say that both five sixty two and five sixty three are fairly early translations in China. 142 00:14:51,750 --> 00:15:01,440 So probably early, probably fourth century translations, although the attribution is very contested. 143 00:15:01,440 --> 00:15:08,250 So T five sixty two is attributed to Dharma Raksha A. five sixty three is attributed to Dharma Sharma. 144 00:15:08,250 --> 00:15:16,950 However, scholarship by highest year to Maduro has shown that probably those attributions are not correct, 145 00:15:16,950 --> 00:15:22,680 although these texts probably come out of the Western gine context that that's a miracle would have been working on. 146 00:15:22,680 --> 00:15:27,600 So the probably contemporaneous but we don't know that they're actually from those, those translators. 147 00:15:27,600 --> 00:15:30,900 OK, so the point is there's confusion in this textual narrative. 148 00:15:30,900 --> 00:15:36,420 So how do we how do we understand as historians, as scholars into the muhanna where this confusion comes from, 149 00:15:36,420 --> 00:15:42,060 how it surfaces and how it sort of progresses throughout the development of the tradition? 150 00:15:42,060 --> 00:15:49,920 That's kind of my second question. In the talk. So in order to kind of broach this, let's go to the lotus suture because it has the most, 151 00:15:49,920 --> 00:15:56,410 I guess, the most well known discussion of this of this problem. 152 00:15:56,410 --> 00:16:01,510 So you probably all know very well the story of the daughter of the Dragon King from the 153 00:16:01,510 --> 00:16:06,340 Lotus Sutra here depicted in this beautiful frontispiece to the David -.TO chapter, 154 00:16:06,340 --> 00:16:09,350 which is where the story falls. 155 00:16:09,350 --> 00:16:18,830 So what we have here is a depiction of the daughter of the Dragon King presenting a jewel to the Buddha in the story, of course, she, you know, 156 00:16:18,830 --> 00:16:26,150 she's kind of being gossiped about people don't think that she could possibly be ready for Buddha Hood because she's not only a female, 157 00:16:26,150 --> 00:16:32,780 but she is a dragon and a child. So how could that body be a body that's sort of equated with widowhood? 158 00:16:32,780 --> 00:16:36,260 Is the question at stake? And she's here. 159 00:16:36,260 --> 00:16:38,960 We hear the discussion of the famous five obstacles. 160 00:16:38,960 --> 00:16:45,140 So the five things that a woman cannot be according to, but is teaching one of those things being a Buddha. 161 00:16:45,140 --> 00:16:51,260 Right. And so what happens, though, is she comes onto the scene and she says, 162 00:16:51,260 --> 00:16:55,490 completes all of the practises toward Buddha Hood, and she does change your sex. 163 00:16:55,490 --> 00:16:56,990 She becomes male. 164 00:16:56,990 --> 00:17:04,100 So the question, I think that's always remained out of this text and that I get a lot of questions about is what does this text about? 165 00:17:04,100 --> 00:17:10,370 Is this text about the need to change the female body, female body in order to become a Buddha? 166 00:17:10,370 --> 00:17:21,830 Or is the text about the fact that a child female non-human has become a Buddha and then has taken on the body as an expression of that ability? 167 00:17:21,830 --> 00:17:25,640 So is maleness a precondition or an expression of Buddha? 168 00:17:25,640 --> 00:17:31,880 Hood is kind of the question that's at stake here and has been interpreted in a lot of different ways throughout history. 169 00:17:31,880 --> 00:17:38,750 So we're to talk a little bit about that. Now it's worth mentioning just for a second to further point to this instability in the tradition 170 00:17:38,750 --> 00:17:45,500 that this chapter is absent from an earlier translation in the Chinese records at the Lotus Sutra. 171 00:17:45,500 --> 00:17:47,690 So in the miraculous Lotus Sutra, 172 00:17:47,690 --> 00:17:56,730 we don't have this chapter and therefore we don't have the story of the of the sexual transformation of the daughter of the Dragon King. 173 00:17:56,730 --> 00:18:02,090 It it is in the standard Lotus Sutra, which is to MacGyver's translation, 174 00:18:02,090 --> 00:18:06,950 but scholarship has suggested that that chapter may also not have been by of his hand. 175 00:18:06,950 --> 00:18:13,400 It may come into the text later. So instability, that's what I want you to take away from this. 176 00:18:13,400 --> 00:18:21,050 This talk today is kind of instability within tradition. OK, so but let's return to the question of how do we understand this? 177 00:18:21,050 --> 00:18:25,400 Because it's important to our project of the suture of the Unsullied, where the girl. 178 00:18:25,400 --> 00:18:30,590 So basically, we want to understand something about the lotus suture. A good place to look is ji. 179 00:18:30,590 --> 00:18:36,740 So the tintype patriarch who obviously commented on the Lotus teacher and had a lot to say. 180 00:18:36,740 --> 00:18:40,880 So in his commentary to this section, this is what he says. 181 00:18:40,880 --> 00:18:46,400 He says exactly when her karmic link to our land was fading, she guided living beings. 182 00:18:46,400 --> 00:18:51,680 That was all made possible by her rich power of expedient means by which she attained one Buddha body, 183 00:18:51,680 --> 00:18:56,720 all Buddha bodies, and the summary of manifesting all physical bodies. 184 00:18:56,720 --> 00:19:02,360 So she's pretty clear here that her transformation is an expression, 185 00:19:02,360 --> 00:19:07,700 it's an expedient means also of teaching and of convincing her audience that doubt her, 186 00:19:07,700 --> 00:19:14,460 that she is able to achieve to achieve good in the body that she has taken on. 187 00:19:14,460 --> 00:19:24,020 Right? OK. Well, he also says, is that a whole bunch of other beings, including women Mara, Obama, India, without abandoning their bodies, 188 00:19:24,020 --> 00:19:29,390 without taking up other bodies and in their apparent curved bodies, they're capable of attaining widowhood. 189 00:19:29,390 --> 00:19:38,420 So he says that in his commentary about what what he's doing is citing in his commentary another text which he calls the womb, such our tightening. 190 00:19:38,420 --> 00:19:41,690 You know, the woman said there's no text in the title called the woman's uterus. 191 00:19:41,690 --> 00:19:46,730 So we have to do a little bit of digging to figure out what exactly it is that he's citing. 192 00:19:46,730 --> 00:19:48,110 And when I was going through this, 193 00:19:48,110 --> 00:19:55,130 my first thought was the text I just mentioned to five sixty three because it is about bodies and there are some statements about bodies in that text, 194 00:19:55,130 --> 00:19:59,750 though none of them really match what she has to say. 195 00:19:59,750 --> 00:20:06,680 In further digging where we're going, it's actually to this text, which is a kind of a newer text to me, 196 00:20:06,680 --> 00:20:13,100 which is the vast suture on the descent of the bodies that was consciousness from tissue the heavens into his mother's womb. 197 00:20:13,100 --> 00:20:21,000 So when you read this text, the text refers to itself internally as the the suture of the story. 198 00:20:21,000 --> 00:20:28,340 The structure of the body sat there in the womb. And that's what we abbreviate to womb, suture or tiding. 199 00:20:28,340 --> 00:20:33,950 And it's worth mentioning that Jey cites the suture in a number of places in his commentary to the lotus suture. 200 00:20:33,950 --> 00:20:39,260 So not just here. Now what's kind of fascinating about this particular text? 201 00:20:39,260 --> 00:20:45,140 If we want to talk about the development of the Muhanna in East Asia and we want to talk about these unstable traditions, 202 00:20:45,140 --> 00:20:54,260 is that T 384 Michael Ravich has worked on somewhat because its trend it's attributed to Dharma Raksha, 203 00:20:54,260 --> 00:21:06,560 which he's worked on a lot, and radish suggests alongside others that T 384 is probably actually written by Dharma Raksha he uses. 204 00:21:06,560 --> 00:21:14,900 If you don't know Raj his work, he uses a digital tools to kind of analyse how people write and how they compose. 205 00:21:14,900 --> 00:21:21,080 And probably this is from Dharma fractious hand as far as that scholarship can tell us. 206 00:21:21,080 --> 00:21:24,710 Now the the problem, though, is that it's probably not a translation. 207 00:21:24,710 --> 00:21:33,500 It's probably a Chinese text so written first in Chinese that probably draws from another a bunch of other suchas in translation, 208 00:21:33,500 --> 00:21:36,050 but is not itself a full suture in translation. 209 00:21:36,050 --> 00:21:42,530 And we know that Dharma Russia was involved in this kind of work sort of towards the end of his career. 210 00:21:42,530 --> 00:21:49,940 So we have an unstable tradition. We have an open question about whether or not we change the body and then we 211 00:21:49,940 --> 00:21:56,990 have this very powerful learnt patriarch whose writings are still influential, 212 00:21:56,990 --> 00:22:00,800 citing what is likely a Chinese indigenous but a sutra. 213 00:22:00,800 --> 00:22:07,730 In order to back up his interpretation that a woman can become a woman or monster 214 00:22:07,730 --> 00:22:12,660 or a devil or any kind of being can become a Buddha in their current bodies. 215 00:22:12,660 --> 00:22:21,110 OK, so that text does say very clearly it goes gives you many examples of different kinds of beings that they don't have to exchange their bodies. 216 00:22:21,110 --> 00:22:24,680 They don't have to give up their current body. They don't have to receive a new body. 217 00:22:24,680 --> 00:22:32,000 In order to become a Buddha, they can just become Buddhas. So it's very clear in that text in all kinds of different examples. 218 00:22:32,000 --> 00:22:37,010 And so it's clearly what Ji is drawing on in his interpretation of the Lotus. 219 00:22:37,010 --> 00:22:41,330 Now again, I was trying to unpack the instability of the question. 220 00:22:41,330 --> 00:22:45,740 The problem that is also embedded in this text is that what does the Buddha? 221 00:22:45,740 --> 00:22:52,580 Right? So the text tells us also quite clearly that indeed, all beings don't have to give up their bodies. 222 00:22:52,580 --> 00:23:00,470 There's no kind of karmic ripening or karmic exchange that needs to happen by the taking on of a karmically superior body, a male body or human body. 223 00:23:00,470 --> 00:23:06,650 However, once they become a Buddha, they will take on the marks of the great man. 224 00:23:06,650 --> 00:23:13,190 Their body that will be the expression of their Buddha hood is that their body will convert to the body of the great man, 225 00:23:13,190 --> 00:23:19,560 which is the body of the Buddha. So again, we have a lot of questions remaining right for Chile. 226 00:23:19,560 --> 00:23:26,930 It's very clear that this is what's going on. Based on his reading in text, it's very clear that you know its expression of Buddha head. 227 00:23:26,930 --> 00:23:30,830 But what we still have is a situation where women are changing their bodies and female bodies. 228 00:23:30,830 --> 00:23:37,970 Non humans are changing their bodies into human bodies in order to progress toward Buddha Hood in some way. 229 00:23:37,970 --> 00:23:43,310 So it's all very muddy, I guess. 230 00:23:43,310 --> 00:23:50,030 So I want to like read between the lines a little bit and discuss kind of the larger context of where these texts fall. 231 00:23:50,030 --> 00:23:56,350 And my I kind of want to pick out some, some pieces of these days in my honour that maybe we. 232 00:23:56,350 --> 00:24:01,390 Talk about during the rest of this conference. So what are these talks really about? 233 00:24:01,390 --> 00:24:05,030 You know, I started reading these texts originally because I'm interested in women's history, 234 00:24:05,030 --> 00:24:07,420 and so there's lots of female protagonists in these texts, 235 00:24:07,420 --> 00:24:11,620 and that's how they stood out to me, and there's many more than than the ones I've suggested. 236 00:24:11,620 --> 00:24:15,550 But when you read them, you know, they are about women in some way. They're about bodies. 237 00:24:15,550 --> 00:24:21,250 They're about pollution. They're about spiritual inferiority mapped on to the body, the physical body. 238 00:24:21,250 --> 00:24:28,300 They're about karmic ripening, the body of the Buddha. So they are about female bodies in some sense. 239 00:24:28,300 --> 00:24:34,840 But I want to suggest a shift of thinking is that they're not about women, they're about even women. 240 00:24:34,840 --> 00:24:38,440 And this seems like a small point to make. 241 00:24:38,440 --> 00:24:48,800 But it was a point that was sort of suggested to to me by Professor Shoppin, who said, you know, who suggested to me that. 242 00:24:48,800 --> 00:25:00,050 Although we must we must find out. I think you may have hit something and it kind of went funny. 243 00:25:00,050 --> 00:25:07,510 So it's sort of like just adjust it in mind. I'll tell you, I mean, when he's not yet. 244 00:25:07,510 --> 00:25:15,760 No, nothing yet. Last time, I think you unplugged something from the back end that seem to work. 245 00:25:15,760 --> 00:25:19,560 That again, sounds like you back my back. Yeah, you're back. 246 00:25:19,560 --> 00:25:25,480 It looks like I'm having trouble with my my microphone. I'm sorry. 247 00:25:25,480 --> 00:25:31,360 OK, so I was talking about even women that these texts are about a kind of Mahayana frame in which even women, 248 00:25:31,360 --> 00:25:40,540 even all sorts of other beings, are able to be saved. And so that puts us very clearly in the Chinese context anyways, in the obvious question. 249 00:25:40,540 --> 00:25:46,510 And what these text reference internally to themselves is that these texts are about what's known as the great vehicle, 250 00:25:46,510 --> 00:25:52,060 at least in the East Asian context. They constantly say that they are great vehicle texts. 251 00:25:52,060 --> 00:25:56,050 They constantly say things like from the perspective of the great vehicle or with 252 00:25:56,050 --> 00:26:02,260 the vision of the great vehicle or with the knowledge of the great vehicle. You know, this is what's at stake. 253 00:26:02,260 --> 00:26:10,720 And so I just wanted to to take a little to go here for a second and just suggest a few things about the Mahayana in China, 254 00:26:10,720 --> 00:26:14,860 which is that the muhanna in early mediaeval China is quite concerned or salvation 255 00:26:14,860 --> 00:26:18,820 there is that that component to a lot of the texts that are not just translated, 256 00:26:18,820 --> 00:26:24,310 but popularised and circulated a lot of questions about [INAUDIBLE] and rebirth and those kinds of things. 257 00:26:24,310 --> 00:26:33,280 So there's that. But what I also wanted us to pay attention to is that in the East Asian context, these texts are unstable, as I've shown. 258 00:26:33,280 --> 00:26:38,920 So how does that instability become part of what we know is the Mahayana in East Asia is, I think, 259 00:26:38,920 --> 00:26:45,760 a question that we need to pay a lot more attention to what are the unstable questions and how do they get interpreted over time? 260 00:26:45,760 --> 00:26:52,780 And I think like an approach that focuses in on that kind of instability potentially has a lot to offer. 261 00:26:52,780 --> 00:26:59,320 So let me just show you a little bit about what I think. Maybe it has to offer in some cases. 262 00:26:59,320 --> 00:27:06,280 So the the story of T five, sixty two and T five sixty three doesn't end with T five sixty three. 263 00:27:06,280 --> 00:27:15,430 There's another text, 564. And all of these texts are sort of thought to be distributed to the Kamasutra. 264 00:27:15,430 --> 00:27:19,300 This is conjectural, and there's two other text that are also said to be have this name, 265 00:27:19,300 --> 00:27:25,270 but they're all very different, and this is a hope of giving reference that these are part of that textual family. 266 00:27:25,270 --> 00:27:30,010 So I showed this slide a lot. You may have seen me show the slide in previous times. 267 00:27:30,010 --> 00:27:33,640 You don't have to memorise the side or anything like that. It's not all that important. 268 00:27:33,640 --> 00:27:38,620 What's important is that T five sixty four is is a pastiche text. 269 00:27:38,620 --> 00:27:43,390 I've argued. So it it doesn't. It's not T five, sixty two and fifty five sixty three. 270 00:27:43,390 --> 00:27:47,290 What it does is it takes the the narrative set up the baby in the womb, 271 00:27:47,290 --> 00:27:54,340 all the magic and takes it from there and then adds a large a kind of debate section from 272 00:27:54,340 --> 00:28:00,580 five sixty five and five sixty six that come together and make this this much larger text. 273 00:28:00,580 --> 00:28:07,120 Five sixty four to five sixty four is long and it integrates all of this different material from different texts. 274 00:28:07,120 --> 00:28:13,450 And what I also kind of want to point out here is that all of these texts are known in all of these other names in early mediaeval catalogues, 275 00:28:13,450 --> 00:28:17,860 and perhaps this is also another version of this, another name for this. 276 00:28:17,860 --> 00:28:26,830 So it's all very confusing and I think speaks to this instability and instability that's both ideological, 277 00:28:26,830 --> 00:28:32,080 but also in terms of translation tactics and who's translating what and how texts are 278 00:28:32,080 --> 00:28:39,040 known then circulated now T five 64 is important because it becomes very popular, 279 00:28:39,040 --> 00:28:45,490 y, you know, so in later Chinese history, this text kind of becomes a very dominant text in there. 280 00:28:45,490 --> 00:28:50,800 For example, in the CCR we have I shouldn't I shouldn't pair the CTA as Chinese history, 281 00:28:50,800 --> 00:28:54,580 but it kind of in the East Asian history, it circulates widely. 282 00:28:54,580 --> 00:29:00,190 So in the future, we have an empress dowager circulating this text and tens of thousands of copies. 283 00:29:00,190 --> 00:29:05,260 It's popular in Japan and liturgy for the four deceased women and things of that sort. 284 00:29:05,260 --> 00:29:10,240 So what accounts for this instability and this transmission of this text? 285 00:29:10,240 --> 00:29:15,370 What I want to say here is that in five sixty two, there's no sex change, she 562. 286 00:29:15,370 --> 00:29:22,600 There's a sex change in T five 64. The text, which becomes ultimately the most successful of this progression. 287 00:29:22,600 --> 00:29:29,470 What there is is actually there is a sex change, but it's not talked about in terms of sort of karmic ripening and the necessity of a female body. 288 00:29:29,470 --> 00:29:31,600 It's in fact talked about as a gender change. 289 00:29:31,600 --> 00:29:39,760 So we have this kind of protagonist who has this conversation about why she has to change her female body and the conversation about gender. 290 00:29:39,760 --> 00:29:46,480 So the idea being that life as a woman is really hard and prevents you from practising Buddhism as a woman, 291 00:29:46,480 --> 00:29:54,310 you're subject to verbal abuse, physical abuse. You're not individually free, you don't have any autonomy. 292 00:29:54,310 --> 00:30:02,950 All of those reasons are sort of part of T five sixty four, and they're not in any of the other in these other texts. 293 00:30:02,950 --> 00:30:13,360 So what accounts for this? I think that, and this is where my work is going in the future, is that women themselves account. 294 00:30:13,360 --> 00:30:20,320 For a part of this interesting part of this instability, because I believe that women constituted a an audience, 295 00:30:20,320 --> 00:30:25,810 a context for some of the discussion of the sex and created some demand within 296 00:30:25,810 --> 00:30:29,920 the ways in which early mediaeval texts were translated and were circulated. 297 00:30:29,920 --> 00:30:36,580 So I'm I'm doing the work now of trying to connect actual historical women to groups 298 00:30:36,580 --> 00:30:41,650 of translators that were involved in the discussion and the creation of these texts. 299 00:30:41,650 --> 00:30:47,680 So I think, you know, when we when we zero in on these places of instability, we get an opportunity to ask, 300 00:30:47,680 --> 00:30:55,690 who are the the agents of this instability and learn about the development of the tradition through their eyes. 301 00:30:55,690 --> 00:30:58,030 And I'll just finish up by showing you this. 302 00:30:58,030 --> 00:31:04,660 This is yet another development of this textual progression, and I'm sorry that the the picture is so bad. 303 00:31:04,660 --> 00:31:12,040 It's like a cell phone picture of a scan of a document held in Tokyo in the National Library. 304 00:31:12,040 --> 00:31:18,110 And this is a further development of this textual tradition that's probably written in Japan. 305 00:31:18,110 --> 00:31:25,390 A Japanese scholar named Michiko Junco has written on this text and argues that it's the Japanese apocrypha. 306 00:31:25,390 --> 00:31:30,380 And, you know, so it shows that the instability of the question goes beyond China. 307 00:31:30,380 --> 00:31:34,150 OK, so I'm going to stop here. There's many, many more texts. 308 00:31:34,150 --> 00:31:40,780 This is like a little picture for studying this topic. There's so many more texts on this topic within early mediaeval catalogues. 309 00:31:40,780 --> 00:31:44,530 And you know, my work will go through some, but there's there's way more than I can possibly do. 310 00:31:44,530 --> 00:31:48,970 So just to suggest that this is a big question as early as the fourth century, 311 00:31:48,970 --> 00:31:56,500 and that remains a big question today and I think points to some important pieces of the Mahayana in East Asia. 312 00:31:56,500 --> 00:31:59,740 OK, so I'm going to stop now, and I'm very sorry about my technological difficulties. 313 00:31:59,740 --> 00:32:07,134 It looks like I need a new microphone and I hope I can take some questions.