James Benn: Meditation in the Apocryphal Śūraṃgama sutra

Date: 

Monday, March 1, 2021, 2:00pm to 3:30pm

In the later Chinese Buddhist tradition one text above all others has been extolled for the profundity of its ideas, the beauty of its language, and its insight into the practice of meditation—this is the scripture popularly known as the Lengyan jing or Śūraṃgama sutra (Scripture of the Heroic March). In this talk, I will look at the Śūraṃgama sutra’s general prescriptions for meditation. I will indicate some specific examples of methods of mental cultivation described by the scripture and taken up by later Buddhist practitioners. Finally, I will talk about how the scripture elucidates in detail some of the potential dangers of meditation for the practitioner.

James A. Benn (PhD UCLA 2001) is Professor of Buddhism and East Asian Religions at McMaster University and Director of the McMaster University Centre for Buddhist Studies. He studies Buddhism and Daoism in medieval China. He has published on self-immolation, spontaneous human combustion, Buddhist apocryphal scriptures, and tea and alcohol in medieval China. He is currently working on a translation and study of the Śūramgama sutra, a Chinese Buddhist apocryphon.

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See also: 2020-2021 Lecture Series