THE BIRTH OF REBIRTH IN CHINA

In this talk, Stephen Bokenkamp (Indiana University) explores a new approach to the birth of rebirth in China, one that appreciates the role of Daoist authors and ritualists in the “redescription” of Buddhism in ways that made its doctrines accessible to Chinese patrons. The Daoist adoption of Buddhist ideas of rebirth would have to stand as a key moment in the spread of the foreign religion to China. Recent studies that do mention this transformation would have us understand it as Buddhist “influence” or Daoist “borrowing.”

Sponsored by the CENTER FOR EAST ASIAN STUDIES