Wednesday, January 18, 2023 12pm to 1:30pm
About this Event
3550 Trousdale Parkway, Los Angeles, CA 90089
Can we access the religious lives of impoverished individuals in the premodern world? This talk proposes that we can. I will introduce evidence from a previously untranslated manuscript to show how preachers actively promoted doctrines aimed to appeal to poor provincial villagers in ninth-century Japan, often promising them wealth in return for humble donations or sometimes even simple faith. I will then survey earthenware pots found throughout Japan that often contain simple prayers for wealth and were likely offered by provincial villagers. By combining these sources, I will suggest that we may be able to recover not just what was said about the poor but also how impoverished individuals may have responded to Buddhist teachings.
Bio
Bryan D. Lowe is an assistant professor in the Department of Religion at Princeton University. His first book, Ritualized Writing: Buddhist Practice and Scriptural Cultures in Ancient Japan (University of Hawaii Press, 2017) was awarded the John Whitney Hall Prize from the Association for Asian Studies. He is currently completing a book called How Buddhism Spread in Japan. His work has been supported by a ACLS Robert H. N. Ho Foundation fellowship, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Fulbright IIE, Japan Foundation, and others.
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