Varieties of Religious Healing in Medieval Chinese Buddhism

Prof Stephen F. Teiser (Princeton University)

Abstract

For about two thousand years, people from all walks of life in China have taken recourse to different therapies when they fall sick. Depending on individual fortune and local care facilities, they might seek help from a doctor practicing acupuncture and moxibustion or prescribing herbal cures, an exorcist, a Daoist priest, or a Buddhist monk—or all of them in succession. This lecture surveys the range of healing methods offered by Buddhist monks between roughly the fourth and tenth centuries.Drawing on evidence from paintings, sūtras, liturgies, talismans, manuscripts, and other archaeological remains, the talk explores the technologies employed in Buddhist forms of healing. Techniques ranged from relatively humble acts of donation to more extensive projects of copying scriptures, chanting spells, confessing one’s faults, commissioning the making of images, sponsoring lamp-lighting ceremonies, making seals or ingesting talismans, or engaging the services of an exorcist. The lecture highlights the logics of these various practices and reflects on the process of healing in Chinese Buddhism.

Bio

Stephen F. Teiser is D.T. Suzuki Professor in Buddhist Studies in the Department of Religion and Director of the interdepartmental Program in East Asian Studies at Princeton University. He is interested in the intersections between Buddhism and Chinese social life. He studies canonical texts, handwritten manuscripts, images, and temple complexes across the Buddhist world. His recent books include Reinventing the Wheel: Paintings of Rebirth in Medieval Buddhist Temples (University of Washington Press, 2006), which was awarded the Prix Stanislas Julien by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, Institut de France, and a volume co-edited with Morten Schlütter, Readings of the Platform Sūtra (Columbia University Press, 2012). His Yili yu fojiao yanjiu 儀禮與佛教研究 (Ritual and the Study of Buddhism) is forthcoming from Sanlian chubanshe (2019).