Graduate Student, Asian Languages and Cultures
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Micah Auerback
Donald Lopez Ben Brose |
About
After graduating from the University of Colorado-Boulder in '05 with a triple-major in Religious Studies, Asian Studies, and Japanese, I went to live in Japan for a year to teach English and study Japanese temples. In '06 I entered the Religious Studies MA program at the University of Colorado-Boulder where I studied Chinese and Japanese languages and East Asian religions. Fall '08, I began my PhD in Buddhist Studies at the University of Michigan. During the '09-'10 academic year I completed twelve months of intensive Japanese language study at the Inter-University Center for Japanese Studies in Yokohama. Currently I am back in Michigan working on my prelim exams.
Broadly speaking, I am interested in the diversity and transformation of the Buddhist idea of a "Pure Land" and how this concept has been variously articulated and interpreted across the Mahayana constellation of traditions. In my research I plan to investigate Pure Land discourse and ritual activity as a site for the articulation and contestation of orthodoxy and heresy in Japanese Buddhisms of the late Heian-Kamakura periods. As of late, I have been reading the Amida Hishaku by Kakuban (1095-1143) and the Himitsu nenbutsusho by Dohan (1178-1252), as well as other works dealing with the so-called "himitsu nenbutsu."
Questions that I am interested in:
How can we deconstruct the prevalent anachronism of retroactively assigning contemporary sectarian identities to premodern Buddhists? In addition, how might we understand the diverse ways in which discourses of belonging change over time?
What are the differences (in a given context) between nenbutsu, mantra, dharani, and other technologies of the "mystery of speech?"
Is there a Buddhist theory of "magic," and how does it relate to Madhyamaka and Yogacara?
How might one craft an approach to the study of Buddhism that is neither historical-materialist, avoiding the pitfalls of positivism and determinism, nor theological, avoiding the pitfalls of a set orthodox "party-line?"
Thanks for stopping by.
