Stevenson, D.

Stevenson, D. on the DRL

Professors

Daniel Stevenson

English Phonetics	Daniel Stevenson

Dates

Birth:	1952/12/15

Tibetan calendar dates

Dates of birth

Day
Month
Gender
Element
Animal
Rab Jyung

Dates of passing

Day
Month
Gender
Element
Animal
Rab Jyung

About

Primary Language:	English
Translates from:	Chinese
Translates to:	English

Primary Affiliation (Workplace)

University of Kansas

Current projects

“Serving the Buddhas in Song Dynasty China” (book manuscript)

This manuscript explores formations and fissures of Buddhist religious life (monastic as well as vernacular) through attention to such key sites and media of Buddhist monastic and vernacular culture as institutional setting, education and textual practice, ritual performance, material and visual repertoire, and narrative network. In a recently published book chapter on “Buddhist Ritual in the Song” I touched upon resonances between Buddhist rituals for intercession with local gods, restless dead, ancestors and animals that were popular during this period and the logics of religious action and efficacy that we find embedded in vernacular narratives of exorcism, healing, aversion of disaster, and miraculous response. That interest, which I continue to explore in this book manuscript, extends also to resonance with equivalent Daoist rites of intercession, such as the Yellow Register fast, and even popular novels and drama of religious bent (e.g., Mulian’s deliverance of his mother from hell). If the rich sensorial settings of ritual performance, drama, and narrative were principal mediums for the formation of the vernacular religious imagination in Song China, as would seem to have been the case, what can integrated study of them tell us about religious identity and difference in traditional China.

“The ‘Tiantai Four Books’ (天台四書): Protocols of Buddhist Learning in Late Song and Yuan China” (major article)

This article explores curricular programs, protocols of learning (textual practice), and discourses of authoritative knowledge in public Buddhist monasteries of the Tiantai School during the Southern Song and Yuan (ca. 12th-14th centuries). The project draws on period-specific archival materials, prefaces and colophons to Song and Yuan imprints of key Tiantai texts, monastic codes, monastery inscriptions, and epitaphs for Buddhist clergy—materials that not only document learning practices during the period in question but also served as active agents for their dissemination. This project features an annotated translation of Siming Zhili’s (960-1028) Notes on Essential Points of the Ten Gates of Nonduality (Shibuermen zhiyao chao十不二門指要鈔, which is prefaced by a series of chapters that reconstruct curricular programs evident in Tiantai public monasteries during Southern Song and Yuan Dynasty China. Drawing on such in situ materials as prefaces and colophons to Song and Yuan imprints of key Tiantai texts, monastic codes, monastery inscriptions, and epitaphs for Buddhist clergy, the project seeks to identify what people actually read and studied in Tiantai monasteries, the sequence and manner in which such texts were studied, how widely such curricula circulated (along with the institutional networks that facilitated it), and the forms of religious knowledge and authority they created. The institutional focus is confined mainly to the Tiantai public monastery circuit in the lower Yangzi basin. As the term ‘four books’ (sishu) clearly demands, I also make a point of examining resonances with shifts in ‘Learning of the Way’ (Daoxue) Confucian educational discourse and curricula that occur during precisely the same period.

“The Life/Lives of a Lotus Sūtra Imprint in Southern Song China” (article in progress)

This article explores the multifaceted life of a copy of the Lotus Sūtra that was printed by book carvers from Jiangxi, obtained by the Tiantai monk Deqiu from a bookshop in Hangzhou, used in Deqiu’s daily devotions, and ultimately deposited by him in a stupa reliquary at the Huiyun Monastery in Jiaxing (Xiuzhou). The life of that text, as an animate entity in the eyes of Deqiu and his patrons, is revealed in a series of calligraphic diary annotations and event-specific prayers that Deqiu composed and appended to the printed scripture. As a holy object, what did that text demand of him? How did he use and relationally engage it, and to what ends?

PhD University

Columbia University, 1987

Education

• Ph.D. in Religious Studies, Columbia University, (October, 1987). Dissertation: "The T'ien-t'ai

Four Forms of Samādhi and Late North-South Dynasties, Sui, and Early T'ang Buddhist Devotionalism."

• M.Phil. in Religious Studies, Columbia University, (May, 1982).
• M.A. in Religious Studies, Columbia University, (May, 1977).
• B.A. in Religion and Chinese Language, Dartmouth College, (June, 1974).
  

Biographical Information

I have been interested for some time in the sites and economies of practice that mediated religious life in Middle Period China (10th–14th centuries), particularly as they applied to persons who identified themselves (or others) as “Buddhist.” This interest arises from the conviction that religious subjects and their traditions are not static and monolithically constituted entities, but disparate works in progress, the estimations of which are ceaselessly negotiated in relation to a diversity of shifting idioms, obligations, and historical contingencies. To me the key question becomes one of processes and agencies of cultural practice, and that question in turn implies networks, that is to say, the sites and channels through which cultural data move, locate, and come to be collectively embodied.

I am working on several projects at the moment, all of which focus on Song (960–1279) and Yuan period China (1279–1368). (Source Accessed October 22, 2019)

Curriculum Vitae

https://religiousstudies.ku.edu/sites/religiousstudies.ku.edu/files/docs/cv/Stevenson%20CV%202011.pdf

Links

Wiki Pages

• Stevenson, D. on the DRL
• Stevenson, D. on the LIB
• Stevenson, D. on the BNW

Buddha Nature Project

Person description or short bio

Expand to see this person's philosophical positions on Buddha-nature.

Is Buddha-nature considered definitive or provisional?
Position:
Notes:
All beings have Buddha-nature
Position:
If "Qualified", explain:
Notes:
Which Wheel Turning
Position:
Notes:
Yogācāra vs Madhyamaka
Position:
Notes:
Zhentong vs Rangtong
Position:
Notes:
Promotes how many vehicles?
Position:
Notes:
Analytic vs Meditative Tradition
Position:
Notes:
What is Buddha-nature?
Position:
Notes:
Svātantrika (རང་རྒྱུད་) vs Prāsaṅgika (ཐལ་འགྱུར་པ་)
Position:
Notes:
Causal nature of the vajrapāda
Position:

Full Name

Daniel Stevenson

Refers to something that is taught for a specific reason, rather than because it is entirely true.

Along with Madhyamaka, it was one of the two major philosophical schools of Mahāyāna Buddhism. Founded by Asaṅga and Vasubandhu around the fourth century CE, many of its central tenets have roots in the Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra and the so-called third turning of the dharma wheel (see tridharmacakrapravartana).

Along with Yogācāra, it is one of the two major philosophical schools of Mahāyāna Buddhism. Founded by Nāgārjuna around the second century CE, it is rooted in the Prajñāpāramitā Sūtras, though its initial exposition was presented in Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā.

The state of being devoid of that which is wholly different rather than being void of its own nature. The term is generally used to refer to the ultimate, or buddha-nature, being empty of other phenomena such as adventitious defiling emotions but not empty of its true nature.

The state of being empty of self, which references the lack of inherent existence in relative phenomena.

Tsen Khawoche's "meditative tradition" of exegesis of the Uttaratantra; it is one of two major Tibetan traditions of exegesis, both stemming from students of Sajjana.