The Hakubi Project

14th

:Global Type
:Tenure-track Type

Short Introduction

Around the 5th century B.C., Śākyamuni Buddha as the founder of Buddhism created monastic rules (the Vinaya) for his disciples who had abandoned family and secular work to regulate their communal life in India. The Mahāyāna movement, emerged about 500 years after the Buddha’s nirvana, emphasized the Buddha’s previous lives of continued compassionate practice as a bodhisattva and promoted the bodhisattva precepts as guidelines for living like the Buddhas. Therefore, in the process of translation from Indic languages into Chinese, there has been no fundamental distinction between the Vinaya and the bodhisattva precepts for East Asia Buddhism. Instead it advocated that all Buddhists should follow what has been translated as “jielü戒律.” (the Vinaya and bodhisattva precepts) The "jielü" established by the Buddha are strictly forbidden to be altered. However, given different periods, regions and cultures in East Asian countries, it is impossible to replicate the exact same lifestyle as that of India during the period when the Buddhist scriptures were established with. The way of life as the Buddhist derived from the tension between human behavior and religious ideals remains in the form of commentary on the precepts. The aim of my study is to provide interpretation on the Buddhist practices of a certain historical period and region by examining these commentaries. This project aims to investigate the principles behind the concept of “breaking the precepts” with a specific focus on medieval Japanese Buddhist monastism.