Topics for Paper II, REL 407/507 Buddhism in American Narratives

Due Tuesday, May 13, 2003, in class.

• Double-spaced, not more than 800 words. (You may use parenthetical notation to indicate page numbers for textual references.)
• Be sure to write your name, the name of the class, and the title of your topic at the top of the page.
• I also strongly encourage you to read the essays on my Writing web pages, especially "Four Keys to Writing in the Humanities," "Paper Writing Guidelines," "Checklist for Papers," and "Writing: The Bridge between Consciousness and Unconsciousness."

Topics

1. In several of the readings, such as Coffinman, Dharma Bums, and Aama in America, there is a mixture of influences in the leading figures of these works that blend the institutional practice of Buddhism (Pure Land temple structure of funerals, Zen monastic experience of Japhy Ryder, Aama's Hindu-Nepali devotionalism and native Indian pilgrimage) with a free-flowing spiritual life of spontaneous religious experiences and expressions. Discuss the relation between the institutional traditions of Buddhism and free-form spiritual self-expression in one or two of these three works. How do they complement each other, and where are there tensions between them?

2. Discuss the same question as above in terms of the relation between Seager's classification of "convert" and "immigrant" Buddhism as found in one of the following: Dharma Bums, Compassionate Vow, or The Buddha from Brooklyn.

3. According to Mark Unno, "The Voice of Sacred Texts in the Ocean of Compassion: The Case of Shin Buddhism in America," who draws upon the theories of Catherine Bell, the ritual hierarchy of religious institutions is inherently ambiguous in terms of their liberative function. That is, this hierarchy both provides a framework for individual religious paths and restricts them in terms of what Bell calls the "redemptive hegemony." According to Unno, however, not all religious life is necessarily bound by the terms of this redemptive hegemony, and individual lives might be able to break through the social framework of the ritual hierarchy to express or manifest something beyond it. Discuss the possibility of such a transcendence of the "redemptive hegemony" in relation to The Buddha from Brooklyn.