Imagined Community: Family Values & Morality in Lingbao Scriptures
A lecture by Stephen Bodenkamp at USC
Thursday, February 09, 2006
2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
202 Taper Hall of Humanities
USC
A transformative moment in the history of Daoism came about when, at the turn of the fifth century, the Lingbao scriptures embraced the Buddhist concept of rebirth. Modern scholars have described this development as "Buddhist influence," "Daoist capitulation," and even "surrender." As part of an ongoing project to construct more accurate conceptual models for understanding this event, Professor Bokenkamp will present in this talk an influential set of Lingbao moral injunctions, the nature of the hell-beings who failed to heed them, and one of the family-centered salvific rituals designed to rectify the situation.
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Stephen Bokenkamp describes himself in the following words:
Trained at the University of California, Berkeley, by Michel Strickmann (Daoism) and Edward H. Schafer (Tang literature), I have continued to study, publish, and teach students on Chinese society and its literary records in a manner unrestrained by traditional disciplinary boundaries. My publications have focused on the early development of the Daoist religion and on issues in Chinese literature, broadly construed, from the Three Kingdoms through the Tang period (roughly 200-1000 CE). In the field of Daoist Studies, I find myself most interested in the interactions between this developing religion and the society that gave birth to it, to include the Buddhist religion. In literature, I have worked most closely on prosody, tale literature, and the rhapsody.In addition, I am joint editor of the Journal of Chinese Religions with Robert Campany of the Department of Religious Studies, of which I am an adjunct member, and Series Editor of Daoist Classics, for the University of California Press.
For more information please contact
Lori Meeks
Tel: (213) 821-5477
meeks@usc.edu
Sponsor(s): USC School of Religion
