Stephen F. Teiser (born 1956) is the D. T. Suzuki Professor in Buddhist Studies and Professor of Religion at
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...
, where he is also the Director of the Program in
East Asian Studies
East Asian studies is a distinct multidisciplinary field of scholarly enquiry and education that promotes a broad humanistic understanding of East Asia past and present. The field includes the study of the region's culture, written language, hist ...
. His scholarship is known for a broad conception of Buddhist thinking and practice, showing the interactions between Buddhism in India, China, Korea and Japan, especially in the medieval period; for the use of wide-ranging sources, not only texts and documents, but artistic and material; for a theoretical approach that builds insights from history, anthropology, literary theory, and religious studies; and for seeing Buddhism in both elite and popular contexts.
Each of his monographs has won a major award. Teiser's first monograph, ''The Ghost Festival in Medieval China'' (1988) was awarded the prize in History of Religions by the
American Council of Learned Societies
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
. His second book, ''The Scripture on the Ten Kings and the Making of Purgatory in Medieval Chinese Buddhism'' (2003) was awarded the
Joseph Levenson Book Prize Joseph Levenson Book Prize is awarded each year in memory of Joseph R. Levenson by the Association for Asian Studies to two English-language books, one whose main focus is on China before 1900 and the other for works on post-1900 China. According to ...
(pre-twentieth century) in Chinese Studies. ''Reinventing the Wheel: Paintings of Rebirth in Medieval Buddhist Temples'' (2007) won the
Prix Stanislas Julien The Prix Stanislas Julien is a prize for a sinological work (usually) published in the previous year. It is named after the French sinologist, Stanislas Julien, and is awarded by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres
The Académie des ...
, awarded by the
Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres
The Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres () is a French learned society devoted to history, founded in February 1663 as one of the five academies of the Institut de France. The academy's scope was the study of ancient inscriptions ( epig ...
,
Institut de France
The (; ) is a French learned society, grouping five , including the Académie Française. It was established in 1795 at the direction of the National Convention. Located on the Quai de Conti in the 6th arrondissement of Paris, the institute m ...
.
Education and career
Teiser took his undergraduate degree from
Oberlin College
Oberlin College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college and conservatory of music in Oberlin, Ohio. It is the oldest Mixed-sex education, coeducational liberal arts college in the United S ...
, then his Master's and Doctorate from Princeton University, where he studied with
Alan Sponberg and
Denis Twitchett
Denis Crispin Twitchett (23 September 192524 February 2006) was a British Sinologist and scholar who specialized in Chinese history, and is well known as one of the co-editors of ''The Cambridge History of China''.
Biography
Denis Twitchett was b ...
. He is known to his friends as "Buzzy."
Thought, ritual, and popular religion
The
Ghost Festival
The Ghost Festival, also known as the Zhongyuan Festival (traditional Chinese: 中元節; simplified Chinese: ) in Taoism and Yulanpen Festival () in Buddhism, is a traditional Taoist and Buddhist festival held in certain East Asian countrie ...
was the subject of Teiser's first book, ''The Ghost Festival in Medieval China''. This festival spread geographically and lasted to the present day in various forms in China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. Ancestral spirits are honored, as well as ones that had no descendants to honor them. Teiser found that most of the historical sources and modern scholarship focused on the institutions of the Buddhist church or the services held within its confines, and that they assumed that these institutions and practices developed logically into their historic form. He felt that this neglected the "diffused" nature of Chinese religion. The Ghost Festival, however, was a "complex symbolic event" that was not constrained by any one authoritative text. Its myths and rituals involved every social class, each for its own reasons, and expressed their vitality in a range of social contexts not usually identified as "religious." Teiser shows that the festival is rooted in traditional Chinese observances in the seventh month, with offerings from the harvest, and also in Buddhist practices from India, where there was not a connection with ancestors, but to a yearly retreat for confession and self-release. There has been disagreement on relation of the festival to the Daoist Festival in which offerings are made to the gods who come to this world to judge the living. Teiser argues that the Buddhist festival influenced the Daoist practice, and that the two are "two peaks of pyramids with a common base."
The scholar
B. J. Ter Haar praised Teiser's approach in because it "distinguishes itself from existing historical studies by an extremely open and broad-minded attitude towards the subject and the available sources." That is, Teiser does not "confine himself to (or arbitrarily exclude) doctrinal sources, but tries to give all available sources their due," and analyses the different social, literary and religious dimensions of the subject.
[B.J. Ter Haar, "Review", ''T'oung Pao'' (1993) p]
379
/ref>
His second book, ''Reinventing the Wheel: Paintings of Rebirth in Medieval Buddhist Temples'' (2006) won the Prix Stanislas Julien The Prix Stanislas Julien is a prize for a sinological work (usually) published in the previous year. It is named after the French sinologist, Stanislas Julien, and is awarded by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres
The Académie des ...
, awarded by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres
The Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres () is a French learned society devoted to history, founded in February 1663 as one of the five academies of the Institut de France. The academy's scope was the study of ancient inscriptions ( epig ...
, Institut de France
The (; ) is a French learned society, grouping five , including the Académie Française. It was established in 1795 at the direction of the National Convention. Located on the Quai de Conti in the 6th arrondissement of Paris, the institute m ...
. Teiser uses both literary and visual sources to follow history and interpretations of the Wheel of Rebirth
The bhavacakra (Sanskrit: भवचक्र; Pāli: ''bhavacakka''; Tibetan: སྲིད་པའི་འཁོར་ལོ, Wylie: ''srid pa'i 'khor lo'') is a symbolic representation of saṃsāra (or cyclic existence). It is found on the ...
, or ''Bhavacakra'', an iconic circle divided into sections to represent the Buddhist cycle of transmigration. The meaning of the wheel has been interpreted in different ways in India, Tibet, Central Asia, and China. The book shows how these depictions have appeared in local religious architecture and religious rituals, and that these representations shaped concepts of time and reincarnation and organized the cosmology and daily life of these Buddhist societies.
''"The Scripture on the Ten Kings: Making of Purgatory in Medieval Chinese Buddhism'', published in 2003, argues that this scripture signals the beginning of a "new concept of the afterlife in medieval Chinese Buddhism" as a "period between death and the next life during which the spirit of the deceased suffers retribution for past deeds and enjoys the comfort of family members." This concept, argues Teiser, is close enough to the situation in medieval Europe to justify the use of the term "purgatory." The text of ''Scripture on the Ten Kings'' is dated to the ninth century, though the concepts in it crystalized several centuries earlier. Teiser shows that this idea of purgatory was produced by a collaboration between Indic and Chinese worlds, and was then taken up by Korean and Japanese Buddhism. This conception of purgatory is still a defining concept in modern Chinese life.
John Kieschnick wrote in ''Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies
The ''Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies'' (HJAS) is an English-language scholarly journal published by the Harvard-Yenching Institute. ''HJAS'' features articles and book reviews of current scholarship in East Asian Studies, focusing on Chinese, ...
'' that Teiser in these three monographs counters the modernist tendency in present-day Asian Buddhism to emphasize a "this-worldly" social engagement as well as the Western tendency to use Buddhist practices for self-cultivation and internal experiences. Teiser's point, says Keischnick, is that historically and perhaps even among most Buddhists today, Buddhism was not a practical guide but a "framework for understanding and negotiating a cosmos that extends far beyond the visible world in which we live, and far beyond the present, to include future and past lives as gods, ghosts, hell beings, and animals, as well as humans."[.]
Teiser has also edited ''Readings of the Lotus Sutra'' (2009). with Jacqueline Ilyse Stone Jacqueline Ilyse Stone (born June 30, 1949) is an emeritus Professor of Japanese Religion in the Department of Religion at Princeton University's Department of Religion and a specialist in Japanese Buddhism, particularly Kamakura Buddhism, Nichir ...
, a group of essays analyzing the Lotus Sutra
The ''Lotus Sūtra'' ( zh, 妙法蓮華經; sa, सद्धर्मपुण्डरीकसूत्रम्, translit=Saddharma Puṇḍarīka Sūtram, lit=Sūtra on the White Lotus of the True Dharma, italic=) is one of the most influ ...
, and ''Readings of the Platform Sutra'' (2012), with Morten Schlütter, which introduces the monk Hui Neng
Dajian Huineng (); (February 27, 638 – August 28, 713), also commonly known as the Sixth Patriarch or Sixth Ancestor of Chan (traditional Chinese: 禪宗六祖), is a semi-legendary but central figure in the early history of Chinese Chan Buddhi ...
, the Chan Buddhist
Chan (; of ), from Sanskrit ''dhyāna in Buddhism, dhyāna'' (meaning "meditation" or "meditative state"), is a Chinese school of Mahayana, Mahāyāna Buddhism. It developed in China from the 6th century Common Era, CE onwards, becoming e ...
patriarch, and his most influential sutra.
Selected publications
*
*
* Awarded the Joseph Levenson Book Prize Joseph Levenson Book Prize is awarded each year in memory of Joseph R. Levenson by the Association for Asian Studies to two English-language books, one whose main focus is on China before 1900 and the other for works on post-1900 China. According to ...
(pre-twentieth century) in Chinese Studies.
* . Awarded the Prix Stanislas Julien by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, Institut de France
*
*
*
*
Social History and the Confrontation of Cultures
" Preface to the Third edition of Erik Zurcher, ''The Buddhist Conquest of China'' (Leiden: Brill 2007), pp. xii- xxviii.
References
Sources
*
External links
Stephen "Buzzy" Teiser
Center on Contemporary China (Princeton University)
Teiser, Stephen F.
WorldCat
WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions (mostly libraries), in many countries, that are current or past members of the OCLC global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC, Inc. Many of the OCL ...
Authority Page.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Teiser, Stephen F.
1956 births
Oberlin College alumni
Princeton University faculty
American sinologists
Living people
Buddhist writers