Aaron Proffitt (University at Albany-SUNY)

The recitation of the name of a buddha (nenbutsu) is often associated with deathbed practices and traditions commonly grouped under the rubric Pure Land Buddhism. In this talk, Professor Aaron Proffitt will consider this widely popular practice as understood by practitioners of mantra, focusing in particular upon the work of Dohan (1179-1252), an early-medieval Japanese scholar-monk and Esoteric Pure Land theorist. As we will see, Dohan’s “esoteric nenbutsu” theory reveals that for some medieval Japanese Buddhist practitioners, the so-called mystery of speech as a willed act, an act of “self power,” rests in its expression of the mystery of breath, as an unwilled act, an expression of “other power.” In this way, the nenbutsu as mantra is said to transcend and collapse perceived binaries between buddhas and beings, this world and the Pure Land.