Radich, M.

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Michael Radich

Michael Radich received his doctorate from the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University (2007), for a dissertation treating the history of Buddhist ideas about the various embodiments of buddhahood. His first monograph (Tokyo, 2011), treats the history of Buddhist stories about the sins and redemption of the famed patricide King Ajātaśatru, as that story changed across two thousand years of Buddhist history in India, China and Japan. His second monograph (Hamburg, 2015) treats the origins of Tathāgatagarbha thought in the (Mahāyāna) Mahāparinivāņa-mahāsūtra. He has held visiting positions at Kyōto University (2009) and the University of Hamburg (Numata Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies, 2013-2014; Alexander von Humboldt Foundation fellow, 2015). From 2005-2017, he taught at Victoria University of Wellington in his native New Zealand, where he was latterly Associate Professor and Programme Director of Religious Studies. As of January 2018, he is Professor of Buddhist Studies in the Cluster of Excellence "Asia and Europe in a Global Context" at the University of Heidelberg. (Source Accessed July 20, 2018)

Library Items

Book
A Distant Mirror
In this book, an international team of fourteen scholars investigates the Chinese reception of Indian Buddhist ideas, especially in the sixth and seventh centuries. Topics include Buddhist logic and epistemology (pramāṇa, yinming); commentaries on Indian Buddhist texts; Chinese readings of systems as diverse as Madhyamaka, Yogācāra and tathāgatagarbha; the working out of Indian concepts and problematics in new Chinese works; and previously under-studied Chinese evidence for developments in India. The authors aim to consider the ways that these Chinese materials might furnish evidence of broader Buddhist trends, thereby problematizing a prevalent notion of “sinification”, which has led scholars to consider such materials predominantly in terms of trends ostensibly distinctive to China. The volume also tries to go beyond seeing sixth- and seventh-century China primarily as the age of the formation and establishment of the Chinese Buddhist “schools”. The authors attempt to view the ideas under study on their own terms, as valid Buddhist ideas engendered in a rich, “liminal” space of interchange between two large traditions. (Source: Hamburg University Press)
Lin, Chen-kuo, and Michael Radich, eds. A Distant Mirror: Articulating Indic Ideas in Sixth and Seventh Century Chinese Buddhism. Hamburg Buddhist Studies 3. Hamburg: Hamburg University Press, 2014. https://hup.sub.uni-hamburg.de/volltexte/2014/146/pdf/HamburgUP_HBS03_LinRadich_Mirror.pdf.
Book
The Mahāparinirvāṇa-mahāsūtra and the Emergence of Tathāgatagarbha Doctrine
Famously, tathāgatagarbha doctrine holds that every sentient being has within the body a womb for Buddhas, or an embryonic Buddha – the potential for full buddhahood. Previous scholars have seen this doctrine as originating in the Tathāgatagarbha-sūtra. In this book, Michael Radich argues that rather, the Mahāparinirvāṇa-mahāsūtra is most likely our earliest extant tathāgatagarbha text. Radich then argues that tathāgatagarbha ideas originated as part of a wider pattern of docetic Buddhology – ideas holding that Buddhas are not really as they appear. Buddhist docetic texts are clearly troubled by the notion that Buddhas could have flesh-and-blood human mothers. The Mahāparinirvāṇa-mahāsūtra is one such text, and tathāgatagarbha functions as a better substitute for imperfect human maternity: rather than a putrid, painful human womb, buddhahood springs from a “womb” inherent in every sentient being, which promises final liberation from flesh altogether. This book should interest readers concerned with the history of Buddhist ideas, gender in Buddhism, the early Mahāyāna, the cult of the Buddha’s relics, and relations between Buddhist ideas and practice. (Source: Hamburg University Press)
Radich, Michael. The Mahāparinirvāṇa-mahāsūtra and the Emergence of Tathāgatagarbha Doctrine. Hamburg Buddhist Studies 5. Hamburg: Hamburg University Press, 2015. https://d-nb.info/1069352969/34.
Article
Reading the Writing on the Wall: "Sengchou's" Cave at Xiaonanhai, Early Chinese Buddhist Meditation, and Unique Portions of *Dharmakṣema's Mahāparinirvāṇamahāsūtra
The Mahāparinirvāṇamahāsūtra (particularly in the version entitled Da banniepan jing 大般涅槃經 T374, translated by *Dharmakṣema ca. 421-432) features centrally in the textual and iconographic programme of a remarkable cave at Xiaonanhai 小南海 in northern Henan 河南, which was rediscovered in the 1980s. The cave has close connections with Sengchou 僧稠 (480-560), a famous meditator, and one of the leading clerics in Northern China in the sixth century. This paper argues for a new interpretation of the programme of the cave, and considers what it allows us to see about religious life and practice in Sengchou's time. An appendix examines implications of the textual material featured at the cave for the nature and provenance of the bulky portions of Dharmakṣema's version of the Mahāparinirvāṇamahāsūtra that are unparalleled in our other three main independent witnesses. (Source: Peeters Online Journals)
Radich, Michael. "Reading the Writing on the Wall: 'Sengchou's' Cave at Xiaonanhai, Early Chinese Buddhist Meditation, and Unique Portions of *Dharmakṣema's Mahāparinirvāṇamahāsūtra." Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 42 (2019): 515–632.
Article
Tathāgatagarbha Scriptures
No abstract given. Here are the first relevant paragraphs:

There is no traditional rubric of tathāgatagarbha scriptures, though modem scholars (e.g. Takasaki, 1974) have treated several scriptures as belonging to a thematic class, namely the ;;Tathāgatagarbhasūtra, the Anūnatvāpūrṇatvanirdeśaparivarta, the Śrīmālādevīsiṃhanādasūtra, the (Mahāyāna) Mahaaparinirvāṇamahāsūtra, the Mahāmeghasūtra, the *Mahābherīhārakasūtra, and the Mahāyāna Aṅgulimālīya (or Aṅgulimālīyasūtra). This classification is based in the first instance on the use of these and related works as proof texts in the Indian treatise Ratnagotravibhāga (Mahāyānottaratantra). The category is thus in some sense conceptually coherent even in an Indian context. Moreover, many of these texts take on a very significant role in East Asia where, again, they are often appealed to in various groupings.

The notion of tathāgatagarbha (embryo of the tathāgatas), a Mahāyāna innovation, signifies the presence in every sentient being of the innate capacity for buddhahood. Although different traditions interpret it variously, the basic idea is either that all beings are already awakened, but simply do not recognize it, or that all beings possess the capacity, and for some the certainty, of attaining buddhahood, but adventitious defilements (āgantukakleśa) for the moment prevent the realization of this potential. (Radich, "Tathāgatagarbha Sūtras," 261)
Radich, Michael. "Tathāgatagarbha Scriptures." In Vol. 1 of Brill's Encyclopedia of Buddhism: Literature and Languages, edited by Jonathan A. Silk, Oskar von Hinüber, and Vincent Eltschinger 261–73. Leiden: Brill, 2015.

On the topic of this person

Video
Christopher V. Jones at the 2019 Tathāgatagarbha Symposium
Christopher Jones discusses the development of the concept of buddha-nature in the first five hundred years of the Common Era. He postulates that the most likely trajectory of buddha-nature thought in India entailed a reimagining of the expression tathāgatagarbha away from its contentious "ātmavādin" origins.
Jones, Christopher V. "Selfhood, Secrecy, Singularity: Reassessing the Early Life of the Tathāgatagarbha in India." Paper presented at the University of Vienna Symposium, Tathāgatagarbha Across Asia, Vienna, Austria, July 2019. Video, 45:01. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARzGpIOwFYc.
Video
Michael Zimmermann at the 2019 Tathāgatagarbha Symposium
In light of the argument that the theory of Buddha-nature is non-Buddhist, Michael Zimmerman summarizes more recent research on the earliest history of buddha-nature thought in India and discusses possible reasons for why the idea that all sentient beings have buddha-nature made its appearance.
Zimmermann, Michael. "New Research on the Concept of Buddha-Nature in India: The Beginnings." Paper presented at the University of Vienna Symposium, Tathāgatagarbha Across Asia, Vienna, Austria, July 2019. Video, 45:00. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYkBSSAJ-zo.
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