Selected Papers by Natalie Gummer
Narrative Visions and Visual Narratives in Indian Buddhism, 2022
https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/view-chapter/?id=39998
In this paper, I argue that some Mahāyāna... more https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/view-chapter/?id=39998
In this paper, I argue that some Mahāyāna sūtras offer ritual and verbal means for transformative visual encounters with buddhas and their perfect fields. I take as a particularly instructive instance the penultimate chapter of the Vimalakīrtinirdeśa, "The Visual Encounter (darśana) with the Tathāgata Akṣobhya and the Fetching of the Abhirati World," (abhiratilokadhātv-ānayanākṣobhyatathāgatadarśana). The chapter begins with a question posed by the Buddha to Vimalakīrti: when he is "desirous of darśana," of seeing and being seen by the Tathāgata, how does he see him? Vimalakīrti replies with a lengthy apophatic description of the Tathāgata, making it clear that he is, as Vimalakīrti concludes, "inexpressible" (avacanīya). Yet almost immediately thereafter, Vimalakīrti provides an actual opportunity for seeing a Tathāgata: the Tathāgata Akṣobhya, whose entire vast world sphere Abhirati, its glittering features amassed in fairly vivid detail in the sūtra, the bodhisattva gathers up into his hand and brings into this Saha world in order to give darśana to Śākyamuni's assembly. Through this encounter, all present are transformed. While the reality of the Tathāgata is ostensibly "inexpressible," then, he and his world can nonetheless be seen and brought into our own, even when both seem far, far away—and precisely through the verbal and ritual technologies of the sūtra, which make him imaginatively present to audiences and allow darśana of him. These technologies have significant implications for our interpretation of Buddhist “literature,” which often defies any comfortable distinction between textual and visual experience.
History of Religions, 2021
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/716427
Feel free to contact me if you do not hav... more https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/716427
Feel free to contact me if you do not have access to the journal.
Abstract:
In this essay, I analyze the multilayered metaphors of sovereignty and sovereign ritual through which the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka and the Suvarṇa(pra)bhāsa, two Mahāyāna sūtras, represent and enact their own potency. I develop a theory of ritual-poetic speech acts and an interpretative methodology from this analysis. According to these sūtras, the dharma that constitutes them is the verbal essence of sovereignty. It consecrates its listeners through predictions and related speech acts that are activated in the moment of utterance; it proclaims the royal decrees through which buddhas govern reality in their own fields; it embodies all buddhas and makes them present in its eternal ritual- poetic substance. Through the performative strategies mobilized by these metaphors, the sūtras rhetorically position their audiences as subjects of (and subject to) this supreme sovereign power and motivate their engagement in a progressive series of ritual-verbal practices of incorporation by which they are in turn transformed into buddhas with the same sovereign essence. The ritual metaphors and mechanisms through which these transformations are evoked and effected reveal linguistic theories and practices quite different from those that continue to dominate the study of religious texts, and demand that we develop new approaches to the interpretation of these and other texts.
The self-referential strategies of Mahāyāna sūtras are woven with time. As recent scholarship has... more The self-referential strategies of Mahāyāna sūtras are woven with time. As recent scholarship has demonstrated, the conception of time as linear, quantifiable, and homogeneous is strongly privileged both in secular history and in much of contemporary life—indeed, to such an extent that different understandings of time are all too easily viewed as evidence of false consciousness. Without denying the considerable insight to be gained by means of the historicist lens through which most contemporary scholars (myself included) usually approach the interpretation of Buddhist sūtras, I seek in this paper to explore the temporal alternatives found in the sūtras themselves. I focus in particular on the temporal frameworks and strategies employed in the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka and the Suvarṇa[pra]bhāsottama, which frequently intervene in the past, present, and future of their audiences. What might we learn by attending to the tension between historical readings of these texts and the temporal frameworks at play in the sūtras themselves? How might the conceptions and experiences of time offered by the sūtras challenge our assumptions about time and history? Are we able to imagine a form of historiography that does not require the imposition of a single temporal framework? I analyze the conceptions and manipulations of time in these sūtras with the aim of identifying alternative hermeneutical approaches and expanding our temporal understanding.
In this paper, I read the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka (Lotus Sūtra) as a highly sophisticated theory and p... more In this paper, I read the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka (Lotus Sūtra) as a highly sophisticated theory and practice of performative utterance. I bring the sūtra’s own stunning array of performative strategies into conversation with J.L. Austin’s theory of speech acts, as refracted through Shoshana Felman’s psychoanalytic reading of Austin’s work in The Scandal of the Speaking Body. The performative devices (upāya) employed in the sūtra include pervasive self-referentiality, vows, predictions, stories of past lives that shape the present, and direct address to the listener, including explicit instructions on what to do with the Buddha’s speech. They also include ubiquitous descriptions of the surprise, delight, and intense pleasure that the sūtra claims to engender in its listeners—descriptions that are themselves highly performative. Taking a cue from Felman, I argue that the connection between performative efficacy and the erotics of the dharma is located in the Buddha’s body, a body in which (so his teachings tell us) potency is transferred from the Buddha’s sheathed genitals to his mouth—a mouth that continues to perform through the embodiment of speech in the sūtra. The pleasurable performance of this literary body of the Buddha produces “sons born of his mouth.” This simultaneous enactment and theorization of performative utterance has much to offer contemporary theories of the performative, while raising a number of provocative questions about the relationship between literature and the body.
Stepien, Rafal K. (ed.) (2020). Buddhist Literature as Philosophy, Buddhist Philosophy as Literature. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Can literature reveal reality? Is philosophical truth a literary artifice? How does the way we th... more Can literature reveal reality? Is philosophical truth a literary artifice? How does the way we think affect what we can know? Buddhism has been grappling with these questions for centuries, and this book attempts to answer them by exploring the relationship between literature and philosophy across the classical and contemporary Buddhist worlds of India, Tibet, China, Japan, Korea, and North America. Written by leading scholars, the book examines literary texts composed over two millennia, ranging in form from lyric verse, narrative poetry, panegyric, hymn, and koan, to novel, hagiography, (secret) autobiography, autofiction, treatise, and sutra, all in sustained conversation with topics in metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, and the philosophies of mind, language, literature, and religion.
Interdisciplinary and cross-cultural, this book deliberately works across and against the boundaries separating three mainstays of humanistic pursuit—literature, philosophy, and religion—by focusing on the multiple relationships at play between content and form in works drawn from a truly diverse range of philosophical schools, literary genres, religious cultures, and historical eras. Overall, the book calls into question the very ways in which we do philosophy, study literature, and think about religious texts. It shows that Buddhist thought provides sophisticated responses to some of the perennial problems regarding how we find, create, and apply meaning—on the page, in the mind, and throughout our lives.
What are Mahāyāna sūtras, and how should we read them? In this paper, I explore the implications... more What are Mahāyāna sūtras, and how should we read them? In this paper, I explore the implications of our answers to these fundamental questions for contemporary translation practices. The scholarly tradition we have inherited generally interprets these texts as repositories of doctrinal teachings, but the sūtras themselves, with their visions of cosmic transformation, elaborate self-referentiality, and striking performative elements, resist (or at least exceed) this characterization. Indeed, I have recently argued that some Mahāyāna sūtras figure their own performance as an aesthetic, dramatic form of sacrificial ritual, one that offers a verbal substitute for the bodily self-sacrifice of the bodhisattva, as well as the flesh offerings of Brahmanical ritual. How does one read, recite, or hear the ritual body of the Buddha? If we fail to ask such questions, we are bound to impose uncritically and ahistorically our own assumptions about what a text (not to mention a Mahāyāna sūtra) is, and how it ought to be read—and translated.
Given that our conceptions of what a sūtra is and how to interpret it are historically situated, which understandings do we privilege when we translate, and why? Translating a sūtra as a doctrinal work is quite a different undertaking from translating the aesthetically pleasing, ritually recited and resuscitated body of the Buddha, and such different modes of translation further enable and constrain particular avenues of interpretation for subsequent audiences. This paper advocates for a more explicit and deliberate exploration of different interpretations of Mahāyāna sūtras and the different modes of translation that they warrant.
Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 2014
Early Buddhist thought and practice were shaped in several important respects by the rejection of... more Early Buddhist thought and practice were shaped in several important respects by the rejection of the sacrificial rituals that were so central to Brahmanical tradition. For instance, as scholars have recognized, the bodhisattva path inverts the logic of substitution that informs animal sacrifice: the bodhisattva perfects himself not through sacrificing another in his place, but by sacrificing himself for the sake of others. This article argues that some Mahāyāna sūtras (specifically, the Suvarṇa-(pra)bhāsottama, the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka, and the Vimalakīrtinirdeśa) invert this inversion by portraying themselves as aesthetic, dramatic forms of sacrifice, rituals of recitation that obviate the violence not only of animal sacrifice, but also of the bodhisattva's self-sacrifice. These sūtras substitute themselves for both the fire and the food of sacrificial ritual, offering audiences a performative technology for transformation and a bloodless path to buddhahood.
Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 2012
The self-referential discourse that characterizes the sub-genre of to which the Sūtra of Utmost G... more The self-referential discourse that characterizes the sub-genre of to which the Sūtra of Utmost Golden Radiance (Suvarṇa(pra)bhāsottama Sūtra) belongs has led scholars to posit a "cult of the book" focused on the written sūtra as potent object. While Buddhists in various times and places have certainly revered the material text, the central role many such sūtras accord to the dharmabhāṇaka, the Buddhist preacher, demands that greater attention be paid to the role of oral performance in the actualization of the sūtra's self-proclaimed transformative potential. Through an examination of both what the sūtra has to say about its preacher, and how the preacher’s performance changes the meaning of the text, this article argues for the centrality of oral performance and aural reception in the sūtra's normative vision, and for the importance of deriving an interpretive methodology from that normative vision
Books by Natalie Gummer
Gummer, Natalie, editor. 2021. The Language of the Sūtras: Essays in Honor of Luis Gómez (Berkeley, CA: Mangalam Press)
Based on a conference held at Mangalam Research Center for Buddhist Languages, this collection of... more Based on a conference held at Mangalam Research Center for Buddhist Languages, this collection of essays explores the narrative strategies and uses of language employed by Buddhist sūtras to create imaginal worlds and invite the reader or listener to enter. Not content to read Buddhist texts solely for their doctrinal meaning, the authors of these papers focus on the ways in which the sūtras draw the audience into their worlds. The act of reading becomes a central focus for examining the way sūtras structure symbolic and ritual worlds. The essays in the book are presented in honor of the late Luis Gómez, who inspired a generation of young scholars to attend to the practice of reading Buddhist texts creatively and with appreciation.
Defining Buddhism(s): A Reader (co-editor, with Karen Derris)
Recorded Talks by Natalie Gummer
The Dharmabhāṇaka’s Body and the Ontologization of Authority (presentation at the Oxford Treasure Seminar, Third Series, February 21, 2022)
In this presentation, Natalie Gummer looks at the “Chapter on the Benefits to the Performer of th... more In this presentation, Natalie Gummer looks at the “Chapter on the Benefits to the Performer of the Dharma” (dharmabhāṇakānuśaṃsāparivartaḥ) in the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka (Lotus Sūtra), in which the Buddha proclaims the many remarkable transformations that will take place in the six sense faculties of the performer of the dharma (dharmabhāṇaka). Her analysis of this chapter clarifies the sūtra’s normative vision both for the self-referential performance of the dharmabhāṇaka and for the bodily transformations that he is said to undergo as a consequence of his performance. In the process, the presentation sheds light on the temporal aspects of self-referentiality as elements in the embodied performance of authority and demonstrates some of the ritual and performative precedents for the creation of new forms of buddhavacana.
Presentation on "Sūtra Time" for the Mangalam Research Center's "Spotlight" series, December 2, 2021
Why do stories of past lives and visions of the future play such a central role in many Mahāyāna ... more Why do stories of past lives and visions of the future play such a central role in many Mahāyāna sūtras? In this presentation, I explore how attending to the narrative and performative orchestration of time in the sūtras can enhance our understanding of their promises to transform the present lives of their listeners, readers, and reciters. This exploration also offers fresh perspectives on the ways in which contemporary approaches to narrating the past and the future may offer comparable, if also quite different, resources for altering the present.
Welcome to the Real World... (Beloit Convocation Speech, Fall 2013)
Book Reviews by Natalie Gummer
Journal of the American Academy of Religion 79, no.3 (2011): 759-762
Journal of the American Academy of Religion 76, no. 1 (2008): 192-195
Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 2008
The Journal of Global Buddhism, 2005
The Life of Buddhism, edited by Frank E. Reynolds and Jason A. Carbine
International Journal of Hindu Studies vol. 9, nos. 1-3 (2005): 190-191. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20106938
Papers on Pedagogy and Curriculum by Natalie Gummer
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Selected Papers by Natalie Gummer
In this paper, I argue that some Mahāyāna sūtras offer ritual and verbal means for transformative visual encounters with buddhas and their perfect fields. I take as a particularly instructive instance the penultimate chapter of the Vimalakīrtinirdeśa, "The Visual Encounter (darśana) with the Tathāgata Akṣobhya and the Fetching of the Abhirati World," (abhiratilokadhātv-ānayanākṣobhyatathāgatadarśana). The chapter begins with a question posed by the Buddha to Vimalakīrti: when he is "desirous of darśana," of seeing and being seen by the Tathāgata, how does he see him? Vimalakīrti replies with a lengthy apophatic description of the Tathāgata, making it clear that he is, as Vimalakīrti concludes, "inexpressible" (avacanīya). Yet almost immediately thereafter, Vimalakīrti provides an actual opportunity for seeing a Tathāgata: the Tathāgata Akṣobhya, whose entire vast world sphere Abhirati, its glittering features amassed in fairly vivid detail in the sūtra, the bodhisattva gathers up into his hand and brings into this Saha world in order to give darśana to Śākyamuni's assembly. Through this encounter, all present are transformed. While the reality of the Tathāgata is ostensibly "inexpressible," then, he and his world can nonetheless be seen and brought into our own, even when both seem far, far away—and precisely through the verbal and ritual technologies of the sūtra, which make him imaginatively present to audiences and allow darśana of him. These technologies have significant implications for our interpretation of Buddhist “literature,” which often defies any comfortable distinction between textual and visual experience.
Feel free to contact me if you do not have access to the journal.
Abstract:
In this essay, I analyze the multilayered metaphors of sovereignty and sovereign ritual through which the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka and the Suvarṇa(pra)bhāsa, two Mahāyāna sūtras, represent and enact their own potency. I develop a theory of ritual-poetic speech acts and an interpretative methodology from this analysis. According to these sūtras, the dharma that constitutes them is the verbal essence of sovereignty. It consecrates its listeners through predictions and related speech acts that are activated in the moment of utterance; it proclaims the royal decrees through which buddhas govern reality in their own fields; it embodies all buddhas and makes them present in its eternal ritual- poetic substance. Through the performative strategies mobilized by these metaphors, the sūtras rhetorically position their audiences as subjects of (and subject to) this supreme sovereign power and motivate their engagement in a progressive series of ritual-verbal practices of incorporation by which they are in turn transformed into buddhas with the same sovereign essence. The ritual metaphors and mechanisms through which these transformations are evoked and effected reveal linguistic theories and practices quite different from those that continue to dominate the study of religious texts, and demand that we develop new approaches to the interpretation of these and other texts.
Interdisciplinary and cross-cultural, this book deliberately works across and against the boundaries separating three mainstays of humanistic pursuit—literature, philosophy, and religion—by focusing on the multiple relationships at play between content and form in works drawn from a truly diverse range of philosophical schools, literary genres, religious cultures, and historical eras. Overall, the book calls into question the very ways in which we do philosophy, study literature, and think about religious texts. It shows that Buddhist thought provides sophisticated responses to some of the perennial problems regarding how we find, create, and apply meaning—on the page, in the mind, and throughout our lives.
Given that our conceptions of what a sūtra is and how to interpret it are historically situated, which understandings do we privilege when we translate, and why? Translating a sūtra as a doctrinal work is quite a different undertaking from translating the aesthetically pleasing, ritually recited and resuscitated body of the Buddha, and such different modes of translation further enable and constrain particular avenues of interpretation for subsequent audiences. This paper advocates for a more explicit and deliberate exploration of different interpretations of Mahāyāna sūtras and the different modes of translation that they warrant.
Books by Natalie Gummer
Recorded Talks by Natalie Gummer
Book Reviews by Natalie Gummer
Papers on Pedagogy and Curriculum by Natalie Gummer