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Stephan Kigensan Licha (1979-)

Kigensan LICHA
Thesis Title: Esoteric traditions in late medieval Japanese Sôtô Zen Buddhism (2010-2011)
https://www.soas.ac.uk/jrc/awards-and-grants/kayoko-tsuda-bursary-recipients.html

Abstract:  The research focuses on the secret transmissions handed down in late medieval and early modern Japanese Soto Zen Buddhism. These traditions are based on two closely related genre of texts known as the kirigami and monsan. Kirigami are brief records of oral transmission, often involving diagrams and illustrations of various kinds. They mostly deal with matters of ritual and cosmology. Monsan are collection of koan arranged into standardized hierarchies. Both genre are based on an innovative and distinctive use of koan. This use was based on the need of Japanese Zen monks to come to terms with increasingly incomprehensible Chinese koan material. Koan, their use and acquisition, become increasingly ritualized in Japan. Not only were koan learned in ritualized, performative exchanges between master and disciple, but their use grew to encompass encoding material objects with hidden meanings and they even were employed directly as ritual utterances endowed with magical force.  The research focuses on the conceptual, ontological and cosmological structures that allowed these developments to occur.  In the course of this, it will be argued that any definition of the “esoteric” has to pay attention to the subjectivity of the practitioner generated through its practices.

The most in-depth study on kirigami in English is Kigensan Licha's dissertation (Kigensan Stephan Licha, “The Imperfectible Body: Esoteric Transmission in Medieval Sōtō Zen Buddhism,” PhD diss., University of London, 2011). Licha has also studied concepts of embryology explained in kirigami (Kigensan Licha, “Embryology in Early Modern Sōtō Zen Buddhism,” in Anna Andreeva and Dominic Steavu, ed., Transforming the Void: Embryological Discourse and Reproductive Imagery in East Asian Religions [Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2016], 480–521).

https://www.zo.uni-heidelberg.de/japanologie/institut/mitarbeiter/licha.html
https://ci.nii.ac.jp/author?q=LICHA+Stephan

 

PDF: Hara Tanzan and the Japanese Buddhist Discovery of “Experience”
by Stephan Kigensan Licha
Journal of Religion in Japan, 2020, pp. 1-30

 

PDF: Dharma Transmission Rituals in Sōtō Zen Buddhism
by Stephan Kigensan Licha
in: Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies=JIABS, vol. 39. 2016, pp. 171-205.
https://poj.peeters-leuven.be/content.php?url=article&id=3200525&journal_code=JIABS
http://buddhism.lib.ntu.edu.tw/DLMBS/en/search/search_detail.jsp?seq=574650

This paper investigates the formation and transformation of Sōtō Zen Dharma transmission rituals (denbō or shihō) from the point of view of Eric Hobsbawm’s notion of 'invented traditions'. It argues that the reformation of transmission rituals was an important tool for re-inventing Sōtō Zen whenever the tradition faced an institutional or ideological crisis. Focusing on the transformation of transmission in the Tokugawa period (1603-1868), the paper makes three points. Firstly, transmission rituals in Sōtō Zen derived from precept initiations. Secondly, Dharma transmission in Tokugawa Sōtō Zen relied on the systematic distinction and complementary usage of precept and Dharma lineages, which developed in response to medieval practices. Finally, the context in which to understand the formation of Sōtō Zen transmission rituals are the oral initiation practices (kuden hōmon) of the Tendai tradition. In order to arrive at these conclusions, the paper first investigates the transmission ritual promoted by the Tokugawa period reformer Manzan Dōhaku (1635-1715). It shows that this ritual relies on a systematization of the separate but complementary transmission of Dharma and precept lineages. It then investigates the origins of this usage, concluding that while Dōgen (1200-1253) did position Dharma transmission in the context of precept initiations, the systematic distinction of Dharma and precept transmission stems from a later period. Finally, the paper clarifies the influence Tendai initiatory practices exerted on the development of Sōtō transmission rituals. The paper concludes that the Tokugawa period transformation of Dharma transmission ritual needs to be understood firstly as a form of crisis management and secondly in the context of a struggle among oral initiation lineages for orthodoxy.

Table of contents

1. Introduction 171
2. Early Modern Soto Zen Dharma Transmission Rituals 173
3. Dharma Transmission in Early Soto Zen 181
3.1 Dogen and Dharma transmission 181
3.2 Dharma and Precept Transmission in Gikai and Keizan 185
4. The Sources of Soto Dharma Trnsmission Rituals 188
4.1 The Tashito zen debu no gishiki zu 189
4.2 the Gishiki zu and Tengai oral transmissions 193
4.3 Tendai Precept Texts in Soto Zen 197
5. Conclusions 198
Bibliography 201
Abbreviations 201
Primary Sources 201
Secondary Sources 202
ABSTRACT 205


Embryology in Early Modern Sōtō Zen Buddhism
Author: Kigensan Licha
in: Transforming the Void: Embryological Discourse and Reproductive Imagery in East Asian Religions
Series: Brill, Sir Henry Wellcome Asian Series, Volume: 16. Chapter 11. Pages: 479–521
https://brill.com/view/book/edcoll/9789004306523/B9789004306523_013.xml?crawler=true

 

曹洞宗における切紙伝授の起源について : 五位説における『銭』の比喩を中心として
On the Origin of Kirigami in the Sōtō School : With Special Consideration of the Coin Metaphor in Five Positions Thought [in Japanese]
インド哲学仏教学研究 (23), 85-97, 2015-03

This paper offers a new interpretation of the origin of kirigami in the Sōtō school. The paper proposes that kirigami were the products of a process of esoterization in the context of intra- and intersectarian strife. The paper suggests that this process can be traced to speculation on the Yijing. The paper first considers the oldest existent kirigami document, the Ichimonzen no kirigami 一文銭之切紙. This text offers an interpretation of the symbolic meaning of a Chinese coin in terms of both the Yijing and the Five Positions (goi 五位). The same connection between the Yijing, the Five Positions and coins is apparent in the works of Ketsudō Nōshō 傑堂能勝 (1355–1427) and his disciple Nan'ei Kenshū 南英謙宗 (1387–1460). Nōshō used the coin in order to explain the transformations of the tri- and hexagrams associated with the Five Positions. However, Nōshō's work differs from the Ichimonzen no kirigami in that the metaphor of the coin is nowhere associated with secrecy and transmission. It was in Kenshū's later work that there appeared an association between the teaching of the Five Positions and a "secret transmission" (miden 密伝). Initially, Kenshū used this notion to criticize Rinzai masters' interpretations of the Five Positions but he eventually came to wield it as a weapon against rival factions of the Sōtō school. This development occured in the context increasing strive between Sōtō lineages in the 15th century. Kenshū never reveals the nature of this secret transmission. Yet a close reading of the Jūri jōhen ketsu 重離畳変訣 suggests that it is closely related to the teachings on coins inherited from Nōshō. Consequently, the metaphor of the coin appears to have undergone a process of esoterization in Kenshū. Tthis process coincides with the transmission of the Ichimonzen no kirigami. As both Nōshō and Kenshū as well as the author of the kirigami belonged to the Gasan 峨山 faction, the paper concludes that it was here that secret transmissions first formed and that one part came to be formalized as kirigami documents.