Allan Ding talks about why the Chan monk Moheyan lost the 8th-century “Samyé Debate” over the future of Tibetan Buddhism, how medieval Chinese Buddhists shifted from “antiritualism” to accepting the “zhāi” feast, and what forms of religious imagination scholars can adopt from liturgical practices.

Yi (Allan) Ding received his bachelor's degree from Fudan University (2008) and his PhD in Religious Studies from Stanford University (2020). As a scholar of Chinese and Tibetan Buddhism, he has published several articles that deal with Buddhist materials from Dunhuang and Sino-Tibetan Buddhism, including “‘Translating’ Wutai Shan into Ri bo rtse lnga (‘Five-peak Mountain’): The Inception of a Sino-Tibetan Site in the Mongol-Yuan Era (1206–1368)” (2018), “The Transformation of Poṣadha/Zhai in Early Medieval China (2nd–6th Centuries CE)” (2019), and “By the Power of the Perfection of Wisdom: The ‘Sūtra-Rotation’ Liturgy of the Mahāprajñāpāramitā in Dunhuang” (2019). He is currently working on a book project that focuses on the "zhāi" feast and relevant liturgical scripts from the eighth to the tenth century. In connection to his interest in consumption rituals, he is also working on early Sanskrit and Tibetan materials concerning the practice of the Tantric feast (gaṇacakra).​​

Interview by Miles Osgood.

[Prologue]

Welcome to “The Ho Center for Buddhist Studies at Stanford” podcast. Come join us by the tree.

[music - Ani Choying Drolma, guitar]

In 8th-century China, Chan Buddhism had been on the rise for some two hundred years, but its core ideas and its sphere of influence were still in flux.

What most distinguished the Chan tradition from other Buddhist beliefs was its apparent rejection of scholasticism and study in favor of embodied practice and the possibility of sudden enlightenment. And yet Chan monks also produced, paradoxically, Chinese Buddhism’s largest corpus of philosophical literature.

The beliefs and the texts of this new school were put to the test from 792 to 794, at the Samyé debate, when the Chan monk Moheyan challenged Indian traditions to decide the future of Tibetan Buddhism. Defending the “suddenist” Chan principle of immediate, internal enlightenment, Moheyan wrote his case against the “gradualist” Indian monk Kamalaśīla. The stakes were not just philosophical; they were geopolitical.

ALLAN DING: The larger issue is that, at that point, the Tibetans had established a large empire. And then they started to look to the east, and then look to the west, to try to figure out how they’re going to incorporate Buddhism as part of state-sponsored religion. Then the question is: “Which form of Buddhism? Can we actually utilize Chinese Buddhism as the foundation, or should we actually turn to Indian Buddhism and the search for the lamas, the experts, and the texts from there?”

At home, Chan Buddhists also had to reckon with competing cultural traditions within China: particularly around the observance of liturgical rituals. Here, again, Moheyan played a major combative role, arguing that such rituals were only for those “of dull and inferior faculties,” since true Buddhist practice was internal. In essence, rituals exemplified precisely the “gradualist” approach toward Buddhist practice that Moheyan had fought in the Samyé Debate.

Curiously, though, as Chan became more and more established in China, its antipathy toward ritual was edited out of earlier scriptures, revised, in the Song Dynasty, to be more ambivalent or even affirmative. Increasingly, by the 11th century, ritual practices experienced a resurgence in China around gatherings like the zhāi feast, aligning the goals of laypeople and monastics or monastics and ministers.

ALLAN DING: From a Chinese perspective, this goes all the way back to Confucius. So ritual always includes an internal dimension. It’s about sincerity. It’s about how you imagine you’re interacting with deities or ancestors. So in that sense the Chan emphasis on the internal elements of ritual is actually part of the cultural norm.

[music - Ani Choying Drolma, guitar and flute]

We’re recording from the Ho Center for Buddhist Studies at Stanford.

I’m your host, Miles Osgood. My guest today is Allan Ding, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at DePaul University in Chicago. Allan received his bachelor’s degree from Fudan University in Shanghai, his master’s from Harvard University, and a PhD here at Stanford with his twenty twenty dissertation, “Divine Transactions: The Transformation of Buddhist Public Liturgies at Dunhuang (8th-10th Centuries).”

Since moving from Stanford to DePaul, Allan has published articles in Buddhist Studies Review, the Journal of the American Oriental Society, Tang Studies, the BuddhistRoad Paper, and History of Religions, continuing his work on liturgical practices and the links they reveal between Chinese Buddhism and the traditions in India and Tibet.

It’s those liturgical practices, and specifically the zhāi feast in Tang Dynasty China, that will be the subject of his first book, and it’s the subject that brought him to campus, for the Ho Center’s “Workshop on Food in Chinese Religion.”

As you’ll hear at the end of our conversation, food turns out to be a fruitful topic for all kinds of religious ideas, both material and spiritual: for the rituals of the meal, the social relationships of the table, the cultivation of aesthetic taste, and the imaginative transformation of physical goods into metaphysical ones.

[music - Ani Choying Drolma, singing]

So let’s not delay our own gathering any longer: it’s time to head into the library.

[bell chime]

MILES OSGOOD: My guest today is Allan Ding, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies

at DePaul University in Chicago. Allan received his bachelor's degree from Fudan University in Shanghai,his master's from Harvard University, and a PhD here at Stanford with his twenty twenty dissertation, "Divine Transactions: The Transformation of Buddhist Public Liturgies at Dunhuang (8th–10th centuries)." Since moving from Stanford to DePaul, Allan has published articles in "Buddhist Studies Review," the "Journal of the American Oriental Society," "Tang Studies," the "BuddhistRoad Paper," and "History of Religions," continuing his work on liturgical practices and the links they reveal between Chinese Buddhism and the traditions of India and Tibet. It's those topics and the "zhāi" feast that will be the subject of his first book. And all of that brings him to campus for this weekend's "Workshop on Food in Chinese Religion." Thanks so much for being with us here today, Allan, and welcome back to Stanford.

ALLAN DING: Thank you.

MILES OSGOOD: It's great to have you. So, as I was going through your research, one thing that really struck me is, while you have this precise area of study that is going to be your emphasis in the book and something that you keep coming back to— namely Tang Dynasty China and Chan Buddhism in the eighth to 10th centuries—there is this consistent interest throughout all your work, going back to your dissertation it seems, in what are the Indian and Tibetan sources of the ritual practices, liturgical practices of that period, of that region. And so I guess what I wanted to ask you, first of all —as a way of introducing yourself and talking about the course of your research—is, from going from Fudan to Harvard to Stanford to DePaul and then last year being at the Ghent Centre for Buddhist Studies, how do you keep a balance between these two regional interests? How have you found your footing in these different areas? Could you tell us a little bit about how you've kept these different tracks of your research going together?

ALLAN DING: Well, thank you for your observation. That kind of brings back a lot of memories stretching all the way back to almost 15 years ago. But when I was an undergraduate student, I started—I was interested in actually in Mongolian studies and I realized that the Mongolians—the Mongols— had a lot of connections with the Tibetan lamas, and that they were influenced by Tibetan cultures. Then I have to get to know Tibetan Buddhism at least a little bit. Then I realized that there's a whole world of Sanskrit literature behind Tibetan Buddhism. And at the time we had a quite good Sanskrit teacher— Sanskritist—working at Fudan University. So then that got me started. And then so I bring all the same kind of interests from Fudan to Harvard and spent two years at Harvard. Then I moved to Stanford, where I can find a lot of resources supporting what I'm interested in, and I was allowed to do whatever I'm planning to pursue. And eventually I think what's actually interesting to me is that both ritual and Zen Buddhism are in cross-tradition and international phenomena. So if you—from my perspective— if I work on either of them or both of them, I get to use Sanskrit material, I get to use the Tibetan material, which would be kind of at least interesting for me.

MILES OSGOOD: Yeah, that makes sense. So that's great that you go from Mongolia to Tibet, and then from Tibet back to Sanskrit. Does Mongolia continue to show up at all in your research, or is there—can you draw us the link between Mongolia and China, I guess?

ALLAN DING: So, for example, the formation of a Tibetan Buddhist cannon actually was under the influence of the compilation of a catalog that took place during the Mongolian era. So there's still something I want to go back and to revisit even after so many years.

MILES OSGOOD: So there will be a chance to go back full circle there. So I mean, I think one thing we will end up talking about is the ways in which there are real harmonies and points of overlap between these traditions. But I was taking note— you know, just to stir the pot a little bit— I was taking note in a couple of your recent articles that you seem to interested in at least one point of contention, or one historical point where at least scholars have emphasized the contention, which is the "Samyé Debate." So could you tell us—our listeners— a little bit about how that debate's been covered in the past? You know, whether it's even a debate in the first place? And then maybe we can work our way to thinking about more complex and comprehensive ways of thinking about it.

ALLAN DING: Good. Good. So scholars have been thinking this is probably one of the most important— one of the several most important debates in the history of Buddhism. However, I think in the last two or three decades, we realized that there was probably no in-person debate. So, whatever happened would probably be something similar to a written exchange between the two parties. So the larger issue is that at that point the Tibetans had established a large empire and then they started to look to the east and then look to the west to trying to figure out how are we going to incorporate Buddhism into the—as part of a state-sponsored religion. And then the question is, "Which form of Buddhism?" "Can we actually utilize Chinese Buddhism as the foundation, "or should we actually turn to Indian Buddhism and search for the lamas, the experts, and the texts from there?" So the "Samyé Debate" kind of reflects—it's an inflection point. And from there the Tibetans decided it's actually easier for us to actually lean towards the Indian Buddhism, which I think is actually a wise choice. But at some point they have to figure out what's the difference between Chinese Buddhism and Indian Buddhism.

MILES OSGOOD: Yeah. So why was that a wise choice potentially to lean towards Indian Buddhism, politically or philosophically?

ALLAN DING: So part of it has something to do with geopolitics, right? Because there is an empire in China— or there was a tradition of empire-building in China—whereas India—the Indian cultural area— does not necessarily tend to produce large, overstretching empires. But the most important part is that it is very difficult to absorb Chinese Buddhism and build upon it if you're not using Chinese characters. So only—so if we think about the Japanese Buddhism, Korean Buddhism, Vietnam(ese) Buddhism: these are part of the so-called "Sinitic Cultural Circle" and they use—so they can just simply take over the canon and start to build on the the existing Chinese Buddhist canon.

MILES OSGOOD: Yeah.

ALLAN DING: But the Tibetans have their own writing system, and the language is quite different from Chinese. So it's a little bit harder I think, and they have—and at the same time they have a lot of access to Indian masters. And they can actually bring in very knowledgeable Indian masters, and they were very willing to work with the Tibetans.

MILES OSGOOD: Yeah, that's fascinating. So it kind of comes down ultimately to shared culture and linguistic practicalities, perhaps more than philosophical distinctions. Is that right?

ALLAN DING: Exactly.

MILES OSGOOD: So, because, as I was learning about the "Samyé Debate" and reading your research, I was sort of taken with this philosophical distinction, right, that it's often summarized as this "gradualist" versus "suddenist" attitude towards the pace at which enlightenment happens. And it feels as though: is that a question that empires would be interested in? Is that a political question? And are you saying that, in fact, that's right that in that question is kind of beside the point for the decision that ultimately ends up being made, or it does it play a factor somehow?

ALLAN DING: So, my observation—and I try to work it out in my papers— is that once the Chinese— the representative of Chinese Buddhism, which would be just one figure called Moheyan— once he started to debate or have a some kind of exchange with the Indian side or the Indo-Tibetan sides, actually, it appears to me at least quite clear that they both are part of Buddhism.

MILES OSGOOD: Mm-hmm.

ALLAN DING: And they have a lot of common ground with each other. And both parties liked one of the most important sūtra: for both parties was the "Laṅkāvatāra." And the "Laṅkāvatāra" had a syncretic position, and therefore they all have a sympathetic to syncretic position, which means they can—they want to input— they want to incorporate most parts of Buddhism and do not really want to exclude any existing important component of Buddhism. So in that sense, they can actually talk with each other: that actually says something about—they belong to the same tradition in the—under a larger umbrella term. So the difference for— so this is also a historical moment for Chinese Buddhism because this is on the cusp of the rise of Zen Buddhism, or Chan Buddhism in China. So because of the existing— existence of the common ground—so both parties actually agree that nonconceptuality is important or a state of mind that can be categorized as nonconceptuality is important and is the one of the most important goals of meditation. So they agree about that. What they don't agree with each other is: "How are we going to arrive at nonconceptuality?" So this is where—so the Chan position is that if we are talking about nonconceptuality, then we need to get rid of all the concepts. Therefore, doctrine doesn't matter. You can get rid of all the doctrines, sūtras, or theories. But for the Indian position, that's just the wrong approach, because without the doctrine, and without the proper foundation, you'll never get the correct door into nonconceptuality to begin with.

MILES OSGOOD: Mm. Mm-hmm.

ALLAN DING: So, therefore, for them still the traditional training and the doctrinal foundation is important.vYou have to build an elaborate foundation before you can try to meditate—start to meditate—and enter—try to enter the state of nonconceptuality.

MILES OSGOOD: Yeah.

ALLAN DING: So they agree about almost a large portion of what Buddhism was. They only have a tiny bit difference I think.

MILES OSGOOD: Yeah, in terms of process. Okay, great. Well so that makes me just want to ask a little bit again about sort of differences and similarities with regard to liturgical practices between these two traditions because this is something you've worked on for quite a while, and I gather it's going to influence the book that's coming out next year. So, specifically, one of the things that you're really interested in is kind of merit-making rituals and feast rituals and the "zhāi" feast in China. But before we get there, could we talk a little bit about what would have been the analogues in India and Tibet and like how different are they, or how influential are they? If we, as it were, either turn back the clock or just move west, what kinds of similar rituals do we see in those regions?

ALLAN DING: So I think— so one of my premises is that the so-called "zhāi" rituals—so there are several different aspects to it, and you can actually claim their different rituals can be categorized as "zhāi." But my claim is that—or my thesis is—everything can actually go back to India.

MILES OSGOOD: Mm-hmm.

ALLAN DING: So you can find similar elements in Indian Buddhism and similar dynamics and similar principles in Indian Buddhism. And that approach enables me to bring in Pali materials and Tibetan materials.

MILES OSGOOD: So what are some of those basic shared principles?

ALLAN DING: So one of the most— and this is not even a Buddhist principle, it's just an Indian custom— as a householder you want to cater to, or you want to hold a feast that includes the religious experts. It could be Brahmans. It could be all kinds of the so-called "wanderers." And the Buddhist tradition produced one kind of wanderer. And that dynamic was imported into China, so the lay people would constantly hold feasts and invite Buddhist monks and nuns to to participate.

MILES OSGOOD: Yeah. So is this for the spiritual benefit largely of the lay people, or is the merit-making that's happening shared between the clergy and lay people, in terms of who's benefiting spiritually from this gathering?

ALLAN DING: Yes. So for one—of course the donors, the so-called "dānapati," they receive the meritorious rewards, or karmic rewards, but also it's a chance to feed everyone. So you can't be mad at the food. (both laugh)

MILES OSGOOD: So different kinds of benefits: spiritual and material benefits. A sort of exchange, perhaps, of those of those two categories. That makes sense. So one of the pieces that you wrote about in twenty twenty-three talks about the sort of erosion or alteration of Chan attitudes towards these kinds of rituals, specifically merit-making rituals. You mentioned that there's kind of an initial resistance and that over time maybe we approach more— approach something more like ambivalence or acceptance. What accounts for the resistance initially among Chan Buddhists to maybe this kind of liturgical practice or this kind of lay clerical meeting?

ALLAN DING: Yes. So coming back to the point earlier I was trying to make that if you think nonconceptuality is important, then you should lend less credence to any kind of concepts, which would include merit feasts. They are just man-made—to a certain degree, constructed—concepts. So they—so on a rhetorical level, they would argue, ultimately, merit is not that important. Ultimately, ritual is just a constructed human interaction—forms of human interaction. However, of course, the interesting part for me at least is if you look into what they were actually doing on a daily basis, it's all all about rituals. And they also participate in all kinds of feasts. They actually invent different forms of—invented different forms of feasts. So it's not that they're rejecting ritual on the practical level. It's just rhetorically they think they have ways to transcend functioning as mere ritual masters.

MILES OSGOOD: So rituals are already happening, and they're a practical part of clerical life, and yet they don't— they initially don't need to be part of a kind of philosophical system, of approaching nonconceptuality or meditation practices. That could be more personal or internal and not rely on this kind of social interdependence?

ALLAN DING: And that's actually a good observation because from a Chinese perspective, this goes all the way back to Confucius. So ritual always includes an internal dimension. It's about sincerity. It's about how you imagine you're interacting with the deities or ancestors. So, in that sense, the Chan emphasis on the internal elements of ritual is actually part of the cultural norm.

MILES OSGOOD: Ah, I see. So there's a way in which it kind of aligns with other Chinese practices— other Chinese religious practices. So that—yeah that leads me to ask you a little bit about sort of what is the diversity of these practices in Tang China? You talk about there not being necessarily just kind of one programmatic system of the "zhāi" feast but there—but kind of tracking through the literature different ways this might have manifested itself. How varied are these events?

ALLAN DING: So in my book, half of it talks about observances, half of it talks about feasts. So it just happened. It's a coincidence that they use the same word to translate both feast and observances. There's no really philosophical reason for doing that. This is a linguistic choice they made. Then if you combine both observances, which include actually half-day fast and a feast, then almost you can use this word as a synonym for liturgy, or just a ritual, because it already includes so many things.

MILES OSGOOD: Yeah, that's wild. So asking about the range of what these practices could look like, from fast to feast, you might—almost diametrical opposites. And then I suppose I want to know: you're looking at a very particular period where these things are happening. Does the term start to mean something else going forward? Does it just die out of practice? Are there other kinds of practices that take over? Why would we stop looking at the 10th century, or what should we look at next if we kind of keep going in history?

ALLAN DING: Yes, so the importance of the traditional style of feasts started to decline during the 10th century. They're still practiced even nowadays. The observances and the feasts, they are still practiced but in a more elaborated form. Of course the details have evolved. So the 10th century is a kind of a— and the 10th century witnessed the rise of Chan Buddhism, which has started to build its own ritual repertoire. And then—so the same dynamic can be observed from or reemerge in different forms. So from—in terms of continuity, the 10th century might be a good good place to stop.

MILES OSGOOD: Mm-hmm. Okay. Makes sense. But then you do mention that there's versions of this re-elaborated today. Have you witnessed anything like this or gotten accounts of what those might look like or where would one—where would one look if one wanted to see the legacy of this eighth to 10th-century practice in twenty twenty-five?

ALLAN DING: So if you— so when I visit monasteries, I tend to linger in the vegetarian restaurants because that's where you can see the donors still bring monastics to the restaurant to buy them food as a form of offering. So the same dynamic goes way all the way back to the beginning of Buddhism.

MILES OSGOOD: Yeah. So this very basic cooperation and charity and support has some kind of bearing on that history?

ALLAN DING: (nodding) Mm-hmm.

MILES OSGOOD: Yeah. Well so you mentioned Confucius in passing, and so that—this leads me to ask about the workshop that we just had here this weekend, the "Workshop on Food and Chinese Religion." We had such a wide variety of scholars who are working on very different things from you: topics like contemporary urban Chinese cuisine, food safety systems in Guangdong and Yunnan, the politics of meat-eating and vegetarianism, even sort of a comparativist perspective on food offerings in the Afro-Caribbean diaspora. What unites you all around food? What makes food a potentially interesting way of thinking about religion and Chinese religion in particular?

ALLAN DING: Good, good. So I think this is a—we all need to eat. (Miles laughs) That's one dimension of it. Even the participants of the workshop had to eat. And then if you think about eating, of course, it's a—it provides a venue for cultural exchange and prevents—provides a venue for insisting cultural paradigm. Like you have— you would want to exclude certain kinds of food or consume certain kinds of food in the correct manner. So it's all coded in a certain way. Not only food is—or food-related practices are coded, but also they always involve imagination. Especially in a religious setting, you would have to imagine certain spirits or certain kinds of existence partake in the feast or the food together with the rest of the visible, invisible audience members. And also you would imagine the food is not just food. Imagine it's—it has some kind of a sacred quality. It cures your disease, or it quenches your spiritual thirst, or in a certain way, it gives you a karmic connection with other people. So food always includes the dimension of imagination. So that's—and religion is... also part of religion is imagination.

MILES OSGOOD: Yeah.

ALLAN DING: So food participates— everyone participates in religious imagination one way or another when we consume food in a religious setting. And the other component, or another side of the story, is that food always reflects a social structure and a social relationship. For example, if I'm a donor, and I bring food to the monks, to the monastics—so I'm actually from— I can perform the ritual from a higher position because I'm the one who has the economic means to actually bring in nutritious food. But on the spiritual level, I'm the disciple of the masters. I need to be grate(ful). I need to actually act as an inferior in this relationship. So there's a lot of dynamics, and it's never... And one thing I realized is that the dynamics change over time and can be recaptured in a different set of symbols or coded system. So that's actually interesting to talk about with specialists in other fields, and they have their own insight into the system or the dynamics.

MILES OSGOOD: Is there something that became particularly clear to you about your area? Looking at these universal facts about food and their relationship not just to kind of material and social hierarchy, but as you say, to spirituality, to imagination. I think that's really a wonderful way of thinking about food, not just as a kind of cultural and and essential material reality, but of having all these symbolic qualities to it as well. So is there something that became a light bulb moment for you about Chan Buddhism in the last couple days where you sort of realized, "Oh, this is one of our symbols "that might have disappeared if not for food kind of rendering continuous"? Or, you know, "This is a way in which food is "more than just material and social relations, but is about our obligations to one another, our potential to imagine." What's going in your— what's going through your mind now?

ALLAN DING: So one thing I want to figure out is that: how is it possible food that generates— or people would associate certain kinds of food with aesthetics. So there must be some very elaborate social processes that enabled the people to use food as a way of expressing their preferences, their hierarchy— different kinds of hierarchy. Eventually we agree this certain kind of food would be associated, for example, with Zen aesthetics, however modern it is.

MILES OSGOOD: Yeah.

ALLAN DING: So that's something I'm still thinking about.

MILES OSGOOD: So quite—yeah, quite literally linking food to taste, in the sense of cultural taste and aesthetic taste. Is there a particular food item or food ritual that in the Chinese context, in the Chan context, comes to mind in terms of, "Oh, this is particular to this region "or is particular to this culture where we can see an aesthetic preference"?

ALLAN DING: So part—for example, tea is always important in the Chinese tradition, and that's how China actually expresses itself. It brings the tea culture to other East Asian areas, and they invent certain tea ceremonies. So this is clearly—and you can— you can say tea absolutely gives you some kind of a—it's a—drinking tea is an aesthetic choice, because it's not just a sweet that appeals to our brain directly.

MILES OSGOOD: Yeah.

ALLAN DING: You have to cultivate yourself to be able to appreciate a certain kind of tea.

MILES OSGOOD: It's an acquired taste.

ALLAN DING: Acquired taste.

MILES OSGOOD: Yeah. And then does tea have a particular meaning specific... So certainly within China, but then within Chinese Buddhism in particular, does it have—is it about— is it about that acquisition of an appreciation, or is there something about mental-state selection, community around tea, that is even more particular to Buddhism?

ALLAN DING: So part of it is— this is where it gets more and more complicated if you delve into the primary sources, because tea could be a euphemism for medicine, and medicine could be a euphemism for food or even meals. So there are different levels of symbol, symbolism working. So there—a lot of work could be done in this area.

MILES OSGOOD: Yeah. Okay. Great. Well, final question. I loved going through your bibliography and just noting the fun you seem to be having in teasing your readers with these intrigues around exciting titles around esoteric topics. You write about "Ornamenting Liturgies" on the scripts for the "zhāi" feast. You write about "Telling Infelicities on Hidden Intelligibility," and "The Compatible and the Comparable," on the "Samyé Debate" that we talked about already. And we mentioned in passing "Antipathy, Ambivalence, and Acceptance" as a title on Chan attitudes towards merit-making rituals. These are lovely main titles before the colon, before we get into the weeds of the academic work that you're doing. Do you have in mind— it sounds like maybe if you're at the—if you're past the editing stage, do you have in mind a title for the book that's coming? And what is it that you have to pack into that title to make it both intriguing and intelligible?

ALLAN DING: Yeah, thank you for the question. So my book title is "Observances, Feasts, and Scripts: The Varieties of 'Zhāi' in Medieval China (Chinese Buddhism from the Second to the Tenth Century)," so quite bland. (Miles laughs) So that—so whatever titles we're using, ultimately, it's a matter of taste but also matter of a market: who you are marketing to or what kind of preferences the press has. So, but for me, it's a— of course I want to use the title to express some kind of a structure. So either it is the— is the structure of the paper or it's some kind of a structure we can find in the topic. So I think it's better the title reflects something structural, and at the same time, the title is not—it's not immediately transparent.

MILES OSGOOD: Mm-hmm.

ALLAN DING: So the reader can actually be puzzled, or trying to… It piques their interest.

MILES OSGOOD: Yeah.

ALLAN DING: That would be the best.

MILES OSGOOD: Does that mean we're going to go roughly through observances, scripts, and feasts, or is it that we need those three terms to understand "zhāi" as something more than just a single definition?

ALLAN DING: So this actually goes back to why I started to work on ritual is I realize those scripts, written scripts, are not actually blow-by-blow records of the ritual scene, and they just—they reflect certain elements that took—take place in the ritual— in the ritual process. So what I have to do is not only reconstruct what happened but also imagine—try very hard to imagine— the social relationships and the logistics and the temporal elements and all elements but not actually reflected in the feasts or in the scripts. So I think if you—ritual study actually includes a lot of imagination, and, of course, so what I want to do in my book is first establish the Indian precedence and trace the development from India to China, and then use the scripts as a vehicle for generating more imagination about what happened.

MILES OSGOOD: Yeah, that's lovely. And it makes sense. I mean that if you think about a theatrical script, you have to take the same kind of imaginative approach. You have to think about, "Okay, what was actually the blocking on stage? "What were the props? How was this line delivered? How might a director have altered something that happened here?" If I think about the literary tradition, but, you know, just lovely to kind of come full circle in this conversation and say there are acts of imagination that are happening around food it sounds like at—or around fasting, around other kinds of observances— at these gatherings. But then there's also an act of imagination that the scholar has to take on to sort of figure out what was really happening besides a blow-by-blow, a play-by-play, that would be unnecessarily simplistic and reductive. Well I think that that's a great teaser. So I hope folks are very excited for this book to come out and get your imaginations on what happened in this particular phase of history. It sounds like there's a lot to unpack, a lot to conjure, a lot to create. So we'll be looking forward to all of that.

ALLAN DING: Thank you. Thank you.

MILES OSGOOD: Thanks, Allan. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for coming back to Stanford. It was great to meet you and talk to you.

[Epilogue]

[music - Ani Choying Drolma, guitar and bells]

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[music - Ani Choying Drolma, guitar and bells]

Thanks again to Allan Ding for joining the show. Allan’s book, Observances, Feasts, and Scripts: The Varieties of Zhāi in Chinese Buddhism from the Second to the Tenth Century, will be published by University of Hawaii Press just a few months from now, in February twenty twenty-six. You can register online on the press’s website today to get on the waitlist.

[music - Ani Choying Drolma, Oṃ maṇi padme hūm̐]

As always, the music for this episode is a recording from Ani Choying Drolma’s “Buddhist Chants and Songs,” performed at Stanford’s Memorial Church in twenty seventeen.

Until next time, this has been “The Ho Center for Buddhist Studies at Stanford” podcast.

[music - Ani Choying Drolma, Oṃ maṇi padme hūm̐]