I study death, illness, and Buddhism in East Asia. In my doctoral thesis I examined something called the “malady of meditation.” This is a “malady” or “defect” that continued to trouble Buddhist meditators in East Asia for centuries. I was particularly interested in the transformation of this malady or defect over time. In a number of different publications I tried to explain this transformation by situating the changing views of the malady of meditation in their proper historical contexts. I focused specifically on two Buddhist monks who spoke extensively about the malady of meditation: the Chinese Buddhist monk Dahui Zonggao (1089-1163) and the Japanese Buddhist monk Hakuin Ekaku (1686-1769). What drew me to these two towering figures of Chan and Zen is not only the critical role that they played in shaping the discourse about the malady of meditation but also their efforts to use the malady to make sense of problems associated with changing habits of reading among students of Chan and Zen.

Current projects:

My current research focuses on the relationship between Buddhist mortuary practices and elite identity formation in fourteenth century Korea. A small but growing number of families that belonged to the late Koryŏ elite began to abandon Buddhist mortuary practices, which they associated with waste and decadence, in favor of Neo-Confucian mortuary practices and in my recent publications I try to explain why. Using, among other things, officials histories, biographies, funerary inscriptions, commemorative steles, and literary collections I try to draw a connection between the rise of this rhetoric of decadence, the gradual shift in the cultural construction of elite identity during the late Koryŏ, and the influx of new social elements under Mongol rule.

Teaching interests:

At the undergraduate level I teach courses about premodern and modern Korean history and religion. I also teach courses about East Asian Buddhism, Zen, contemporary controversies in Korea, life and death in megacities or great cities in Asia, and love in Korean literature and film. I also teach immersive learning courses, which take place in Seoul Korea.

I work on the history of religion in China. My recent research has focused on two transformational historical eras—the late ninth through the early eleventh centuries and the twentieth century—in an attempt to better understand the relationships between social, cultural, and political change and the development of religious doctrines and practices. My first book, Patrons and Patriarchs: Regional Rulers and Chan Monks during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms (University of Hawai’i Press, 2015), examined the tumultuous century that spanned the collapse of the Tang dynasty (618–907) and the consolidation of the Northern Song dynasty (960–1127). I attempted to resolve two closely related issues in the field of Chinese Buddhist studies. The first is how Chan (a.k.a. Zen) clerics, who represented a relatively minor undercurrent in mainstream Buddhism during the Tang dynasty, rose to become some of the most culturally and politically significant clerics of the Northern Song. The second is the extent to which the Chan institutions and traditions of the early Northern Song—which were later transmitted to Japan, Korea, and Vietnam—derived from developments in southeastern China during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms.

I have explored other facets of Chinese Buddhism during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms in a series of articles. “Crossing Ten-Thousand Li of Waves” (Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, 2008) examines the loss and recovery of an important corpus of Tiantai Buddhist texts against the backdrop of pilgrimage and the circulation of material culture in China, Korea, and Japan. “Credulous Kings and Immoral Monks”(Asia Major, 2014) reevaluates the state of the Buddhist clergy in China after the fall of the Tang dynasty in light of polemical accounts written by later generations of Chinese scholar-officials. Finally, “Disorienting Medicine”(Journal of Chinese Buddhist Studies, 2015) is a study and annotated translation of a leading tenth-century cleric’s critique of the Chan monks of his generation.

Current projects:

My current research looks at the transmission and adaptation of Chinese Buddhist cultures in other parts of Asia, the evolution and malleability of hagiographical narratives, and the history of religious traditions in modern China. A second book project, provisionally titled Embodying Xuanzang: A Medieval Monk in the Modern Imagination, examines recent representations of the seventh-century Buddhist cleric, pilgrim, and scholar Xuanzang 玄奘 (600/602–664). My intention is to document and interpret instances where Xuanzang has been re-embodied—by means of spirit mediums, relics, rituals, and icons—during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries primarily in mainland China, but also in Taiwan, Japan, and India.

Teaching interests:

At Michigan, I teach a range of courses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. My regular course offerings include “Zen Buddhism: History, Culture, and Critique,” “Gods, Ghosts, and Gangsters: Popular Religion in China,” “Buddhism and Death,” and “Zen Masters, Dharma Bums, and Drag Queens: Buddhism in America.” I also teach courses on the reinvention of religion in modern Asia, Qing dynasty and Republican era Buddhism in China, reading Buddhist texts (in Chinese), and systems of self-cultivation in China.

Madhav M. Deshpande is an emeritus professor of Sanskrit and Hindu Studies at the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, jointly appointmented in the Department of Linguistics. Originally trained in traditional and modern Sanskrit scholarship in Pune, India, Deshpande earned his B.A. (1966) and M.A. (1968) in Sanskrit from the University of Pune, and his doctorate in Oriental Studies from the University of Pennsylvania (1972). He joined the faculty of the University of Michigan since 1972. His research relates to the fields of the Sanskrit grammatical tradition, historical linguistics and sociolinguistics of Indo-Aryan languages, and the religious and philosophical traditions of India, including Hinduism and Buddhism. He has published fifteen books and over 150 research papers relating to these areas.

Publications:

-Samskrtasubodhini: A Sanskrit Primer
-Sociolinguistic Attitudes in India: A Historical Reconstruction
-The Meaning of Nouns: Semantic Theory in Classical and Medieval India

Field(s) of Study:

Historical linguistics
Sanskrit grammatical tradition
Sanskrit phonetics
Indo-Aryan linguistics
Sociolinguistics of Sanskrit and Prakrit languages