The Mahāvairocana sūtra was translated into Chinese by the Indian monk Śubhakarasiṃha 善無畏 (637–735) and the Chinese monk Yixing 一行 (683–727), and Yixing also composed an elaborate commentary based on the teachings of Śubhakarasiṃha. Their efforts to introduce to China this key source for esoteric Buddhist doctrine and ritual offer us a remarkable case study of Buddhological translation. The two translators respond with particular flair to the perennial challenge of translating any Buddhist scriptures, namely, how to deal with foreign terms (...) or phrases that might appear untranslatable. Looking at both the translation and commentary, we can observe how the two translators employed multiple strategies and frequently relied on commentary to clarify the multiple layers of meaning embedded in the source text. In particular, the polysemous Sanskrit word kalpa highlights the ingenuity of the two translators, as their interpretation of this term differs considerably from that implied in the Tibetan translation. Some of their specific choices in the translation had a substantial impact on the future of esoteric Buddhism in East Asia. (shrink)

Attention Restoration Theory proposes that exposure to natural environments helps to restore attention. For sustained attention—the ongoing application of focus to a task, the effect appears to be modest, and the underlying mechanisms of attention restoration remain unclear. Exposure to nature may improve attention performance through many means: modulation of alertness and one’s connection to nature were investigated here, in two separate studies. In both studies, participants performed the Sustained Attention to Response Task before and immediately after viewing a meadow, (...) ocean, or urban image for 40 s, and then completed the Perceived Restorativeness Scale. In Study 1, an eye-tracker recorded the participants’ tonic pupil diameter during the SARTs, providing a measure of alertness. In Study 2, the effects of connectedness to nature on SART performance and perceived restoration were studied. In both studies, the image viewed was not associated with participants’ sustained attention performance; both nature images were perceived as equally restorative, and more restorative than the urban image. The image viewed was not associated with changes in alertness. Connectedness to nature was not associated with sustained attention performance, but it did moderate the relation between viewing the natural images and perceived restorativeness; participants reporting a higher connection to nature also reported feeling more restored after viewing the nature, but not the urban, images. Dissociation was found between the physiological and behavioral measures and the perceived restorativeness of the images. The results suggest that restoration associated with nature exposure is not associated with modulation of alertness but is associated with connectedness with nature. (shrink)

Transmitting Authority: Wang Tong and the Zhongshuo in Medieval China’s Manuscript Culture. By Ding Xiang Warner. Sinica Leidensia, vol. 113. Leiden: Brill, 2014. Pp. 225 + xii. €103, $134.