Prof. Pierce Salguero, Ph.D.

My current research project explores the close relationship between Buddhism and medicine in medieval China. My analysis does not proceed using modern categories such as “religious” vs. “secular” (or “religion” vs. “science,” or other such anachronistic binaries) to understand the medieval case. Rather, I focus on exploring how medieval authors themselves framed the boundaries of Buddhism by constructing distinctions between what they called “the Dharma” or “ultimate truth” on the one hand, and “worldly knowledge” or “expedient means” on the other. While overcoming  disease and achieving health were always perennial Buddhist concerns, medieval Chinese texts carved out separate  domains of worldly and Dharmic healing expertise, and associated these in turn with the different social categories of “physician” and “bodhisattva.” Each of these types of actors were implicated in different social networks, occupied different positions within the Buddhist moral hierarchy, and were idealized as contributors to society and the state in different ways.