Encyclopedia of Buddhism

See also:Buddhahood and Buddha Bodies; Buddha,
Life of the; Disciples of the Buddha; Relics and Relics
Cults

Bibliography

Gómez, Luis O. “The Bodhisattva as Wonder-Worker.” In Pra-
jña
pa
ramita
and Related Systems: Studies in Honor of Edward
Conze,ed. Lewis Lancaster. Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Buddhist
Studies Series, 1977.

Kieschnick, John. The Eminent Monk: Buddhist Ideals in Me-
dieval Chinese Hagiography.Honolulu: University of Hawaii
Press, 1997.

Nakamura, Kyoko Motomochi. Miraculous Stories from the
Japanese Buddhist Tradition: The Nihon ryo
iki of the Monk
Kyo
kai.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973.

Ray, Reginald A. Buddhist Saints in India: A Study in Buddhist
Values and Orientations.Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1994.

Thomas, Edward J. The Life of Buddha as Legend and History
(1927). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975.

Woodward, Kenneth L. The Book of Miracles: The Meaning of
the Miracle Stories in Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hin-
duism, and Islam.New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999.

JOHNKIESCHNICK

MIZUKO KUYO

Mizuko kuyo
is a Japanese rite performed at Buddhist
temples for the repose of aborted fetuses. Mizuko,lit-
erally “water child,” is the modern term used for fetus,
and kuyo
refers to rituals for making offerings. Mizuko
kuyo
was popular particularly in the 1970s and 1980s,
and is still performed at many Buddhist temples.

Japanese Buddhists are divided in their attitudes to-
ward mizuko kuyo
.The Shin (true) Pure Land school
(Jo
do Shinshu
) is opposed officially to this rite on the
grounds that it is based on the superstitious fear that
spirits of the dead can curse the living. Others criticize
the rite as a moneymaking scheme made popular
through advertisements designed to make women feel
guilty about abortions and the anguish of the aborted
fetuses, who will surely curse those who killed them.
Defenders of the rite argue that mizuko kuyo
provides
the same ritual service that funeral and memorial rites
do in commemorating and caring for the deceased.

Associated with mizuko kuyo
is the practice of ded-
icating a sculpted image of Ksitigarbha (Japanese, Jizo
),
the BODHISATTVAwho protects children, by tying a baby

bib around its neck. Parents inscribe the bib with the

name of the child, and often include words of apology

and regret. While some of these words can be inter-

preted as expressions of guilt arising from the clear

sense of moral wrongdoing, they more often express

sadness and regret for having done something circum-

stantially unavoidable but not morally reprehensible.

See also:Abortion

Bibliography

Hardacre, Helen. Marketing the Menacing Fetus in Japan.Berke-

ley: University of California Press, 1997.

LaFleur, William R. Liquid Life: Abortion and Buddhism in

Japan.Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992.

GEORGEJ. TANABE, JR.

MODERNITY AND BUDDHISM

No religion has a greater claim to embodying moder-

nity than Buddhism. This assertion can be supported

by examining what is meant by modernity,and by re-

lating this modernity to the doctrinal characteristics of

Buddhism. The term modernityderives from Latin

modernus,which itself derives from the adverb modo,

a term that since the fifth century C.E. was equivalent

to nunc(now). During the European Middle Ages

one’s status as modernusrequired distinguishing one-

self from the antiqui.Modernity, then, is to be under-

stood as requiring an act of self-conscious distantiation

from a past in which ignorance or naiveté prevailed.

More specifically, modernity has required moving

from an organic to a mechanic conception of the cos-

mos and society, from hierarchy to equality, from the

corporate to the individual, and from an understand-

ing of reality in which everything resonates with every-

thing else to an understanding built around precision

and the increasing differentiation of domains. Ulti-

mately, modernityhas had to do with the perpetual

questioning of one’s presuppositions. In terms of reli-

gion, modernity has generally involved the rejection of

a symbolic view of reality and of anthropomorphic

conceptions of the divinity, and, even more radically,

the rejection of any notion of transcendence. When

discussing modernity in the context of Western his-

tory, this process has been understood above all as in-

volving a movement away from religion. Both in

Christian and Buddhist terms, however, such a view is

problematic to the extent that the process of differen-

MIZUKOKUYO