Planting Buddhism: Flora in the monasteries of Luoyang

Date: 2nd February 2024
In this talk, Natasha Heller seeks to bring the emerging field of plant humanities-which articulates the importance of attending to the role of plants in human history and culture-into conversation with Buddhist Studies. Taking as a case study The Monasteries of Luoyang 洛陽伽藍記, compiled by Yang Xuanzhi 楊衒之in the mid sixth century, Natasha argues that plants played a significant, but overlooked, role in the creation of Buddhist places in medieval China.
Although the monastic landscapes described in The Monasteries of Luoyang shared much with the garden culture of medieval China, plants could also take on new meanings in religious contexts. Trees, flowers, and fruits were instrumental in cultivating the sensory and affective dimensions of Buddhism; through plants, temples and monasteries came to feel a certain way. Yet plants were not simply passive objects, and trees especially might be understood to have a certain kind of agency and spiritual potency.
As Natasha shows, plants elicited behaviors, thereby co-creating human-vegetal relations that were at the heart of Buddhist placemaking and the growth of the religion.
About the speaker
Natasha Heller is a cultural historian of Chinese Buddhism with research interests spanning the premodern period (primarily 10th through 14th c.) and the contemporary era. She teaches in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia and is currently a Faculty Fellow of UVA’s Institute of the Humanities and Global Cultures.