How would you summarize your research?

My training is in East Asian Studies where I specialized in religion and philosophy, particularly Buddhism and Taoism. My dissertation work was on a monk in Taiwan, Master Yinshun, who passed away in 2005, but he was most prolific in the mid-to-late 20th century.

When my mentor passed away, I promised I would write the book that he never got to. My mentor sat outside of academia. He was a pure land Buddhist priest trained in Japan, and he had a very unique interpretation of pure land Buddhism. He was very much involved in western esoteric traditions. The book will be about him and this work.

A second project is one that Professor Char Kunkel and I are working on together in the field of Animal Studies. We are contributing a book chapter that looks at the notion of utopia or heterotopia. Part of that is to extend this notion of how we can live in community not only with one another, as human beings or human animals, but also with the nonhuman animal community. So that would be nonhuman animals, but also the larger environment, land, trees and so on. We are considering how we engage with a nonhuman world. Part of our argument is that the notion of rights and citizenship is problematic. It often reinforces a kind of status quo in which systemic inequities persist.

We are trying to think about a world where we can live together and address those inequities, taking into consideration the nonhuman world. We are thinking about how we develop an ethics of responsibility, which is a little bit different than an ethics of care. The ethics of care is about how we care for the environment, nonhuman animals, and one another, but part of the problem with this is that it tends to reinforce a kind of hierarchy. The best example here is this sort of white saviorism kind of mentality. If we focus on a kind of ethics of responsibility then we recognize that we are in relationships with each other, and that those are interdependent relationships. We take the notion of beloved community from Martin Luther King Jr. We are trying to paint a picture of what this looks like and we have some interesting models, especially from science fiction and fantasy genres.

A third project is in martial arts studies. The focus of this paper is that there is a deep and important connection between the way the founder of Aikido experienced Aikido and the way George Leonard experienced and then developed Aikido. There are important overlaps, but they had different soteriological goals. Soteriological goals are about studying and understanding salvation and enlightenment. It is originally rooted in Christian theology, but it's been borrowed over into Buddhist studies. So this paper is about how George Leonard was informed by Buddhism, Taoism, the human potential movement, and Aikido. He has also influenced how Aikido is understood by people who are interested in human potential.

What change do you hope to see based on your research?

I am hoping to grapple with the systemic nature of inequality and how it applies to the nonhuman world. How can we write something that helps us see better how systemic inequality happens and functions? And how can we begin to think about what the alternatives are? People looking to address systemic inequality spend a lot of time deconstructing, which is absolutely essential to do. We have to see inequality before we can do anything about it, but we can't stay there. We have to start thinking about what the alternatives are. The animal studies project is focused on what we can do and what we can create. This issue is not going to be solved in a chapter, but this is our concrete attempt.

For the human potential moment, some of my interest is selfish, because I am fascinated by the topic. But the human potential movement and mystical experiences are also essentially a shift in consciousness that reorients you and the way you inhabit the world. That puts us in a position to rethink how we live our lives. Not everyone shares this view and it is important to remember that you can be a terrible human being and still have a mystical experience. It is not inherently rooted in ethics and morality. But I think George Leonard and others like him want it to be that, and see it as a way to change the way we live in the world. If we are fully in our bodies then we are automatically more present and more connected to the earth. I think this is where George Leonard brings ethics together with mystical experiences.

What advice would you give to someone interested in religion, identity studies, or animal studies?

I would say take Identity Studies 101. Let's sit down and do the hard work. Let's unpack the systemic inequalities. I know that I keep coming back to that, but that is what I hope students who come to Luther College begin to hear, even if you sort of get beaten over the head with it. The other thing is, it is important to remember that the environment is essential to all of this. Any practice that brings us back to our bodies and reminds us of that is important. That is essential to all of this other work.

To learn more about Dr. Scott Hurley visit his faculty profile.

Published on: January 19, 2023

By: Dominique Stringer