Program
Introductory Remarks and Award Presentation
Robert Sharf (UC Berkeley) and George Tanabe (President, BDK America)
Keynote by Award Winner
Roger Jackson (John W. Nason Professor of Asian Studies and Religion, Emeritus, Carleton College)
“Mahāmudrā Embodied and Disembodied: Reflections on Tibetan and Western Uses of the Great Seal.”
Presentations
Chair: Jacob Dalton (UC Berkeley)
Georges Dreyfus (Jackson Professor of Religion, Williams College)“Can Mahāmudrā Help Us to Understand Consciousness?”
David Higgins (Editor, 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha), “What is it Like to be a Buddha? The Place of Mind in Tibetan Mahāmudrā of the Middle Way.”
Giacomella Orofino (Professor of Tibetan Studies and President of the Centre for Buddhist Studies, University of Naples "L'Orientale"), “Images of Buddha (buddhabimba), Images of Emptiness (śūnyabimba): The Metaphysics of Light in the Indian and Tibetan Esoteric Buddhist Literature of the 11th-12th centuries CE.”
Tom Tillemans (Professor Emeritus, University of Lausanne, Switzerland), “Prospects for Buddhist Philosophies of Mind and Mahāmudrā.”
Discussion