Thursday, September 5, 2024
Aśvaghoṣa as a Buddhist Poet. “Calming, not Exciting” (vyupaśāntaye na rataye)
Somadeva Vasudeva, Kyoto University
In this talk I will consider in what sense the three surviving works of the 2nd cent. Buddhist monk (bhadanta) and great poet (mahākavi) Aśvaghoṣa of Sāketa can be identified as Buddhist poetry (kāvya). The question of “What makes a poem Buddhist?” finds analogues in a long line of disputes recorded in Alaṅkāraśāstra treatises seeking to define poetry as a distinct form of literature. Was Aśvaghoṣa a Buddhist monk who composed poetry, or was he a poet who composed Buddhist poetry? Or something else altogether? Is what he himself declares about the purpose of his literary activity credible?
Thursday, September 12, 2024
A New Look at the ‘Short Chronology’ of the parinirvāṇa: The Buddha as a Contemporary of Alexander the Great and Candragupta Maurya 2024 Numata Lecture in Buddhist Studies
Antonello Palumbo, Numata Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies, UC Berkeley
We still do not know when the Buddha lived, and his very historicity has been recently questioned anew. In 1988, a major symposium on the dating of the Buddha was able to shatter a long-held agreement on the so-called ‘corrected Long Chronology’ that placed the parinirvāṇa in 486/483 BCE. However, no new consensus has emerged in its stead, apart from an increased perception that the date of the Buddha’s death should be lowered by perhaps as much as a century. But while the jury is still out, we may yet have to take full stock of what important strands of the Buddhist tradition have to say. This lecture will revisit the so-called ‘Short Chronology’ of the parinirvāṇa, ostensibly dating the Buddha’s death to exactly one century before the Maurya emperor Aśoka (ca. 268–232 BCE), and supported by a large number of sources in Sanskrit, Sinitic, Tibetan, and Khotanese. A closer look at this body of materials will reveal the widespread presence, between the second and the seventh centuries CE, of a deep-seated historical memory that the Buddha had died only few decades before Aśoka’s reign. This obviously jars with the higher chronologies of those who have privileged Pāli sources, but also with the skeptical view that the earliest Buddhist history is simply unknowable. For if that history seems obscure before Aśoka, our sources will suggest that it may well be because it had only just begun.
Antonello Palumbo is the current Numata Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Berkeley (Fall Semester 2024/25). From 2005 to 2020 he was first Lecturer and then Senior Lecturer in the Religions of China at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He subsequently was a researcher in the ERC project ‘Open Philology: The Composition of Buddhist Scriptures’ at Leiden University, Institute for Area Studies (2021), Associate Research Scholar and Lecturer in East Asian Studies at Yale University (2021/22), a Senior Fellow at the IKGF, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität, Erlangen (2022/23), and Substitute Professor of Buddhist Studies at the Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies, Heidelberg University (2023/24). He studied in China (Peking University), Italy (where he holds a Ph.D. in East Asian Studies from the former Istituto Universitario Orientale, Naples) and Japan (Kyoto University). His research has covered several aspects of the religious, social and political history of premodern China in its connections to the Old World system, and with a special focus on Buddhism. He is the author of An Early Chinese Commentary on the Ekottarika-āgama: The Fenbie gongde lun 分別功德論 and the History of the Translation of the Zengyi ahan jing 增一阿含經 (Taipei: Fagu Wenhua, 2013) and of many articles and essays.
Thursday, October 4, 2024
Buddhist Art History in Medieval South and Southeast Asia: Innovations and Interactions - Conference
The post-500 CE period in South and Southeast Asian Buddhism came with various religious, socio-political, and economic changes. Patronage patterns changed dramatically after the decline of the imperial Guptas; Brahmanical religions and image-based practices began to gain significant popularity, followed by changing ritual technology with the compilation and dissemination of tantric texts by the early medieval period. Fertile artistic advancements at new and longstanding Buddhist monastic centers responded to these changes. This conference brings together scholars discussing the adaptations, innovations, and interactions in Buddhist art of the medieval period at both the center and periphery of Buddhist South and Southeast Asia through diverse topics. Papers that take the form of case studies, comparative analysis, and diachronic analysis focused on the intertwined themes of changing ritual and patronage, congruent patterns of artistic innovation, gender, and the roles of the marginalized in Buddhism will add to a rich tapestry of a globally connected yet regionally and locally distinct medieval Buddhist South and Southeast Asia.
Program
Friday, October 4
13:00 – 14:15: Introduction and Keynote
Looking Back to Move Forward in the Study of Later Buddhist Art, Janice Leoshko, University of Texas, Austin
Moderator: Sonali Dhingra, Ho Family Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow
14:30 – 17:30: Panel 1 - Patterns of Ritual Change
Chair, Penny Edwards, UC Berkeley
Monks, Mūrtis and Mahāyāna Buddhism:Tracking Religious Change through Material Culture in the Early Medieval Deccan, Nick Morrisey, University of Georgia
Investigating Inter-religious Interactions between the Hindu and Buddhist Traditions in the Magadha region, Abhishek Amar, Hamilton College
Vraḥ Guhā: Expressions of Religious Belonging in the Caves of Phnom Kulen, Elizabeth Cecil, Florida State University
The Depiction of the Svayambhū-caitya in Commemorative Nepalese Painted Scrolls (paubhā), Alexander von Rospatt, UC Berkeley
Saturday, October 5
9:00 – 12:00: Panel 2 - Artistic Connections and Innovations
Chair, Padma Maitland, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco
Legate of Vairocana, Door Keeper, Destroyer of Inner Obstacles, and Perfected One: The Immovable One’s Multiple Forms and Roles in Tantristic Buddhism, Rob Linrothe, Northwestern University
Origins and Dissemination of Buddhist triads in South and Southeast Asia, Nicolas Revire, Art Institute of Chicago
Buddhist Art as Object and Presence: A Comparative Perspective, Eric Huntington, Rice University
Affective Presence” in a Corpus of Bodhisattva Sculptures from Odisha (9th-11th Centuries), Sonali Dhingra, Ho Family Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow
13:40 – 16:40: Panel 3 - Gender and Buddhist Art
Chair, Janice Leoshko, University of Texas, Austin
New Perceptions of Western Deccan Mahāyāna Female Figures (ca. early 6th century): The Case for Understanding Tārā as both Goddess and Bodhisattva in Early Relief Sculptures, Hillary Anne Langberg, Bard College
Buddhist Wives: Women in Visual and Epigraphic Records of Medieval Indic Buddhism, Jinah Kim, Harvard University
Utpalavarṇā in Palm-Leaf Manuscripts of Medieval India, Sonya Rhie Mace, Cleveland Museum of Art
Thursday, October 10, 2024
Re-reading the Scripture in Forty-two Sections (Sishier zhang jing四十二章經, T784): New Light on an Enigmatic Text
Jan Nattier, Visiting Scholar in Buddhist Studies, UC Berkeley
The Scripture in Forty-two Sections is one of the most famous texts in the Chinese Buddhist canon. According to tradition it was the first Buddhist scripture to be translated into Chinese, brought by envoys sent to the West by the Han emperor Ming (r. 58-75 CE). This account is now widely considered to be a pious fiction, but the date of production of the text has been an ongoing topic of controversy, with current scholarly estimates ranging from the early 2nd century to the 5th century CE. The nature of the text has been contested as well, with some considering it a genuine translation (either of an integral Indian scripture or of a selection of excerpts from various Indian sources), while others have claimed that it is an outright forgery produced in China. In this paper I will offer a brief survey of these views and the assumptions on which they are based, before turning to a close examination of the content and terminology of the text itself. Taken together with the testimony of external sources—not only Buddhist but Daoist—we are now in the position to use a number of new tools to place this unique scripture within the overall context of Chinese Buddhist history.
Jan Nattier did her undergraduate work in comparative religion (specializing in Buddhism) at Indiana University, where she also began graduate training in the Department of Uralic and Altaic Studies. She completed her Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1988 under the Committee on Inner Asian and Altaic Studies (specializing in classical Mongolian). She has taught at Macalester College, the University of Hawaii, Stanford University, Indiana University, and the University of Tokyo, before serving as Research Professor at the International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology (Soka University, Tokyo, Japan) from 2006-2010. Subsequently she has taught as a Visiting Professor at Stanford University, the University of Washington, and the University of California at Berkeley, where she is currently a Visiting Scholar. Her publications include Once Upon a Future Time: Studies in a Buddhist Philosophy of Decline (1991), A Few Good Men: The Bodhisattva Path according to the Inquiry of Ugra (2003), and A Guide to the Earliest Chinese Buddhist Translations (2008), as well as a variety of journal articles, encyclopedia entries, and book reviews.
Friday-Saturday, October 18-19, 204
AI and the Future of Buddhist Studies
Advances in AI, exemplified in tools like ChatGPT and perplexity.ai, are likely to have a broad impact on the humanities, and the field of Buddhist Studies is no exception. As computers become more proficient at both the translation and analysis of Buddhist texts, one wonders what the effects will be on the training of graduate students and the nature of the field. The Numata Center for Buddhist Studies at UC Berkeley is hosting a two-day workshop (October 18-19, 2024) to take measure of the present status of these new technologies and to assess their future impact. The workshop is organized in collaboration with Kurt Keutzer and Sebastian Nehrdich of the Berkeley AI Research lab, who are developers of the MITRA translation system for the languages of Buddhism, and Jann Ronis, Executive Director of the Buddhist Digital Research Center.
Welcome and Introduction (Friday 2:30-2:40)
Robert Sharf, UC Berkeley
Panel 1 (Friday 2:40-5:30): Uses of Advanced Computational Methods for the Analysis of Buddhist Texts; Creation and Analysis of Digital Corpora
Chair: Kurt Keutzer, UC Berkeley
Sebastian Nehrdich (UC Berkeley): Dharmamitra Search: Leveraging Multilingual Language Models for Search and Detection of Textual Reuse across Diverse Text Collections
Michael Radich (Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies): A Set of Conceptually Simple Tools and Methods for ‘Cyborg’ Critical Assessment of Ascriptions in the Chinese Buddhist Canon
Jann Ronis, Élie Roux, and Eric Werner (Buddhist Digital Resource Center): Using AI to Transform BDRC’s Massive Archive of Scans into a Dataset for Research and AI Models
Panel 2 (Saturday 9:30-12): Machine Translation of Buddhist Texts
Chair: Alexander von Rospatt, UC Berkeley
Kurt Keutzer (UC Berkeley): Does Buddhist Studies Need an AI Assistant?
Meghan Howard Masang (Yale University): Buddhist Translation Process and Its Construction of Intellectual Culture
Bob Miller (84000): Human Intelligence and Buddha Speech: Agency, Automation, and Knowledge
Panel 3 (Saturday 1:30-6): The Impact of AI on the Training and Work of Buddhist Scholars
Chair: Robert Sharf, UC Berkeley
Marcus Bingenheimer (Temple University): The Impact of Large Language Models (LLMs) on DH Methods in Buddhist Studies
Daigengna Duoer (Boston University): Digital Mapping and the Study of Buddhism in Modern Asian History
John Dunne (University of Wisconsin): The Bodhisattva AI – A Cautionary (Meta-) Tale
James Robson (Harvard): Too Much to Know: Curated Authoritative Research Sources for Buddhist Studies in the 21st Century
Donald S. Lopez (University of Michigan): The Fifth Noble Truth
Kiyonori Nagasaki (International Institute for Digital Humanities): Enhancing Buddhist Scripture Research with Imperfect AI Outcomes: A Case Study of the SAT Text Database
Friday, November 1, 2024
2024 Toshihide Numata Book Award Presentation and Symposium
This event celebrates the winner of the 2024 Toshihide Numata Book Award in Buddhism, Matthew Kapstein (Professor Emeritus, École Pratique des Hautes Études), for his edited book Tibetan Manuscripts and Early Printed Books, Vol. 1: Elements (Cornell University Press, 2024).
Program
2:10-2:30 Introduction and Prize Presentation
Robert Sharf, UC Berkeley
Brian Nagata, Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai
2:30-3:30 Keynote by Award Winner
The Buddhists Behind the Books
Matthew T. Kapstein, Professor Emeritus
Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, PSL Research University, Paris
3:45 – 6:00 Symposium
Traces of the Hand: Reflections on the Material Culture of Tibetan Books
Janet Gyatso, Harvard University
Annotations, Abbreviations, and Alphanumeric Codes in Southeast Asian Manuscripts
Trent Walker, University of Michigan
Scattered Treasures: Tibetan and Mongolian language Buddhist Manuscript and Blockprint Collections of the Mongols
Sangseraima Ujeed, University of Michigan
Thursday, November 7, 2024
On the Doctrines of the Buddhist Personalists: Saṅghatrāta’s presentation of the Abhidharma
Francesco Sferra, University of Naples “L’Orientale.”
Over the past 10 years, new manuscript sources found in manuscript collections preserved in Asia and in the West have brought to light important documents belonging to the Buddhist tradition of the Personalists (pudgala-vādin), particularly of the Saṃmitīya-s. The lecture will introduce the text of the Abhidharmasamuccaya-kārikā by Saṅghatrāta and analyze parts of it, especially in relation to the Abhidharmakośa and other relevant texts.
Thursday, February 13, 2025
The First Prāsaṅgikas: What newly discovered texts reveal about early Tibetan Madhyamaka - 2025 Khyentse Lecture
Kevin Vose, Walter G. Mason Associate Professor of Religious Studies, William and Mary
The discovery of the 5th Dalai Lama’s library in the “Arhats’ Temple” of Drepung Monastery has dramatically improved our knowledge of the transmission of Candrakīrti’s Madhyamaka to Tibet. Previously known only from brief references from later Tibetan scholars, we now have access for the first time in centuries to texts from the foundational figures in promoting Candrakīrti’s views. We have two significant compositions from Patsab Nyimadrak (Pa tshab Nyi ma grags, c. 1070-1145), translator of Candrakīrti’s major works: his “Difficult Points” commentary on Candrakīrti’s Prasannapadā is the earliest known commentary on that text; his commentary on Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā is the earliest known Tibetan commentary on it. Additionally, we have texts from three of Patsap’s disciples: Shang Thangsakpa (Zhang thang sag pa ʼByung gnas ye shes) wrote the first complete commentary on the Prasannapadā, while Khutön Dodébar (Khu ston mDo sde ʼbar) and Mabja Jangchup Tsöndrü (rMa bya Byang chub brtson ʼgrus, d. 1185) composed independent Madhyamaka treatises, in addition to Mabja’s long-available commentary to the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā.
These works provide a picture of how Candrakīrti’s earliest supporters, the first Prāsaṅgikas, advanced his Madhyamaka views—a picture that differs substantially from the perspectives of later Tibetan scholars. Patsab and his disciples read Candrakīrti’s use of arguments by “consequence” (prasaṅga) as the first step of a re-imagined Mahāyāna Buddhist path, replacing inferential knowledge of emptiness and culminating in the cessation of consciousness. Unlike the near-universal esteem in which Candrakīrti was held by later Tibetan scholars, twelfth-century Tibetan thinkers were not always impressed. A number of newly discovered volumes, particularly those from the lineage of Ngok Lotsawa (rNgog Blo ldan shes rab, 1059-1109), offer trenchant criticism of the new Prāsaṅgika movement, defending instead the views of Śāntideva, Jñānagarbha, Śāntarakṣita, and Kamalaśīla. Collectively, these volumes allow us to see the debates that split Tibetan Madhyamaka into Prāsaṅgika and Svātantrika interpretations.
Kevin Vose is the Walter G. Mason Associate Professor of Religious Studies at William & Mary. He is the author of Splitting the Middle: A Natural History of Middle Way Reasoning (forthcoming in Wisdom Publications’ Studies in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism series), Resurrecting Candrakīrti: Disputes in the Tibetan Creation of Prāsaṅgika (2009) and several articles on the transmission of Sanskrit Buddhist philosophical traditions from India to Tibet and the formation of Tibetan Buddhist scholastic traditions. His work focuses in particular on the Collected Works of the Kadampas (bKa’ gdams gsung ʼbum), a reproduced collection of mostly 11th - 13th century Tibetan manuscripts culled from the discovery of one of the few libraries to survive the Cultural Revolution in Tibet and that provide a wealth of information on the formative period of Tibetan Buddhism. From this collection, he and Pascale Hugon of the Austrian Academy of Sciences are preparing an edition and translation of Gyamarwa’s Essence of the Middle Way (rGya dmar ba, dBu ma de kho na nyid).
Friday, February 14, 2025
The Sutra of Limitless Life and its Dunhuang Copies
Brandon Dotson, Georgetown University
Chinese and Tibetan scribes produced over 10,000 copies of the Sutra of Limitless Life (Sanskrit title: Aparimitāyuḥ-sūtra) in the 820s in Dunhuang as an offering for the ailing Tibetan emperor. These sutra copies were then distributed all across his realm for protection, sanctification, and to extend the emperor’s life. Drawing on a decade of archival research documenting approximately 1,500 Tibetan copies of the sutra kept in the British Library’s Stein Collection, I was able to reconstruct the processes by which these sutras were produced, deposited in temples, stored in the Library Cave, and then conserved and documented in London. This presentation highlights codicological features of these sutras, their colophons, later curators’ notes, and the ‘discovery’ of a Tibetan version of this sutra that appears to be otherwise unknown.
Thursday, March 4, 2025
Film Screening - Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom
A young teacher in modern Bhutan, Ugyen, shirks his duties while planning to go to Australia to become a singer. As a reprimand, his superiors send him to the most remote school in the world, a glacial Himalayan village called Lunana, to complete his service. He finds himself exiled from his Westernized comforts after an arduous 8 day trek just to get there. There he finds no electricity, no textbooks, not even a blackboard. Though poor, the villagers extend a warm welcome to their new teacher, but he faces the daunting task of teaching the village children without any supplies. He wants to quit and go home, but he begins to learn of the hardship in the lives of the beautiful children he teaches, and begins to be transformed through the amazing spiritual strength of the villagers.
Pawo Choyning Dorji is a Bhutanese filmmaker, photographer and writer. He made his directorial debut with ‘Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom’ (2019), which has become Bhutan’s first film to be nominated for Best International Feature Film at the 94th Academy Awards. His second film The Monk and the Gun (2023) was shortlisted for the Best International Feature Film for the 96th Academy Awards. He is the youngest recipient of Bhutan’s highest civilian award, the Druk Thuksey (Royal Order of Bhutan), bestowed to him by the King of Bhutan, H.M. Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck. He is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Friday-Sunday, March 7-9, 2025
Buddhism and Its Interlocutors in Song Dynasty China (960–1279 CE) - 2025 Sheng Yen Conference
Scholars of Chinese religion now recognize that, contrary to earlier narratives of decline, Buddhism flourished during the Song Dynasty—that the Song was a time of tremendous literary, artistic, and doctrinal innovation and growth. But that leaves open the question as to the impact of Buddhist thought and culture beyond the Buddhist fold. Scholars remain hampered by the Confucian biases of many of our “secular” sources, especially the dynastic histories authored by court historians; such sources leave the misleading impression, for example, that Buddhism held little sway at court. Be that as it may, scholars are working to overcome such biases, showing that Buddhists—both monastic and lay—broadly engaged with, and left their influence upon, interlocutors from other traditions (Daoist and Confucian), as well as imperial actors. To support such efforts, this conference will bring together specialists in Chinese religion, history, literature, and art history to reassess the nature and impact of Buddhism in the Song.
Friday, March 7
14:15–14:30 Introduction
14:30–17:30 Panel 1: Buddhism and Laypeople
Chair: Jiangnan Li, UC Berkeley
Not the Literati Again: Chan Instructions for Merchants
Jason Protass, Brown University
Meditation, Anxiety, and Lay People in Song Chan Buddhism
Morten Schlütter, University of Iowa
Song Dynasty Buddhist Populism
Benjamin Brose, University of Michigan
Saturday, March 8
9:30–12:30 Panel 2: Buddhism, Syncretism, and Imperial Factors
Chair: Jacob Dalton, UC Berkeley
Building the Pure Land: A Study of the Creation of the Sixteen-Visualization Hall in the Song
Xingyi Wang, Chinese University of Hong Kong
Buddhist Translations during the Song Dynasty and the Question of Chinese Esoteric Buddhism: An Institutional Perspective
Jiangnan Li, UC Berkeley
Debating Efficacy: The Use of Buddhist Discourses in Southern Song Daoist Ritual Criticism
Joshua Capitanio, Stanford University
14:30–17:30 Panel 3: Buddhism and Its Rivals
Chair: Robert Sharf, UC Berkeley
Spells, Specters, and Ritual Failures: Buddhism, Daoism, and Socioreligious Rivalry in Medieval China
Jingyu Liu, Rollins College
Who Speaks for the Dao? Song (and Jin) Defenses of the Dharma
Elizabeth Morrison, Middlebury College
Qisong’s “Fei Han” Essays and the Decline of Guwen as an Intellectual Position in the Mid-Eleventh Century
Douglas Skonicki, National Tsing Hua University
Sunday, March 9
9:30–12:30 Panel 4: Buddhism, literati Culture, and the Natural World
Chair: Robert Ashmore, UC Berkeley
Reading Otherwise: Plants and Song Buddhism
Natasha Heller, University of Virginia
The Lebang wenlei 樂邦文類: Anthologization and the Legitimization of Pure Land Teachings in Song Dynasty China
Hanruo Zhang, Princeton University
Negotiating Transgression with Humor: Courtesans, Literati, and Buddhist Monks in Song Anecdotal Literature
Xiao Rao, UC Irvine
Thursday, March 13, 2025
Neither One Nor Many: A Case for the Conceptual Incoherence of the Idea of Non-dual Awareness - Annual Numata Lecture in Buddhist Philosophy
Christian Coseru (College of Charlestown), Spring 2025 Numata Visiting Professor in Buddhist Philosophy, UC Berkeley
The view that awareness is ultimately undifferentiated and, therefore, that the subject-object duality present in ordinary experience is illusory, is common to certain strands of Buddhist thought (though by no means unique to it). But the view is not without its critics, particularly Madhyamaka philosophers who call into question its conceptual coherence. Their critique offers a range of arguments whose philosophical import is yet to be fully unpacked. In this lecture, I will first examine one of the main arguments targeting the notion of a non-dual entity as a metaphysical simple. I will then consider Dharmakīrti and Śāntarakṣita’s extension of the argument to include mental phenomena, and ask whether their conception of consciousness as reflexive awareness is compatible with a specific kind of narrow content internalism that grounds phenomenal unity in factors that are internal to the structure of consciousness. Lastly, I will draw on recent debates about phenomenal unity to argue that neither partial nor strong phenomenal unity necessarily entails that the intentional structure of consciousness is merely apparent or conventional (as assumed by non-dual theories). Phenomenal unity speaks to the coherence and integration of contents within a subjective or experiential awareness (given that conscious awareness is experiential through and through). By collapsing the subject-object distinction, non-dual views operate with a concept of phenomenal consciousness that I will argue is both empirically implausible and explanatorily vacuous.
Thursday, April 3, 2025
Mapping the Path, Mapping the Fruits: Meditation, Attainments, Legitimization, Subjectivity and Neuroscience: From Early Buddhism via Theravada to Postmodern Practitioners - A Case Study on “Fruition” and “Cessation.”
Speaker: Venerable Bhikkhunī Dhammadinnā
Discussant: Clifford Saron, (PhD), Research Scientist, Center for Mind and Brain, University of California, Davis.
Moderator: Alexander von Rospatt, Professor for Buddhist and South Asian Studies, and Director of the Group in Buddhist Studies.
A close reading of the evolving accounts of the four stages of awakening, as outlined in early Buddhist and Theravāda meditation theory and practice, provides a text-historically informed foundation for investigating the legitimation strategies and claims to meditative attainments presented in postmodern narratives of contemporary American meditators. Case studies on so-called ‘fruition attainments’ and ‘cessation experiences’ illustrate the composite authority discourse characteristic of these new hermeneutics, which draw on rhetorics of experiential subjectivity as well as neuroscientific discourse, among other influences.
Wednesday, April 9, 2025
“An Ordinary Person Will Not Survive:” A Preliminary Study of Daiaragyō, The Most Dangerous Ascetic Training in Nichiren Buddhism
Simona Lazzerini, 2023-2025 Shinjo Ito Postdoctoral Fellow in Japanese Buddhism, UC Berkeley
Daiaragyō 大荒行 is an ascetic training that allows Nichiren monks to master initiated prayers (kitō祈祷) and a variety of exorcistic techniques (harai 祓い) aimed at healing various ailments, destroying evil entities, and granting protection. The training, which lasts one hundred days, is performed once a year at Hokkekyōji 法華経寺and Onjuin 遠壽院, two temples in Ichikawa (Chiba prefecture). Daiaragyō is an austere and dangerous practice that pushes monastics on the verge of death. For a hundred days monks live in seclusion and are allowed sleep only a few hours per night; eat small meals; perform water ablutions seven times a day; copy sutras and endure long chanting sessions. It is very common for practitioners fall ill and, in the past, people have died. While daiaragyō is not a mandatory practice in the Nichiren school, many monks choose to undergo the training, even more than once, to learn esoteric skills that will allow them to assist and benefit people. As a matter of fact, monastics often describe their training and religious career as following Nichiren’s path and enduring similar hardships to spread the teachings of the Lotus Sūtra. Drawing from my fieldwork in Japan as well as textual and visual materials, in this talk I will present my preliminary findings on daiaragyō, focusing on the mechanisms, main practices, and goals of this treacherous training.
Thursday, April 10, 2025
Getting Buddhas and Bodhisattvas “Right”: Magnificence, Aesthetic Hierarchy, and Transnational Buddhist Craftsmanship across the Myanmar-China Border
Beiyin Deng, University of Missouri
The Cultural Revolution is infamous for its violent destruction of religious icons, yet the subsequent surge in demand for Buddhist images in China’s post-Mao Buddhist revival has received scant attention. This study explores the encounters between Chinese workshop owners and Burmese Buddhist artisans in the trade of marble Buddhist images (Ch. miandian yufo) across the Myanmar-China border. By examining this transnational trade network, which emerged in response to the burgeoning market for Buddhist images in China and the regional economic integration between China and Southeast Asia, it illuminates the often-neglected material and transnational dimensions of the post-Mao Buddhist resurgence.
Thursday, April 17, 2025
“A surprising discovery in a new Gandharan manuscript: The Buddha reveals the past and future rebirths of Kushana king Vema Takhuma.”
Richard Salomon, Professor Emeritus, University of Washington, Seattle
A recently unrolled Gandharan scroll has proven to contain an unprecedented type of sūtra in which the Buddha reveals that the Kushana king Vema Takhuma (late first/early second centuries CE) was in his past life a yakṣa general, and is moreover destined in a future life to himself become a Buddha. This patently apocryphal text must have been composed as a political instrument to win the king’s favor and patronage, and is consistent with other recent discoveries of Gandharan manuscripts documenting the patronage of Buddhist establishments by other Kushana kings (Vema Kadphises and Huviṣka). The discovery of this unique document coincides with the recent discovery in Tajikistan of inscriptions mentioning Vema Takhuma, all combining to suddenly bring to life this once shadowy historical figure, once known as “the lost Kushana king.
Thursday, May 1, 2025
At the Crossroads: The Reception, Rejection, and Retention of Chinese Chan in Tibetan Buddhism - Leong Clancy Fellowship Annual Lecture 2025
Khenpo Yeshi, Ph.D candidate, Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies, UC Berkeley
This talk explores the early Tibetan interactions with Chinese Chan Buddhism as documented in several Dunhuang manuscripts and the works of the late ninth century Tibetan scholar Nubchen Sangye Yeshe. These sources reveal a complex interplay between how Chan was received, rejected, and adapted in Tibet, as locals engaged with Chan Buddhism with both admiration and skepticism. While early Tibetan practitioners demonstrated curiosity and made efforts to integrate Chan principles into their pre-established Buddhist frameworks, they also criticized these teachings due to their concerns about doctrinal compatibility. Indeed, Chan’s teachings were, in many ways, at odds with Tibetan religious and ethical conventions. At the time, Tibet was consolidating its Buddhist identity and reassessing foreign influences. Thus, socio-political dynamics further fueled the rejection of certain Chan elements. However, despite all the suspicion and criticism, some aspects of Chan stayed in Tibet through cultural negotiation and adaptation. Eventually, these teachings were transformed to align with local contexts. This phenomenon of intercultural exchange underscores the adaptive nature of Buddhist traditions, as well as their ability to evolve while core teachings remain unaltered. By examining these early cross-cultural engagements, my research uncovers the complexities of religious entanglement and their lasting impact on Tibetan Buddhism and broader spiritual dialogues.
Friday, May 2, 2025 (zoom)
The Origin and Evolution of Avalokiteśvara Images in the Light of New Discoveries from Gandhāra
Osmund Bopearachchi, Emeritus Director of Research, National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), Paris
This talk revisits the question of the origin and evolution of images of the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara in Gandhāra and their diffusion to India, Tibet and China along the trade routes. In Gandhāran art, the iconography of the bodhisattva Maitreya is often recognisable through his characteristic attribute—the flask (kuṇḍikā). Identifying Avalokiteśvara in early Indian art forms, however, is more of a challenge. Contrary to the opinion of some modern scholars who claim that there is no epigraphic or textual evidence for the existence of a cult of Amitābha or Avalokiteśvara during the Kuṣāṇ period, the discovery of the Gāndhārī manuscripts, dated to the first century CE, in a form similar to the Sanskrit version of the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā, the main text of the Mahāyāna, reveals that Avalokiteśvara was known in Gandhāra. Avalokiteśvara became popular owing to his healing powers, especially via his reputation as a protector of land and sea traders mentioned in the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka. The development of trade routes through the Gandhāran valleys made this fertile land a meeting point for different cultures. It will be argued that in the sculptures depicting a triadic composition of the Buddha flanked by two bodhisattvas, a popular composition in Gandhāra, one flanking image is Maitreya, and the other is Avalokiteśvara whose iconography undergoes several stages to become identifiable as Padmapāni-Avalokiteśvara. Previously published sculptures depicting the triad of the Buddha, Maitreya and Avalokiteśvara from Sahrī Bāhlol and Takht-i-Bāhī excavations, whose identification has been misunderstood by art historians, will be re-examined. A sculpture depicting the bodhisattva Padmapāni-Avalokiteśvara dressed in royal garb and wearing an elaborate turban featuring a mediating Amitābha Buddha, already published by the speaker, is the first known undisputed image of Avalokiteśvara. The unpublished bronze sculpture depicting Avalokiteśvara seated on a lotus, wearing a three-leaf diadem with a foliage motif tied with ribbons on the sides (the central leaf with a seated Tathāgata Amitābha in dhyānamudrā and two images of deified females—most probably White Tārā and Green Tārā—on either side), is so far unique in the Gandhāra region. It will be argued that this triad inspired the composition of the images of Avalokiteśvara and Tārā in the Buddhist cave complexes of Maharashtra, where Avalokiteśvara’s reputation as the savior of traders enjoyed great popularity in the fifth century. The origin of the buddha and bodhisattva images in the Gandhāra region and their spread along trade routes can no longer be denied.