Thursday, September 4, 2025
Toward an Inquiry into the Circulation of Sanskrit Manuscripts within Indian Monastic Communities in the Medieval Period
Kazuo Kano, Associate Professor at Komazawa University.
This presentation opens with an examination of the colophons found in Sanskrit manuscripts preserved in Tibet. A number of these colophons contain Tibetan annotations, which, on occasion, record details such as the manuscript’s provenance, location of storage, and the identities of successive owners. Such marginalia provide vivid testimony to the processes by which Sanskrit manuscripts were preserved, transmitted, and inherited within the Tibetan cultural sphere. This, in turn, raises the question of whether comparable practices of ownership, preservation, and transmission were also characteristic of Indian Buddhist monastic communities. In contrast to the Tibetan context, the evidentiary record for India is considerably more fragmentary, though not entirely absent. The present study offers a provisional survey that collates and systematizes the extant traces of evidence pertaining to the ownership, preservation, and transmission of Sanskrit manuscripts within Indian Buddhist monastic milieus.
Thursday, September 25, 2025
Why did Bodhidharma come to the West?: Pali Text Society, Shaku Sōen, and the Invention of “Mahāyāna Buddhism” - Numata Lecture in Buddhist Studies
Norihisa Baba, Numata Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies, UC Berkeley
This lecture will discuss how Shaku Sōen (1860-1919) invented the concept of “Mahāyāna Buddhism” (Daijō Bukkyō 大乗仏教) and resolved to spread Buddhism in the United States during his stay in Ceylon. His role in this process was crucial, but unlike that of his disciple, D. T. Suzuki, is today not sufficiently known. Amidst the rapid popularity of Darwinism and materialism in 1880’s of Japan, Shaku Sōen studied English under Yukichi Fukuzawa (1835-1901), and later studied Pāli in Ceylon. This lecture will clarify the intellectual situation in 19th century Japanese society, following his decision to study Pāli in Ceylon, and how he came to think Buddhism would spread to the “West” in the future. Focusing on his study of Pāli in Ceylon, this lecture will clarify that his invention of “Mahāyāna Buddhism” transformed modern discourse regarding Buddhism in English circles.
Thursday, November 20, 2025
Why did the Uyghurs become Buddhist? Johan Elverskog, Southern Methodist University
When their empire collapsed in the mid-ninth century the Uyghurs settled in the Tarim Basin and established a state that originally maintained their steppe traditions as well as their religious practices. Eventually, however, the Uyghurs began to adopt Buddhism, and it became their dominant faith by the eleventh century. This talk explores how and why this conversion took place within the larger historical context of Eurasian history.
Friday, December 5, 2025
2025 Toshihide Numata Book Award Presentation and Symposium
A Celebration of the Book A Gāndhārī Abhidharma Text: British Library Kharoṣṭhī Fragment 28 by Collett Cox (University of Washington Press, 2025)
Program
2:10 - 2:30 Award Presentation and Introductions
Rev. Brian Nagata, Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai, America
Robert Sharf, Chair, Numata Center for Buddhist Studies
2:30 - 3:30 Keynote by Award Winner
The Elusive Text: Lessons from an Early Buddhist Gāndhārī Manuscript
Collett Cox, Professor Emerita, University of Washington, Seattle
3:45 - 5:15 - Symposium
The Dawn of Modern Buddhist Studies in Japan and the Impact of Gandhāran Discoveries
Norihisa Baba, Numata Visiting Professor in Buddhist Studies, UC Berkeley
Why are Beings Reborn without Consciousness? An Abhidharma Debate
Rupert Gethin, Professor Emeritus, University of Bristol
Do the Three Time Periods (adhvan) Exist in and of Themselves?
Rethinking the Dārṣṭāntika-Vibhajyavādins’ Position in Light of the
Gāndhārī Manuscript BL 28
Gao Mingyuan, The University of Hong Kong
5:15-5:45 - Discussion
Thursday, January 22, 2026
Aspiring Theotopia: Buddhist Sovereignty and the Founding of Bhutan
Jetsun Deleplanque, Shinjo Ito Postdoctoral Fellow in Buddhist Studies, UC Berkeley
This talk examines the founding of the Drukpa state of Shabdrung Ngawang Namgyal (1594-1651), known today as the Kingdom of Bhutan, and its articulation by the seventeenth-century polymath Tsang Khenchen Jamyang Palden Gyatso (1610-1684) in his celebrated biography of Bhutan’s founding figure.
Thursday, February 12, 2026
Secrecy, Exclusivity and Fashion Early Tibetan Art and the Transmission of Buddhism to Tibet 2026 Khyentse Lecture Dr Christian Luczanits, David L. Snellgrove Senior Lecturer in Tibetan and Buddhist Art, SOAS, London
Over the past fifty years, great progress has been made in assessing early Tibetan art preserved in the decoration of ancient monuments and in portable formats. Thereby the questions asked are almost exclusively art historical with a focus on identification, dating and assumed workmanship. Considering early Tibetan art from the perspective of Buddhism, and more specifically as evidence of the transmission of Buddhism to Tibet, is equally productive and provides a corrective to what we think we know in this regard from texts.
Thursday, February 26, 2026
Tragedy in a Medieval Tale: The Enryakuji-Miidera Conflict and its Doctrinal Explanation
Or Porath, Tel Aviv University
“A Long Tale for an Autumn Night” (Aki no yo no naga monogatari) is an illustrated narrative scroll (emaki) dated to the 14th or 15th century, presently held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC. It is the earliest pictorial work belonging to the so-called genre of chigo monogatari (“acolyte tales”). This genre consists of stories that revolve around the infatuation of an older monk with a young monastic acolyte (chigo). In this tale, the male-male love affair leads to intense military warfare between competing factions of the Tendai tradition, Enryakuji and Miidera, the two lineages from which the lovers respectively hailed.
Thursday, March 12, 2026
Disputed Ground: Paradox and Ineffability at the Limits of Thought
Annual Numata Lecture in Buddhist Philosophy
Christian Coseru (College of Charleston), Numata Visiting Professor in Buddhist Philosophy, UC Berkeley
Dialetheism––the view that some contradictions are true––is closely associated with non-classical logics, specifically with paraconsistent logic. For champions of paraconsistent logic, the presence of non-trivially inconsistent theories opens up the possibility that reality itself is inconsistent. Garfield and Priest (2003), Deguchi, Garfield, and Priest (2008), and Deguchi, Garfield, Priest, and Sharf (2021) have argued that much like some philosophers in the West (e.g., Kant, Hegel, Wittgenstein, Heidegger), philosophers in the Indian Buddhist and Chan/Zen traditions (e.g., Nāgārjuna, Dōgen, Nishida) may have discovered and explored a series of paradoxes that arise at the limits of thought. Drawing mainly on Nāgārjuna’s key work, the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, I will first review several instances in which language, particularly when used self-referentially, is prone to paradox. I will then contrast paradoxes of expressibility with the view that in some narrow cases, reality itself or, at the very least, a layered conception of it might instantiate paradoxes. Finally, I argue that although certain reductio arguments about the fundamental structure of reality may tempt us to accept the possibility of ontological paradoxes, the rationale for doing so is ultimately ill-founded. If grounding is understood as the determination of what is fundamental, then it should function as an ordering principle for what exists—that is, for what is real, possible, or merely contingent—rather than as a principle that constrains what, if anything, can be said about the unsayable.