News

2019 Chao Presidential Chair
David Germano, University of Virginia

In recent years, two sets of unique 11th century Tibetan manuscripts have been discovered - a sensational development according to many scholars.

UC Berkeley’s Center for Buddhist Studies is part of a new international network of universities that is receiving $4.9 million to advance the study of Buddhism and East Asian cultures.

The Toshihide Numata Book Award in Buddhism is awarded on an annual basis to an outstanding book or books in the area of Buddhist studies. The selection is made by an external committee that is appointed annually. This year's winner is Professor Roy Tzohar (Tel Aviv University) for his book A Yogācāra Buddhist Theory of Metaphor (Oxford University Press).

BERKELEY — The Center for Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, is pleased to announce that the winner of the 2018 Toshihide Numata Book Award in Buddhism is Professor Roy Tzohar (Tel Aviv University) for his book: A Yogācāra Buddhist Theory of Metaphor (Oxford University Pr

2018 Lecture and Seminar Series

Wednesday, March 14, 2018, 5 pm
Annual Lecture by Evan Thompson
Meditation and Nonconceptual Awareness Perspectives from Buddhist Philosophy and Cognitive Science
Toll Room, Alumni House, UC Berkeley

Jack Meng-Tat Chia is a Senior Tutor in the Department of History at the National University of Singapore and currently a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Center for Buddhist Studies, University of California, Berkeley. Born and raised in Singapore, he received his MA in East Asian Studies from Harvard University, and his PhD in History from Cornell University. He is currently working on his book manuscript, entitled Diaspora's Dharma: Buddhism and Modernity across the South China Sea.

Approximately 70 people attended the 2018 Khyentse Lecture by Prof. Brandon Dotson (Georgetown University).

In Tibet, various forms of divination persist both within and alongside the Buddhist and Bon religions. Excavated divination texts from Dunhuang and from other Silk Road sites furnish us with traces of the dynamic processes by which Buddhism absorbed various divination techniques practiced in 8th to 10th centuries.

Professor Jacqueline I. Stone was presented with the Toshihide Numata Book Award on the afternoon of Friday, December 1, 2017. The prize presentation included a keynote by the author and a symposium with talks by Professors James Benn (McMaster University), Gregory Schopen (UCLA), and Mark Blum (UC Berkeley).

During a ceremony at the Alumni House, the Center for Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and Bukkyō Dendō Kyōkai (Numata Foundation) presented the 2016 Toshihide Numata Book Award to Professor Janet Gyatso (Harvard Divinity School) for Being Buddhist in a Human World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet (Columbia University Press, 2015)

BERKELEY — The Center for Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, is pleased to announce that the winners of the 2015 Toshihide Numata Book Award are Lothar Ledderose and Sun Hua for their edited volume, Buddhist Stone Sutras in China, Sichuan Province, Volume 1 (Wiesbaden/Hangzhou: Harrassowitz Verlag/China Academy of Art Press, 2014).

BERKELEY — The Center for Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, is pleased to announce two winners of the 2014 Toshihide Numata Book Award: Erik Braun, Professor of Reli

This conference was made possible by a grant from The Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation and is dedicated to the exploration of the methodological underpinnings of the current encounter between Buddhism and cognitive science.

BERKELEY — The Center for Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, is pleased to announce that the 2013 Toshihide Numata Book Award has been awarded to Daniel Arnold, Associate Professor of the Philosophy of Religions at the University of Chicago Divinity School, for his book Brains, Bu

During the past few decades, the discovery, cataloguing, and partial publication of important Tibetan manuscript collections has substantially transformed our view of the intellectual and religious history of Tibet. Important developments about which we were almost entirely ignorant only a decade ago may now be studied in detail thanks to copious newly available documentation.

BERKELEY — The Center for Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, is pleased to announce that the 2011 Toshihide Numata Book Award has been awarded to Todd Lewis and Subarna Man Tuladhar for their jointly authored book, Sugata Saurabha: An Epic Poem from Nepal on the Life of the Buddha by Chittadhar Hridaya (Oxford U

BERKELEY - The Center for Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, is pleased to announce that the 2010 Toshihide Numata Book Award has been awarded to Professor James Robson of Harvard University for his 2009 book Power of Place: The Religious Landscape of the Southern Sacred Peak (Nanyue) in Medieval China (Harvard University Asia Center).