CBS Announces the 2020 Toshihide Numata Book Award

September 11, 2020

BERKELEY — The Center for Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, is pleased to announce that the winner of the 2020 Toshihide Numata Book Award in Buddhism is Roger R. Jackson (John W. Nason Professor of Asian Studies and Religion, Emeritus, Carleton College), for his book Mind Seeing Mind: Mahāmudrā and the Geluk Tradition (Wisdom Publications, 2019).

The Toshihide Numata Book Award in Buddhism is presented 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. The members of this year’s committee had strong praise for Mind Seeing Mind, with one reviewer calling it “a model study of a central topic within Indo-Tibetan intellectual and contemplative history that is a must-read for anybody interested in the field.” Reviews also commented that it was “exhaustive, leaving nothing to be desired,” and that it “will become one of the central works of reference for scholars of Tibetan Buddhism interested in the intellectual and practice histories of the Kagyu and Gelukpa domains.”  

Professor Jackson will be presented with the Toshihide Numata Book Award on Friday November 6, 2020, via a webinar. The award presentation will begin at noon Pacific time. Following the  presentation, Professor Jackson will deliver a keynote lecture, titled “Mahāmudrā Embodied and Disembodied: Reflections on Tibetan and Western Uses of the Great Seal.” The lecture will be followed by a panel with four presentations by specialists in the field:
• 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."

More information about the Toshihide Numata Book Award in Buddhism, including names of past recipients of the Award, can be found here