2013-2014 Events

2013-2014 Events

Center for Buddhist Studies 2013-2014 Events

Thursday, May 8, 2014, 4 pm
Tibet in the 1930s: The Emergence of Buddhist Modernism
Jann M. Ronis, Lecturer, East Asian Languages and Cultures and Religious Studies, UC Berkeley
Conference Room, Institute of East Asian Studies, 2223 Fulton Street, 6 floor
Cosponsored by the Institute of East Asian Studies, the Center for Chinese Studies, and the Center for Buddhist Studies

 The Emergence of Buddhist Modernism

This talk will recount Theos Bernard's travels and studies in the 1930s in Tibetan regions, with an eye towards developments in religion, literature, and politics taking place at the time. In addition to narrating Bernard's daring voyages and meetings with remarkable Tibetans, attention will also be devoted to important figures in the rise of new forms of culture and society. Gendun Chopel (1903-1951) is considered the father of modern Tibetan literature and religious sensibilities and was a close associate of Theos Bernard's. Notable examples of his modernist poetry and artwork will be considered. Furthermore, this lecture will follow the evolution of Buddhist modernism into the twenty-first century through a first-hand survey of progressive Tibetan thinkers and institutions in present-day Chinese-controlled Tibet.

This talk is presented in conjunction with the exhibit "Tibet in the 1930s: Photographs from the Theos Bernard Archive," currently on view at the Institute of East Asian Studies. For further information on this exhibit, see the exhibit website.


Wednesday, May 7, 2014, 4 pm
New Discoveries in Sogdian Art and Culture from Central Asia to China
Matteo Compareti, Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University
Conference Room, Institute of East Asian Studies, 2223 Fulton Street, 6 floor
Cosponsored by the Institute of East Asian Studies, the Center for Chinese Studies, and the Center for Buddhist Studies

Talk followed by a panel discussion.

In the last fifteen years, knowledge about the Sogdians along the so-called "Silk Road" has expanded thanks to archaeological discoveries in Central Asia and China. The discovery of "cemeteries for foreigners" in the outskirts of the ancient Chinese capital Xi'an and other sites of present-day China revealed also some tombs that belonged to Sogdian immigrants who were active during the sixth century. Despite the adoption of Chinese cultural traits, these burials displayed some typical Iranian elements which indicated the Sogdians complex religious and cultural traditions.

Greco-Roman, Chinese, Indian and even Mesopotamian elements can be traced among the Sogdians both in their homeland and in the colonies abroad, not to mention Hunnic and Turkic ones. Monumental mural paintings discovered at the three main Sogdian sites of Varakhsha, Afrasyab and Penjikent still present several interpretative problems that can now be compared to visual narratives on Sino-Sogdian funerary monuments, especially, those ones from Xi'an. Moreover, eighth-century Sogdian paintings display elements found commonly in Islamic book illustrations of the late thirteenth-early fourteenth centuries onwards.

This talk will present some of the most recent discoveries and interpretations in this fascinating field of study, with particular attention to Sogdian secular and religious visual production.

Matteo Compareti completed his M.A. at Venice University "Ca' Foscari" in 1999 and his PhD at Naples University "L'Orientale" in 2005. His main field is Silk Road studies, in particular the relationships between Iranian peoples such as the Persians and the Sogdians and neighboring cultures and civilizations. At present, his investigations focus mainly on the iconography of Zoroastrian divinities in both pre-Islamic Persia and Central Asia. Some of his most recent publications include the following articles and books:

Samarcanda Centro del Mondo. Proposte di lettura del ciclo pittorico di Afrāsyāb, Milano-Udine, 2009 (forthcoming English edition : Samarkand the center of the world, Mazda, 2014).

The Painted Vase of Merv in the Context of Central Asian Pre-Islamic Funerary Tradition, The Silk Road, 9, 2011, pp. 26-41.

The So-Called Senmurv in Iranian Art: A Reconsideration of an Old Theory, in: Loquentes linguis. Linguistic and Oriental Studies in Honour of Fabrizio A. Pennacchietti, eds. P. G. Borbone, A. Mengozzi, M. Tosco, Wiesbaden, 2006, pp. 185-200.


Friday–Saturday, April 25–26, 2014
Buddhism, Mind, and Cognitive Science
Conference
Toll Room, Alumni House, University of California, Berkeley

This conference is made possible by a grant from The Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation.

This conference is dedicated to the exploration of the methodological underpinnings of the current encounter between Buddhism and cognitive science. Recently, this encounter has been criticized for failing to take account of the historical and cultural complexities of Buddhist thought and practice, failing to reflect the most recent developments in cognitive science, neglecting the hermeneutic issues that complicate attempts to relate traditional Buddhist psychology to contemporary scientific theories, and neglecting traditional Buddhist epistemologies that are incompatible with the "neurophysicalism" that motivates some of the scientific research. Given such critiques, how might one proceed? Is there some way to mitigate the methodological (historical, hermeneutic, philosophical) quandaries that threaten to unravel the Buddhism-cognitive science dialogue? Is there a way to bring these disparate traditions into conversation without sacrificing the intellectual depth and sophistication of each? Or is such an endeavor misguided in principle? Is it merely another in a long history of attempts to legitimize Buddhism by claiming its compatibility with science? Our interest lies not in rehearsing the critique, but instead in exploring how, if at all, the encounter might move forward.

Friday, April 25, 2014
Toll Room, Alumni House
Session 1: 4:00 – 7:00 pm

Welcome and introduction to the conference: 
•  Robert Sharf (Buddhist Studies), University of California, Berkeley

Plenary talks:
•  Evan Thompson (Philosophy), University of British Columbia
•  Clifford Saron (Neuroscience), University of California, Davis

Open discussion

Saturday, April 26, 2014
Toll Room, Alumni House
Session 2: 9:00 am – 12:30 pm

Chair: Robert Sharf (Buddhist Studies), University of California, Berkeley

Presentations:
•  John Dunne (Buddhist Studies), Emory University Antoine Lutz
•  Lawrence Barsalou (Psychology), Emory University
•  Antoine Lutz (Neuroscience), Neuroscience Research Center, Lyon
•  Rebecca Todd (Psychology), University of British Columbia
•  Laurence Kirmayer (Psychiatry), McGill University
•  Carol Worthman (Anthropology), Emory University

Saturday, April 26, 2014
Toll Room, Alumni House
Session 3: 2:00 – 6:30 pm

Chair: Evan Thompson (Philosophy), University of British Columbia

Presentations:
•  Christian Coseru (Philosophy), College of Charleston
•  Thomas Metzinger (Philosophy), Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz
•  Dan Arnold (Philosophy of Religion), University of Chicago
•  Georges Dreyfus (Buddhist Studies), Williams College
•  Robert Sharf (Buddhist Studies), University of California, Berkeley
•  John Tresch (History and Sociology of Science), University of Pennsylvania


Thursday, April 17, 2014, 5 pm
Early Indian Mahāyāna: Thoughts and Questions
Peter Skilling, École Française d'Extrême-Orient, Bangkok
Conference Room, Institute of East Asian Studies, 2223 Fulton Street, 6th floor

 Thoughts and Questions

The evolution of early Mahāyāna is a topic that perennially fascinates, perhaps because there are more questions than answers. The recent publication and ongoing study of newly discovered manuscripts from Gandhāra have already radically transformed our picture of early Mahāyāna. We now have physical evidence for the development of Buddhist practice and metaphysics in the Northwest of the Indian subcontinent from about Buddhist Era 400 or the beginning of the Christian Era. The manuscripts include a Prakrit Perfection of Wisdom (Prajñāpāramitā) and an unknown sutra from Bajaur (Pakistan), as well as fragments of several other Mahāyāna sutras like the Fortunate Aeon (Bhadrakalpika) and the Meditation on the Buddhas of the Present (Pratyutpanna Samādhi Sūtra). In addition, excavations in India in recent decades have uncovered numerous new Buddhist sites, including major stupa complexes like Deorkothar (Rewa, MP), Bhon (Maharashtra), Phanigiri (AP), and Kanaganahalli (Karnataka). These discoveries completely revise the archaeological map of Indian Buddhism. In short, the old theories and the old textbooks are now very much out of date. With this situation — which I term the "revolution in Buddhist Studies" — in mind, I will discuss some of the new finds and their implications for the history of Buddhist thought.

Peter Skilling is a professor at the French School of Asian Studies (Directeur d’Études, École Française d'Extrême-Orient [EFEO]) in Bangkok, Thailand. He received his doctorate in Religious Sciences from the École Pratique des Hautes Études (Paris, France). From 1988 to 1996 he was a Research Fellow at The Pali Text Society (Oxford, England) where he also served as a curator from 1996 to 2002. From 2002 to 2006, he was a Research Fellow at the Lumbini International Research Institute (Lumbini, Nepal). He currently is the President of the Fragile Palm Leaves Foundation (Bangkok, Thailand), the Regional Representative of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, and the Thailand representative to The Pali Text Society.


Monday, April 14, 2014, 3:00–5:00 p.m.
New Perspectives in Dunhuang Studies
Heyns Room, Faculty Club

The Dunhuang Grottoes on the ancient silk road, a designated UNESCO World Heritage site, are a splendid treasure house of art from Ancient China. For more than 100 years, the discovery, conservation and study of those grottoes have attracted worldwide attention.

3:00 — Opening remarks
Patricia Berger, Professor, History of Art Department, U.C. Berkeley

3:05 — Current Status and Emerging Developments in the Preservation of the Dunhuang Grottoes
Xudong Wang, Deputy Director, Dunhuang Academy

3:40 — New Paleographic Approaches to the Tibetan Manuscripts from Dunhuang
Jacob Dalton, Associate Professor and Khyentse Foundation Distinguished Professor of Tibetan Buddhism, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, U.C. Berkeley

4:00 — Dunhuang and the Silk Road
Yuanlin Zhang, Research Fellow, Dunhuang Academy

4:20 — Sogdians in China: Further Reflections
Albert Dien, Professor Emeritus, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Stanford University

4:40 — Discussion
Peter Zhou, Director, C. V. Starr East Asian Library, U.C. Berkeley
Patricia Berger, Professor, History of Art Department, U.C. Berkeley

5:00 — Reception

Event Contact: art_history@berkeley.edu, 510‑643‑7290

Co-sponsors: Institute of East Asian Studies, Department of History of Art, Library, Center for Buddhist Studies, Center for Chinese Studies


Friday–Sunday, March 14–16, 2014
The Evolution of Tantric Ritual
Conference
Friday – Saturday: Toll Room, Alumni House, University of California, Berkeley
Sunday: 370 Dwinelle Hall, University of California, Berkeley

The Evolution of Tantric Ritual image

The advent of tantric religion in seventh- and eighth-century India changed the face of religious practice across all of Asia. At the heart of these transformations stood the new ritual technologies that the tantras and their attendant manuals introduced. The tantras included new myths, cosmologies, deities, and rhetorical strategies of rulership, secrecy, and transgression, but all of these elements referred to, and revolved around, the complex rituals that formed the core of tantric religiosity. This conference turns a lens on the early development of these rites. The heyday of tantric ritual development was the seventh to the eleventh centuries, and these years will be our principal focus. By bringing together textual scholars working across a range of religious traditions in Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese, we seek to investigate how specific ritual procedures or sequences change over time, across sectarian boundaries, and between cultural regions. Through our discussions, we will attempt to shed light on the early evolution of this highly complex and esoteric religious movement.

Conference Schedule

Friday (Toll Room, Alumni House)

5:00: Opening remarks

5:15-6:30: Keynote by Ronald Davidson, Fairfield University
      Pre-tantric Traditions, Ritual Fluidity, and the Problem of Mudrās

Saturday (Toll Room, Alumni House)

9:30-12:00: Brahmanical Roots

Shingo Einoo, University of Tokyo
      Ritual Devices to Become a God in Vedic and post-Vedic Rituals

Marko Geslani, Emory University
      The Dreams of the King: On the Overnight Structure of 
      Royal Consecrations

Shaman Hatley, Concordia University
      The Sword's Edge Observance (Asidhārāvrata) and the Early 
      History of Tantric Coital Ritual

1:00-3:00: Tantric Intertextuality

Ryan Damron, UC Berkeley
      Purāṇic Inflections: Visions of the Mahādevī in a Buddhist Yoginī Tantra

Paul Hackett, Columbia University
      On the Construction of a Sādhana from a Root Tantra: A Case 
      Study in the Guhyasamāja System

Kurt Keutzer, UC Berkeley
      Evolution of Bon Ritual around the Figure of dBal-chen Ge-khod

3:00-3:15: Coffee break

3:15-5:30: The Tantric Body

Péter Szántó, University of Hamburg/University of Oxford
      How to Organize a Gaṇacakra?

David Gray, Santa Clara University
      Body Mandalas in the Yoginīītantras

Yael Bentor, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
      The Body in Buddhist Tantric Meditations

Sunday (370 Dwinelle Hall)

9:30-12:30: The Sexual Yogas

Kikuya Ryūta, Tohoku University
      Two Steps (dvikrama-) in the Jñānapāda School of Indian Tantric 
      Buddhism

Jacob Dalton, UC Berkeley
      Domesticating Sexual Union: A Case Study from Dunhuang

Christian Wedemeyer, University of Chicago
      Ritualization of Transgressive Observances: Vratadānavidhi-s in 
      the Guhyasamāja Traditions

Harunaga Isaacson, University of Hamburg
      Title TBA

Download the abstracts here.


Thursday, March 6, 2014, 5 pm
Some Questions as to the Nature of Your Existence
(2007 India/Austria, single-channel video installation, 26 minutes)
Film Screening and Panel Discussion with directors Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam
Institute of East Asian Studies, 2223 Fulton Street, 6th floor conference room

A single-channel video installation which explores the rarefied world of Tibetan Buddhist debate. Built around three sets of debates dealing with the basic Buddhist concepts of impermanence, lack of self-existence, and dependent-arising, the piece allows the viewer an opportunity to participate in this unique dialectical practice while highlighting its relevance to the modern world.

Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam have been making films since their student days in the San Francisco Bay Area in the early 80s, including several documentaries, video installations and one dramatic feature film.

Ritu Sarin studied at Miranda House in Delhi University and went on to finish her studies at California College of the Arts in Oakland. Tenzing Sonam was born in Darjeeling in India to Tibetan refugee parents. He studied at St Stephens College, Delhi University, and then specialized in documentary filmmaking at the Graduate School of Journalism, University of California, Berkeley.

http://flim.potala.cz/some-questions-nature-your-existence


Monday, March 3, 2014, 5 pm
A Hiatus in the History of Chinese Buddhist Translation: What Happened in the Second Half of the Fifth Century?
Funayama Toru, Shinnyo‑en Visiting Professor, Stanford University
3335 Dwinelle Hall

The work of translating Indian Buddhist texts into Chinese began in the Han Dynasty and continued into the Ming and Qing, with much of the work being done between the mid-second and early eleventh centuries. But the translation activities did not proceed without interruption; there were at least two remarkable periods in which translation came to a halt. The first was in the latter half of the fifth century. In his talk, Professor Funayama will explore the reasons why the translation work (as well as the migration of Indian monks to China) temporarily ceased at this time, and the significance of this hiatus for our understanding of the Sinification of Buddhism.

Funayama Toru is Professor in the Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University, and Shinnyo-en Visiting Professor of Winter Term 2014 at Stanford. He specializes in medieval Chinese Buddhism in the Six Dynasties period, as well as in the scholastic tradition of the Yogācāra school of Indian Buddhism during the sixth through tenth centuries. His recent works include Making Sutras into 'Classics' (jingdian): How Buddhist Scriptures Were Translated into Chinese (in Japanese, 2013) and a four volume Japanese translation of the Biographies of Eminent Monks (Kōsōden) coauthored with Yoshikawa Tadao (2009–2010).


Thursday, February 20, 2014, 5 pm
The Buddhist Site of Mes Aynak, Afghanistan
Zemaryalai Tarzi, Professor Emeritus, Strasbourg University, France
Institute of East Asian Studies, 2223 Fulton Street, 6th floor conference room

The Buddhist Site of Mes Aynak, Afghanistan

The site of Mes Aynak, Afghanistan, consists of an ensemble of ancient Buddhist settlements presently threatened by the modern exploitation of an adjacent copper mine by a joint Chinese-Afghan venture. The Buddhist art of Mes Aynak has been the object of meticulous attention by archaeologists and art historians, and several monastic settlements and hundreds of sculptures have been excavated. Stylistically, it is closely linked to the Kabul-Kapisa schools of art and, in a broader sense, is in keeping with the Central Asian art of the Hindukush, such as that of Hadda and Gandhara.

Although the chronology of the Buddhist settlements has yet to be determined, most of the monuments seem to date from the reign of the Kushano-Sassanids and the Hephthalites. However, to date no palace or administrative buildings have been unearthed, making it difficult to assign the site to a particular period of dynastic rule. One possibility is that Mes Aynak was managed by an independent commercial Buddhist brotherhood that had a monopoly on the copper, gold and glass mines. In this regard, it is interesting to note that the most impressive buildings are monastic.

Zemaryalai Tarzi, Professor Emeritus at Strasbourg University, is currently President of the Association for the Protection of Afghan Archaeology (APAA), the Director of the DIRI/APAA Mes Aynak Mission, Director for the French Excavations at Bamiyan, and a member of the UMR 7044 at the CNRS (MICHA-Strasbourg). Born in Kabul in 1939, Professor Tarzi has devoted his life to the protection and preservation of the archaeological heritage of Afghanistan, working as former Director for the Archaeology and Conservation of Historical Monuments of Afghanistan, as well as the former Director General for the Archaeology Institute of Afghanistan. He is the author of three theses and hundreds of articles and books.


Thursday, February 13, 2014, 5 pm
2014 Khyentse Lecture
Buddhist women as patrons and innovators: two Tibetan examples from the 15th and the 16th century
Hildegard Diemberger, Pembroke College, Cambridge
The Alumni House, Toll Room, University of California, Berkeley


Note: Due to weather conditions, there will be a new speaker for the Khyentse Lecture. Details are above. The time and place remain the same.

Thursday, February 13, 2014, 5 pm
2014 Khyentse Lecture
Creative Buddhas, Gnosticism, and Pure Lands in Renaissance Tibet — Note new topic above.
David Germano, Department of Religious Studies, University of Virginia — Note new speaker above.
The Alumni House, Toll Room, University of California, Berkeley

Creative Buddhas, Gnosticism, and Pure Lands in Renaissance Tibet

The Great Perfection (rdzogs chen) is historically one of the most creative developments to emerge in Tibetan Buddhism and Bön religious traditions. In the Buddhist forms, the classical history runs from the ninth to thirteenth centuries and culminates in the fourteen-century corpus of Longchenpa. This six-century process is marked by a dramatic transformation occurring from the eleventh century onwards with the emergence of the Seminal Heart (snying thig) form of the Great Perfection. The external markers of this transformation are clear: contemplative and ritual practices abound in a tradition previously marked by their absence, a plethora of new tantric themes, a complex set of new narrative traditions, and a systematic philosophical discourse ranging over a broad array of topics. This talk will examine the inner dynamic of this transformation and argue that at its heart is a model of divine creation modeled upon the efflorescence of pure lands from a divine Buddha’s primordial gnosis (ye shes, jñāna). These innovations, while extensive and intrinsically Tibetan in character, are clearly just as deeply grounded in the minutiae of Indian Buddhist thought, practice, and narrative, and constitute probably the most interesting strand in the larger Tibetan fashioning of a philosophical tantra movement. We will look at nine different contexts — cosmogony through eschatology — in which this model is apparent.

David Germano teaches and researches Tibetan and Buddhist Studies at the University of Virginia, where he directs the Tibet Center (www.uvatibetcenter.org), the UVa Contemplative Sciences Center (www.uvacontemplation.org), the Tibetan and Himalayan Library (www.thlib.org, THL), the Tibet Participatory Culture Initiative, the Contemplative Sciences Center (www.uvacontemplation.org), and SHANTI (Social Sciences, Humanities, and Arts Network of Technological Initiatives, www.shanti.virginia.edu). His personal scholarship focuses on the history of Tibetan culture and Buddhism from the ninth to fourteenth century with a special focus on esoteric religious movements. In THL, he has directed an international digital library for facilitating interdisciplinary, collaborative, and engaged scholarship in Tibetan Studies; with the Tibet Center he has directed extensive exchange programs between China and the US in relationship to Tibetan communities on diverse topics including higher education, tourism, education to employment, and more. Under the Tibet Participatory Culture Initiative, he is working with others to use technology creatively to help support bridges between academics and development projects, and to enable local communities to use modern tools as vehicles for their own self-expression and empowerment. With the UVa Contemplative Sciences Center, he is coordinating a pan-University exploration of contemplation in learning and research contexts. Germano is currently returning to work on a fourfold set of works that constitute a comprehensive analysis of the Great Perfection Seminal Heart (rdzogs chen snying thig) tradition from its formation to its full expression in the fourteenth century with the corpus of Longchenpa, one of the greatest of all Tibetan Buddhist authors. This includes a translation of his major work, The Treasury of Words and Meanings (tshig don mdzod), a historical study, a philosophical study, and a literary study of the tradition.


Thursday, February 6, 2014, 5 pm
The ABCs of Emptiness: the Buddhist Abecedary in the Great Lamp of the Dharma Dhāraṇī Scripture
Ryan Overbey, Shinjo Ito Postdoctoral Fellow, UC Berkeley
Institute of East Asian Studies, 2223 Fulton Street, 6th floor conference room

The ABCs of Emptiness

How did Buddhists do things with words? The Great Lamp of the Dharma Dhāraṇī Scripture, an obscure Mahāyāna text extant only in one sixth-century Chinese translation, transmits a dhāraṇī, a short magical spell which transforms the reciter into a perfect preacher of the dharma (dharmabhāṇaka). The Great Lampattributes the power of the dhāraṇī to the "syllable portals" (akṣaramukha), the ability of empty syllables, when combined, to form an infinite array of meanings. While Buddhist thinkers have always engaged deeply with problems of language and representation, in the early centuries CE we see an explosion of new discussions about the power of syllables to preserve and produce Buddhist ideas. In this talk I explore how the Great Lamptheorizes its own dhāraṇī, and how this fascinating text positions itself within the broader tradition of the Buddhist abecedary.

Ryan Overbey studies the intellectual and ritual history of Buddhism, with particular focus on early medieval Buddhist spells and ritual manuals. He studied at Brown University (AB in Classics & Sanskrit and Religious Studies, 2001) and at Harvard University (PhD in the Study of Religion, 2010). He worked as an academic researcher for Prof. Dr. Lothar Ledderose’s project on Stone Sūtras at the Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, and has also served as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the College of the Holy Cross. His dissertation explored the ideological and ritual construction of the "preacher of the dharma" (dharmabhāṇaka) in the Great Lamp of the Dharma Dhāraṇī Scripture, a massive text extant only in a single sixth-century Chinese translation.


Friday, January 31, 2014, 3:00 pm
Enacting Buddhism: Perspectives on Cambodian Buddhist Painting
Panel discussion
IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton Street, 6th floor

 Perspectives on Cambodian Buddhist Painting

Guest speakers will discuss the place of Cambodian temple painting in culture, custom, and social life, as well as the larger context of Southeast Asian religious arts. This panel is organized in conjunction with the exhibit Framing the Sacred: Cambodian Buddhist Painting, on view at the Institute of East Asian Studies through March 20, 2014.

Erik W. Davis, Religious Studies, Macalester College

Trent Walker, Ph.D. Candidate, Group in Buddhist Studies, UC Berkeley

Teri Yamada, Asian and Asian American Studies, California State University - Long Beach

Joel Montague, Collector of Cambodian Buddhist Art

Pattaratorn Chirapravati, Art Department, California State University, Sacramento

Moderator: Caverlee Cary, Institute of East Asian Studies, UC Berkeley

Co-sponsors: Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Buddhist Studies, Center for Southeast Asia Studies, Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies.

See more information about this event here.


Monday, January 27, 2014, 5 pm
Why Birds are Fish and Fish are Birds: Glimpses of an Archaic Tibetan Cosmology?
Charles Ramble, École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE), Paris
Institute of East Asian Studies, 2223 Fulton Street, 6th floor conference room

Green-glazed Pottery Architectural Ornament in the Shape of Makara. Xixia Dynasty. (National Museum of China, Beijing)

Green-glazed Pottery Architectural Ornament in the 
Shape of Makara. Xixia Dynasty. (National Museum of 
China, Beijing)

Literary and ethnographic studies of Tibet reveal numerous variants of a multi-tiered cosmos with different natural or supernatural entities inhabiting the vertically-arranged strata. However, there is also less obvious evidence of a different world-view in which opposed poles — especially zenith and nadir — are reflections of each other. Possible traces of such a cosmology can be found in a variety of domains: folktales, the decoration of the Lhasa Jo khang, the etiological myth of the Tibetan kings, the cult of Avalokiteśvara and, finally, the ancestral Tibetan kinship terminology. The traces are therefore widely dispersed, and the evidence inconclusive, but the presentation suggest that, even with these fragments, we may be able to trace the shadowy contours of a Tibetan view of the world that has now been largely forgotten.

Charles Ramble is Director of Studies (directeur d’études) at the École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE), Paris, and a member of the Centre de Recherche sur les Civilisations de l’Asie Orientale (CRCAO). After reading Psychology and Anthropology at the University of Durham, UK, he went on to pursue a D.Phil in Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford. Following two years of post-doctoral research in Nepal he remained in the country to work in wildlife conservation and local development, but returned to academic life to participate in German-funded, and later Austrian-funded, research projects on Tibetan societies. From 2000 to 2010 he held the position of University Lecturer in Tibetan and Himalayan Studies that had recently been established in Oxford. From 2006–2013 he was President of the International Association for Tibetan Studies. Since 2010 he has been Directeur d’Études at the EPHE in Paris, and also holds the position of University Research Lecturer at the University of Oxford. His publications include The Navel of the Demoness: Tibetan Buddhism and Civil Religion in Highland Nepal (New York, 2008), and Tibetan Sources for a Social History of Mustang(Nepal): Volume 1, The Archive of Te (Halle, 2008).


Thursday, January 23, 2014, 5 pm
Expressions of the Inexpressible: The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism
Robert E. Buswell Jr., University of California, Los Angeles
Donald S. Lopez Jr., University of Michigan
Institute of East Asian Studies, 2223 Fulton Street, 6th floor conference room

Expressions of the Inexpressible

The new Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, in 1,304 pages and 1.2 million words, is the most authoritative and wide-ranging reference of its kind ever produced in English. Its more than 5,000 alphabetical entries explain the key terms, doctrines, practices, texts, authors, deities, and schools of Buddhism across six major canonical languages and traditions: Sanskrit, Pāli, Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean; the dictionary also includes selected terms from Burmese, Khmer, Lao, Mongolian, Newar, Sinhalese, Thai, and Vietnamese. The entries take an encyclopedic approach to the religion, with short essays that explore the extended meaning and significance of the terms in greater depth than a conventional dictionary. At this book launch event, both authors will be in attendance to discuss new and emerging perspectives on Buddhism that may be gleaned from the dictionary. They will also present a Top Ten list of misconceptions about Buddhism, and will explain how these issues are addressed in the dictionary.

Robert E. Buswell Jr. holds the Irving and Jean Stone Endowed Chair in Humanities at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he is also Distinguished Professor of Buddhist Studies and founding director of the Center for Buddhist Studies. He is the editor-in-chief of the two-volume Encyclopedia of Buddhism(MacMillan Reference, 2004) and the author of Cultivating Original Enlightenment (University of Hawaii Press, 2007) The Zen Monastic Experience (Princeton, 1992), among many other books.

Donald S. Lopez Jr. is the Arthur E. Link Distinguished University Professor of Buddhist and Tibetan Studies at the University of Michigan and chair of the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures. He is the author of Prisoners of Shangri‑La (University of Chicago, 1998), Elaborations on Emptiness (Princeton University Press, 1996), and From Stone to Flesh (University of Chicago, 2013), among many other books.


Friday, November 15, 2013, 3-7 pm
Toshihide Numata Book Award Presentation and Symposium
Award Recipient: Daniel A. Arnold, The University of Chicago Divinity School
Jodo Shinshu Center, 2140 Durant Avenue, Berkeley

 The Problem of Intentionality in Classical Buddhist and Cognitive-Scientific Philosophy of Mind

The 2013 Toshihide Numata Book Award award winner is Daniel A. Arnold (The University of Chicago Divinity School) for his book Brains, Buddhas and Believing: The Problem of Intentionality in Classical Buddhist and Cognitive-Scientific Philosophy of Mind(Columbia University Press, 2012).

Program:

3:10 pm
Welcome on Behalf of Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai
Rev. Brian Nagata

3:15 pm
Award Presentation
Robert Sharf, Chair, Center for Buddhist Studies

3:20 pm
Keynote Address
Nāgārjuna's Critique of Motion as Philosophy of Mind
Daniel A. Arnold, University of Chicago

4:20
Coffee/Tea Break

4:30 pm
Symposium
Taking Buddhist Philosophy of Mind Seriously
Daniel A. Arnold, University of Chicago
John Taber, University of New Mexico
Evan Thompson, 2014 Visiting Numata Professor, UCB
Parimal Patil, Harvard University


Thursday, October 31, 2013, 5 pm
Daoist Vocabulary in Early Chinese Buddhist Translations? A Reappraisal
Jan Nattier, Hua Hin, Thailand
3335 Dwinelle Hall

It is commonly held that when Buddhism was first transmitted to China, this foreign religion was understood — or rather, misunderstood — through a Daoist conceptual lens. The first Buddhist translators, so we are told, made free use of Daoist terminology, creating confusion thaat was only cleared up centuries later, when Kumārajīva and his colleagues began to eliminate such terms from Buddhist discourse. According to this scenario, Chinese Buddhist translations followed a clear trajectory of "progress," with the inappropriate choices made by early translators being rectified in the more careful work of their successors. This paper examines some of the indigenous religious terminology used during the first two centuries of Buddhist translation activity in China. As it hopes to show, the actual pattern of usage is much more complicated — and more interesting — than the simplistic picture of the early appropriation, and subsequent abandonment, of "Daoist" religious terms.

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 under the Committee on Inner Asian and Altaic Studies (specializing in classical Mongolian and Tibetan). She has taught at Macalester College, the University of Hawaii, Stanford University, Indiana University, and the University of Tokyo, in addition to serving as a research professor at the International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology (Soka University). Her publications include Once Upon a Future Time: Studies in a Buddhist Prophecy of Decline (on Buddhist predictions of the decline and disappearance of Buddhism), A Few Good Men: The Bodhisattva Path according to the Inquiry of Ugra (on early Mahāyāna Buddhism), and A Guide to the Earliest Chinese Buddhist Translations: Texts from the Eastern Han and Three Kingdoms Periods, as well as a number of articles on early Mahāyāna Buddhism, Chinese Buddhist translations, and Buddhism in Central Asia. She is now living and working in Hua Hin, Thailand, where she is engaged in the study of 2nd and 3rd century Chinese Buddhist translations.


Saturday, October 26, 2013, 9 am - 5 pm
The Study of Jainism: A Symposium in Honor of Prof. Padmanabh Jaini's 90th Birthday
220 Stephens Hall

The symposium brings together a select group of leading experts of Jainism from Europe and the US who work in different arenas of Jain Studies and represent different disciplines, including textual studies, anthropology, history, and art history. They will present papers on different aspects of Jainism drawing upon their current research. In this way the current state of Jain Studies will be brought to bear in its disciplinary breadth. This is to allow for discussions on past accomplishments and also the challenges and the new directions that may be envisaged for this important and still rather neglected field of study.

The symposium is organized in honor of Prof. Padmanabh Jaini who has pioneered the study of Jainism in the English speaking world. His The Jaina Path of Purification (first published in 1979) has brought the study and knowledge of Jainism to a broader English speaking public, and his numerous further publications — such as his book Gender and Salvation: Jaina Debates on the Spiritual Liberation of Women (1991) and his Collected papers on Jaina Studies (2000) — have made him one of the leading scholar in this field. Even as he is about to become a nonagenarian he continues to work and publish at the forefront of Jain Studies, and will also present himself.

Participants:

  • Prof. Christopher Chapple, Indic and Comparative Theology at Loyola Marymount University
  • Prof. John Cort, Director of Denison University Department of Religion
  • Prof. Paul Dundas, Reader in Sanskrit at the University of Edinburgh
  • Dr. Peter Flügel, Chair of the Centre for Jaina Studies at SOAS, University of London
  • Prof. Phyllis Granoff, Religious Studies - Yale University
  • Dr. Shalin Jain, S.G.T.B. Khalsa College, University of Delhi
  • Prof. Padmanabh Jaini, Department of South & Southeast Asian Studies, UC Berkeley
  • Prof. Robert Goldman, Department of South & Southeast Asian Studies, UC Berkeley
  • Prof. Olle Qvarnström, Centre for Theology and Religious Studies, Lund University
  • Prof. Alexander von Rospatt, Department of South & Southeast Asian Studies, UC Berkeley
  • Dr. Audrey Truschke, ACLS Fellow at Stanford University
  • Dr. Kristi Wiley, Department of South & Southeast Asian Studies, UC Berkeley

Program:

9:00 — Welcoming Remarks

9:10–10:30

Phyllis Granoff — "The Stages of Life"
Olle Qvarnström — "Jain and Buddhist Critique of Samkhya Philosophy"

10:30–10:50 — Coffee Break

10:50–12:10

Paul Dundas — "Hemacandra Maladharin's Allegorical Narratives"
Padmanabh Jaini — "A South Indian Jaina Rathayatra in Tulu Nadu Jain Bramanical Priests and Brahminisation of Temple Rituals"

12:10–1:10 — Break

1:10–2:30

Peter Flügel — "Wishful Thinking: The Padmavati Shrine at Humcha"
John Cort — "Digambar Jains in Gujarat"

2:30–2:50 — Coffee Break

2:50–4:50

Robert Goldman — "Ahiṃsa Warriors: Epic Heroes and Avatāras in Jaina Narrative Literature"
Kristi Wiley — "Nigodas Revisited"
Alexander von Rospatt — "Beyond Jainism: Reflections on the Survival of Indic Buddhism in Nepal"

Click here to visit the symposium website.


Thursday, October 10, 2013, 5 pm
Śākyamuni Returns to Lumbinī: A Popular Theme in Newar Buddhist Art and Literature
Gudrun Bühnemann, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Institute of East Asian Studies, 2223 Fulton Street, 6th floor conference room

 A Popular Theme in Newar Buddhist Art and Literature lecture

According to Newar Buddhists, Śākyamuni Buddha returned to his birthplace Lumbinī after his enlightenment. Depictions of his journey and visit to Lumbinī date back to the seventeenth century. They show the Buddha riding standing up on a Nāga while being attended by Hindu deities in service to him. The theme, known as the lumbinīyātrā, is represented in numerous paintings and in wood and metal work and became especially popular in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Nepal. This paper traces the history of the lumbinīyātrā by examining descriptions in texts and artistic representations and discusses elements of the yātrā which are also found independently in other contexts. In conclusion, it offers some thoughts on the significance of the theme.

Gudrun Bühnemann is a Professor in the Department of Languages and Cultures of Asia, The University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has published extensively on South Asian iconography and ritual. Details can be found at http://lca.wisc.edu/~gbuhnema/. Her recent books include Buddhist Iconography and Ritual in Paintings and Line Drawings from Nepal (Lumbini International Research Institute, 2008) and The Life of the Buddha: Buddhist and Śaiva Iconography and Visual Narratives in Artists' Sketchbooks from Nepal (Lumbini International Research Institute, 2012).


Saturday, October 5, 2013
Fifth Annual Group in Buddhist Studies Fall Hike and Picnic
Stinson Beach


Fifth Annual Group in Buddhist Studies Fall Hike and Picnic

Fifth Annual Group in Buddhist Studies Fall Hike and Picnic


Thursday, October 3, 2013, 5 pm
The Interpretation of the Past in Modern Chinese Buddhism
John Kieschnick, Stanford University
Institute of East Asian Studies, 2223 Fulton Street, 6th floor conference room

Image for The Interpretation of the Past in Modern Chinese Buddhism

Over 1500 years, Chinese Buddhists developed a distinctive way of writing about the past, informed on the one hand by Buddhist doctrine, and on the other by a strong indigenous tradition of Chinese historiography. In the twentieth century, however, many of the core assumptions of Chinese Buddhist historiography became increasingly difficult to maintain. A new awareness of the history of Buddhism in India, Ceylon and elsewhere suggested that long held Chinese views about, for instance, the dates of the Buddha, were wrong, and the primacy of Mahayana as the last word of the Buddha began to look suspect. At the same time, Chinese academics, under the influence of the latest trends in Germany, Japan and America, championed radical changes in the writing of history — calling for greater rigor in the use of sources and an iconoclastic suspicion of the veracity of texts and events of cherished national history — that had profound implications for the history of Buddhism. In this lecture, I trace the changes in Buddhist historiography, primarily in the writings of Taixu 太虛 (1890-1947) and Yinshun 印順 (1906-2005). The story of their struggles to narrate the Buddhist past in the modern era reveal the exciting opportunities provided by the new ideas that flooded China in the twentieth century, the dangers of a harsh and fickle political environment, and the limitations of their unique social circumstances as erudite monks from humble family backgrounds.

John Kieschnick, Robert H. N. Ho Professor of Buddhist Studies at Stanford University, specializes in the cultural history of Chinese Buddhism. His representative works are The Eminent Monk: Monastic Ideals in Medieval Chinese Buddhist Hagiography (University of Hawai’i Press, 1997) and The Impact of Buddhism on Chinese Material Culture (Princeton, 2003). He is currently writing a book on the place of the past in Chinese Buddhism.


Thursday, September 19, 2013, 5 pm
The Uttaratantra Commentaries in 13th-Century Tibet
Tsering Wangchuk, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of San Francisco
Institute of East Asian Studies, 2223 Fulton Street, 6th floor conference room

The Uttaratantra is an early Indic treatise that discusses the concept of buddha-nature at great length. The text was first translated into Tibetan in the 11th century, and since then Tibetan masters have written a number of commentaries to the treatise from various doctrinal perspectives. This paper focuses mainly on the 13th-century Tibetan commentaries that laid the doctrinal foundation for later Tibetan scholars' formulations of ultimate truth.

Tsering Wangchuk received his PhD from the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. He is an Assistant Professor and the Richard Blum Chair in Himalayan Studies in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of San Francisco. His research interests include the intellectual history of Tibetan Buddhism and the Tibetan diaspora.


Thursday, September 5, 2013, 5 pm
The Self as a Process: Rāmakaṇṭha's Middle Ground Between Brahminical Eternalism and Buddhist Momentariness
Alex Watson, Harvard University
Institute of East Asian Studies, 2223 Fulton Street, 6th floor conference room

 Rāmakaṇṭha's Middle Ground Between Brahminical Eternalism and Buddhist Momentariness lecture

This paper concerns the Buddhist-Brahminical debate about the existence or non-existence of a self. First an analysis is given of what precisely separates the Buddhist and the Brahminical positions. Next the view of Rāmakaṇṭha — a little-studied 10th century Kashmirian thinker, belonging to the tradition of Śaiva Siddhānta — is introduced. We will see how he carves out middle ground between the two protagonists in this debate, and I will argue that those two occupy extreme limits, leading to an unnecessary polarization of the debate. Rāmakaṇṭha's view arguably provides better opposition to Buddhism, since it achieves what the Naiyāyika wants to achieve while making less extravagant metaphysical claims.

At the end I ask which is to be preferred, Rāmakaṇṭha's view or the Buddhist's. I argue that these two views are also unnecessarily polarized, and I outline a different philosophical position, which rejects both the contention that we have an unchanging essence (accepted by all the Brahminical thinkers and by Rāmakaṇṭha), and the contention that we are momentary (which came to be the mainstream view of Buddhist philosophy).

Alex Watson is the Sanskrit Preceptor at Harvard University. His publications include The Self's Awareness of Itself (2006), about the Buddhist-Brahminical Ātman debate, and (with Dominic Goodall and Anjaneya Sarma) An Enquiry into the Nature of Liberation(2013), about twenty different theories concerning liberation (mokṣa) and the nature of the liberated state. After a BA in Western Philosophy and Psychology (University of Oxford), he switched to Indian Philosophy and Sanskrit, completing an MA (SOAS, University of London), MPhil, DPhil and JRF (University of Oxford). He has held research fellowships at the EFEO, Pondicherry, India, a JSPS fellowship at Kyushu University, Japan, and has taught at the University of Vienna.