2004-2005 Events

Monday, April 25, 2005, 12:15 - 1:30 pm
Justin McDaniel
Whither a Buddhist Golden Age? The History of the Burmese in Northern Thailand
IEAS conference room, 2223 Fulton Street, 6th Floor

Co-sponsored by the Center for Southeast Asia Studies.

The Burmese invasion of Northern Thailand in the 1550s is often seen as ushering in a period of decline in Buddhism after its Golden Age from 1400-1550. However, manuscripts, inscriptions, and literary evidence suggest that this was not a period of serious decline and, in fact, the teaching of Buddhism survived and in many cases thrived under Burmese rule. Furthermore, it is difficult to label this period particularly Burmese. Justin McDaniel explores the available evidence and suggests new ways of looking at Buddhist history and development in the region from 1550-1893.

Justin McDaniel received his PhD from Harvard University's Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies in 2003. Presently he teaches Buddhism and Southeast Asian Studies at the University of California, Riverside. His research foci include Lao, Thai, Pali and Sanskrit literature, Southeast Asian Buddhism, ritual studies, manuscript studies, and Southeast Asian history.

Friday, April 15, 2005, 2:00 - 5:30 pm
Second Berkeley-Stanford Buddhist Studies Graduate Student Colloquium
followed by reception
Stanford Humanities Center, 424 Santa Teresa Avenue, Stanford

Jinah Kim (Berkeley)
From Text to Deity: Understanding the advent of Mahayana female deities in the perspective of book-cult

Nancy Lin (Berkeley)
Narrative Strategies in the Avadana Thangkas of Situ Panchen (1700-1774)

Tad Cook (Stanford)
Pivots of Meaning in the Teaching of the Way: An Introduction to the Daojiao yishu

2004 Graduate Student Colloquium

Thursday, April 14, 2005, 5:00 pm
Dina Bangdel, Ohio State University
Myths, Mandalas, and Monuments: Art of the Newar Buddhist Monasteries of Nepal
425 Doe Library

The Newar Buddhist traditions of Nepal serve as the last remaining legacy of Sanskrit Buddhism, still practiced within the South Asian cultural milieu. Contextualizing the art and ritual practices, Dina Bangdel will discuss the iconography of Newar Buddhist monastic architecture, highlighting the relationship of these visual expressions with the larger Tantric traditions as well as with the local cosmogonic myth of Kathmandu Valley.

Dina Bangdel specializes in South Asian as well as Himalayan Art and is currently the Director of Special Collections at Ohio State University. In fall 2005, she will join the faculty at Virginia Commonwealth University as Associate Professor of South Asian art.

Co-sponsored by the Department of Art History.

Friday, April 8, 2005, 5:00 pm
José Cabezón, Department of Religious Studies, UC Santa Barbara
The Sera Project: Representing a Tibetan Monastery in a Digital Environment
370 Dwinelle Hall

José Cabezón will introduce The Sera Project, an interdisciplinary digital multimedia initiative whose goal it is to document Buddhist monastic life in one of Tibet's great monasteries. Sera Monastery, one of Tibet's premier monastic educational institutions, had close to 10,000 monks before 1959, making it the second largest monastery in the world. What variables of analysis are most relevant to the study of a religious institution like Sera? What difference does digital media make in the envisioning and dissemination of research on an institution like Sera?

José Cabezón is the XIVth Dalai Lama Professor of Tibetan Buddhism and Cultural Studies in the Department of Religious Studies at UC Santa Barbara. His research interests focus on Tibetan Buddhism, and Buddhism and popular culture. He recently co-edited Identity and the Politics of Scholarship in the Study of Religion. He is the principal investigator for The Sera Project, a joint research initiative between UC Santa Barbara, and the Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library. For more information about the project, visit http://www.seramonastery.org

Michael Hahn addresses a question
from the audience.

Tuesday, March 15, 2005, 5:00-7:30 p.m.
Michael Hahn, Numata Visiting Professor in Buddhist Studies, UC Berkeley
A Never-ending Story - On the Rediscovery of Buddhist Sanskrit Texts
IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton St., 6th Floor

After the demise of Buddhism in the fourteenth century almost the entire body of Buddhist texts was lost in India. However, outside India proper Buddhist Sanskrit manuscripts survived in Nepal, Kashmir, Central Asia, Tibet and elsewhere. The process of locating and accessing these manuscripts is by no means completed, and new and exciting discoveries continue to be made. Reconstituting a particular corpus of Buddhist narrative literature, Michael Hahn will illustrate how recent discoveries can make it possible to regain works of seminal importance that have been believed to be irretrievably lost in the Sanskrit original.

Michael Hahn is the current Numata Visiting Professor in Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. A professor of Indology and Tibetology at Philipps-University in Marburg (Germany), his research interests focus on classical Sanskrit and Buddhist literature, in particular narrative works and didactic and epistolary texts. He is the author of numerous articles and books, among them a primer of the Tibetan language that has been reprinted seven times and is now forthcoming in an English translation.

Buddhist Film Series - Spring 2005
During the spring term 2005 the Center for Buddhist Studies and the Pacific Film Archive co-sponsored "Seeing Through the Screen: Buddhism and Film," a Buddhist film series. Taught by Professor Robert Sharf, director of the Group in Buddhist Studies, "Seeing Through the Screen" focused on Buddhism through film, and film through Buddhism — using the medium of film to explore various themes and issues in the study of Buddhism, and employing ideas culled from Buddhism to reflect back on the nature and power of film. In viewing a wide variety of international and domestic films, the class considered such themes as the Buddhist notion of the "empty self," and the epistemic status of the viewing subject, the role of imagination and visualization in Buddhist meditation, and the role of projection and fantasy in cinematic representations of Buddhism.

"Speaking for the Buddha? Buddhism and the Media" conference - February 8/9, 2005
Sponsored by the Center for Buddhist Studies and the Institute for East Asian Studies at UC Berkeley (with support by Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai America) this conference will bring together scholars, journalists, filmmakers, writers, and professionals from the television, movie, and publishing industries to discuss the media's role in the contemporary transformation of Buddhism.
For more details, please visit:
http://ieas.berkeley.edu/ events/ 2005.02.08-09.html

The conference is organized in conjunction with the International Buddhist Film Festival with screenings in San Francisco (Jan 27-29), Berkeley (Feb 3-13), and San Rafael (February 12-13). For more information, see:
http://www.ibff.org/ index.cfm?pg=N0

Graduate Student Colloquium
On December 3, 2004 the Center for Buddhist Studies hosted a graduate student colloquium featuring talks by three students, Amanda Goodman and Juhn Ahn from Berkeley, and Lisa Ann Grumbach from Stanford. Rather than presenting finished papers, the presenters discussed work in progress, sharing the results of their ongoing research and talking about problems they have encountered. Amanda Goodman shared her research on "Why did Bodhidharma ascend the Vajradhatu? Observations on the 'Chapter on Entrusting the Dharma Repository' (Fu fazang pin) from the Tanfa yize (P3913)," Juhn Ahn spoke about "To Death and Back Again: The Great Death and the Malady of Meditation," and Lisa Ann Grumbach reflected on "Sacrifice and Salvation in Medieval Japan: Hunting and Meat in Religious Practice at Suwa Jinja."

The Buddhist Studies Graduate Colloquium will be held twice a year in order to give graduate students at UC Berkeley and Stanford the opportunity to present their work in an informal setting. This is part of a broader effort to strengthen the cooperation between the Buddhist Studies programs at UC Berkeley and Stanford University.

The next Graduate Student Colloquium will be held on April 15, 2005 at Stanford University.

Berkeley-Stanford Buddhist Studies Colloquium Series
The Berkeley-Stanford Buddhist Studies Colloquium Series continues in the 2004-2005 academic year.