2019-2020 Events

Thursday, September 12, 2019, 5pm

Filled with Meaning: Why Do the Contents of Buddhist Statues Matter?
James Robson, James C. Kralik and Yunli Lou Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations - Harvard University
370 Dwinelle Hall, UC Berkeley

Co-sponsored by the Glorisun Global Network for Buddhist Studies, made possible by a generous gift from the Glorisun Charitable Foundation.

Scholars have recently come to realize that religious statues throughout Asia have hidden cavities that are filled with various objects inserted during a consecration ritual. This talk explores the hidden world of these statues through a discussion of a large collection of (primarily) Buddhist statues from China, Korea, and Japan. The statues discussed in this talk contain a niche carved into their back (or the base) that is filled with a variety of objects, including relics, religious manuscripts and printed texts, materia medica, desiccated insects, talismans and dharani, and a “consecration certificate” or “vow text." The manuscripts from inside of these statues provide a valuable glimpse of local religion, ritual practice, lay devotion, and lost sūtras. These statues also raise many interpretive questions for historians of religion, including issues such as icon animation, idolatry, and iconoclasm. These statues were ubiquitous, but have had a particularly intriguing history of visibility and concealment in East Asia and in Western scholarship. This talk will raise questions about why sacred images and icons such as these have been objects of extreme devotion for some, but also presented problems for priests, politicians, missionaries, and philosophers, who for various reasons have found them distasteful, attacked their validity and power, and have tried to hide them away or destroy them. Why, even in the face of critique and destruction, have they persisted and proliferated into the present? Why are the contents of these statues important for scholars of Buddhism and East Asian Religions?

James Robson is James C. Kralik and Yunli Lou Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations

 and the Victor and William Fung Director of the Harvard Asia Center. He is also the Director of the Harvard Summer School in Kyoto program. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University (2002) and previously taught at Williams College and the University of Michigan. He specializes in the history of Chinese Buddhism and Daoism. He is the author of the Power of Place: The Religious Landscape of the Southern Sacred Peak [Nanyue 南嶽] in Medieval China (Harvard University Press, 2009), which won the Stanislas Julien Prize awarded by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in France and the Toshihide Numata Prize in Buddhist Studies. He is the editor of the Norton Anthology of World Religions: Daoism (2014). He has also published on topics ranging from sacred geography and local religious history to talismans and the historical development of Chan/Zen Buddhism. Some of his major articles include: “Signs of Power: Talismanic Writings in Chinese Buddhism" (History of Religions 48:2); "Faith in Museums: On the Confluence of Museums and Religious Sites in Asia"; and "A Tang Dynasty Chan Mummy [roushen] and a Modern Case of Furta Sacra? Investigating the Contested Bones of Shitou Xiqian"; “The Buddhist Image Inside-Out: The Placing of Objects Inside Statues in East Asia,” “The Archive Inside: Manuscripts Found Within Chinese Religious Statues,” “Hidden in Plain View: Concealed Contents, Secluded Statues, and Revealed Religion,” and “Brushes With Some ‘Dirty Truths’: Handwritten Manuscripts and Religion in China.” During the 2012-2013 academic year he was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. He is engaged in a long-term collaborative research project with the École Française d’Extrême-Orient studying local religious statuary from Hunan province and a long-term project on the history of the confluence of Buddhist monasteries and mental hospitals in Japan. He is currently completing a monograph on the Daodejing for the Princeton University Press, Lives of Great Religious Books Series entitled The Daodejing: A Biography.

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Friday, September 20, 2019, 10 am - 7 pm
Buddhist Philosophy: The State of the Field
Toll Room, Alumni House 
UC Berkeley 

2019 Numata Symposium in honor of the 35th anniversary of the
Numata Chair Program

10:10 - 10:30: Welcome remarks
Robert Sharf, Chair, Center for Buddhist Studies
Shōryū Katsura, President, Bukkyō Dendō Kyōkai Japan
Yoshiaki Numata, President, Mitutoyo Corporation

10:30 - 12:45:  Panel I - Chair, Alexander von Rospatt

Shōryū Katsura (Bukkyō Dendoō Kyōkai): “Mark Siderits on Anumāna.”

Jay Garfield (Smith College): “Knowing Illusion: Studying Geluk-Sakya/Kagyu Polemics following Takstang’s ‘18 Great Contradictions in the Thought of Tsongkhapa.’”

Lin Chen-kuo (National Chengchi University): “When Chan Meets the Logicians: Miyun Yuanwu’s (1566-1642) Response in the Debate on No-Motion.”

12:45 - 2:30: Lunch Break

2:30 - 4:45: Panel II - Chair, Shōryū Katsura

Dan Arnold (University of Chicago): “Location, Location, Location! Thoughts on the Philosophical Implications of a Locative Absolute.” 

Jan Westerhoff (Oxford University) “How to Balance Philology and Philosophy in the Study of Madhyamaka.”

Cat Prueitt (University of British Columbia) “Salience, Attention, and Exclusion.”

4:45 - 5:15: Coffee Break

5:15 - 6:45:  Panel III - Chair, Robert Sharf

Parimal Patil (Harvard University) “Why Buddhists Argue.”

Jonathan Gold (Princeton University) “What Use Is Buddhist Philosophy? Constructing the Path for Academia.”

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Thursday, October 3,  2019, 5pm                                                                                 From Being “Enlightened” to Being “Woke”: Racial Justice Work in American Convert Buddhism                                                                                                            Ann Gleig, Central Florida  University                                                                                180 Doe Library, UC Berkeley

On May 14 2015, a delegation of 125 Buddhists gathered for the first “White House - U.S. Buddhist Leadership Conference,” during which they delivered a letter titled “Buddhist Statement on Racial Justice.” This letter should be seen as part of efforts to challenge racism and white privilege in American Buddhist convert communities spanning over two decades. For much of this time, such efforts have been either marginalized or ignored. Due to the combination of a committed network of Buddhist Teachers of Color and the impact of #BlackLivesMatter, however, such work is being increasingly centered. The aim of this paper is to examine racial justice and diversity work in American Buddhism. It will highlight the main pragmatic and theoretical strategies employed to integrate racial justice work with Buddhism, as well as consider opposition such work has faced. Finally, it will reflect on the significance of such developments for Buddhist modernism in the United States.

Ann Gleig is an Associate Professor of Religion and Cultural Studies at the University of Central Florida. She is the author of American Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Modernity (Yale University Press, 2019

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Thursday, October 31, 2019, 5pm
Science of Salvation in Sa skya Soteriological Treatise in Pre-Classical Mongolian Verse
Brian Baumann, University of California, Berkeley
180 Doe Library, UC Berkeley

This talk introduces the science of the old world and applies it to questions of Buddhism’s place in the greater soteriological movement, that movement’s this-worldly program for achieving world dominion, and Buddhism’s methods and means in comparison with those of its counterparts. It does so through the exemplar of a Sa skya treatise on salvation in pre-classical Mongolian verse titled Oyin-i geyigülügči [The Illumination of the Mind].

Brian Baumann is a lecturer at UC Berkeley. He received his Ph.D. in Mongolian Studies from Indiana University. He studies the language, history, and culture of the Mongols. This compels him to study Mongolian Buddhism in particular and Buddhism at large (as best he can). He has published a book: Divine Knowledge: Buddhist Mathematics according to Antoine Mostaert’s Manual of Mongolian Astrology and Divination, (Brill). That work’s subject matter led him to study Eurasian astral science broadly. He focuses on Buddhist philology, translation of Buddhist texts, Buddhism’s relationship with secular dominion, and Buddhist astral science. Currently he is publishing a series of articles discussing aspects and implications of scientific epistemology.

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Thursday, November 14, 2019, 5pm
Dual-Aspect Reflexivism in Buddhist Philosophy of Mind
Matt MacKenzie, Colorado State University 
Howison Library, Moses Hall, UC Berkeley

Indian Buddhist philosophers associated with the pramāṇavāda (logico-epistemological) school developed an account of mind and cognition that I term ‘dual-aspect reflexivism’. On this view, conscious awareness is reflexive or self-presenting in that it always involves awareness of awareness. Further, a typical episode of conscious cognition involves the presentation of an object and aspects of that very cognition itself. Thus, a typical episode of conscious cognition will involve a dual-aspect (dvairūpya) structure of presentation within the context of reflexive awareness (svasaṃvedana). The first part of my talk will explore these ideas in the context of the Indian philosophical tradition. In the second part, I will examine these ideas in the context of cross-cultural philosophy of mind, with particular attention to issues of self-consciousness, subjectivity, intentionality, and the sense of self.

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Friday, December 6, 2019,3-7 pm
Toshihide Numata Book Award Presentation and Symposium      Banatao Auditorium, Sutardja Dai Hall, UC Berkeley

A symposium to celebrate the winner of the 2019 Toshihide Numata Book Award in Buddhism, Professor Paul Swanson (Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture) for his book: Clear Serenity, Quiet Insight: T’ien-t’ai Chih-i’s Mo-ho chih-kuan (3 vols., Nanzan Library of Asian Religion and Culture, University of Hawai’i Press).

Program

3:10 pm Introduction and Award Presentation

3:30 pm Keynote by Paul Swanson (Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture) - "In Search of Clarity: Reflections on 30+ Years of Translation"

4:30 pm Coffee/tea Break

4:45 Symposium
Jackie Stone (Princeton University) - “Three Thousand Realms in a Single Thought”: Some Japanese Readings of a Passage from Zhiyi"

John Kieschnick (Stanford University) - "Zhiyi's Demons"

Jan Nattier (UC Berkeley) - "The Eye of the Beholder: Early Buddhist Translations through Medieval Chinese Eyes"

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Thursday, January 30, 2020, 5 pm
Chiasmus in Bodhisattva Literature: Two Examples and Theorizing a Meta-Structure                              Matthew Orsborn, Visiting Associate Professor, National Taiwan University                                                        370 Dwinelle Hall                           

The discovery of chiasmus or ring composition in Western religious and classical literature in the 20th century had a paradigm-changing effect upon our understanding of these texts. Recent application of this theory to two important Indian Buddhist texts, the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā and the Vessantara Jātaka, also indicates the presence of such inverted parallel structures. The implications of this prompt us to reformulate several common claims about the composition and central messages of these texts. Extending beyond this and drawing from other examples, I will theorize a possible chiasmic meta-structure which may be the underlying model for this kind of structure found in Bodhisattva literature.

A native of New Zealand, since 2000 Matthew Orsborn has studied and subsequently taught Buddhism in Taiwan, Hong Kong, China and Thailand, including at his alma mater the University of Hong Kong. Presently at National Taiwan University as a Visiting Associate Professor, his research is focused on classical Indian Buddhist texts and philosophy, as well as the practice, thought and institutions of contemporary Chinese Buddhism.

This event is supported by a generous gift from the Tianzhu Global Network for the Study of Buddhist Cultures.

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Thursday, February 6, 2020, 5 pm                                                                                                                                 On the Interior Life of Master Hongyi 弘一大師 (1880-1942), a Modern Chinese Buddhist Artist-Monk:   Three or Four Strands                                                                                                                                                          Raoul Birnbaum, University of California Santa Cruz                                                                                                3335 Dwinelle Hall                           

What can be said about the interior life of an eminent and multi-talented twentieth-century Chinese Buddhist monk? Can we speak of things below the obvious surface, beyond a sequence of events? How can the life of a complex individual be approached? This talk looks to some core elements of Hongyi’s interior life, set in time, based on consideration of a broad array of primary sources: diaries, essays, dream records, correspondence and other manuscript remains, as well as photographic records and Hongyi’s paintings, calligraphy, poetry, and song compositions.

Biographical notes:
Through a career focused on studies of Chinese Buddhist worlds of imagination and practice, Raoul Birnbaum (Professor Emeritus of Buddhist Studies, UCSC) has concentrated on three main topics: the great deity cults of the Chinese Buddhist world; constructions of Chinese geography interwoven with Buddhist conceptions and practices; and the lives of key figures within Chinese Buddhist worlds of the twentieth century, together with their seventeenth-century predecessors and models. He is preparing a book-length study of Master Hongyi and his worlds of practice.

This event is supported by a generous gift from the Tianzhu Global Network for the Study of Buddhist Cultures.

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Thursday, February 13, 2020, 5 pm                                                                                                               Temporality and Buddha-Nature in Tiantai Buddhist Thought                                                                          Brook Ziporyn, Tianzhu Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies, UC Berkeley                                                       180 Doe Library

A remarkable rethinking of temporality is embedded in Tiantai Buddhist thought, which can be excavated directly from its classificatory scheme of the “Four Teachings of Transformation” (化法四教). What is most philosophically intriguing about this view is the way in which it embraces a view of both impermanence and permanence for all real and virtual entities without exception. This is because, although the teaching moves from affirming the “arising and perishing” 生滅of suffering and its end in the Tripiṭaka Teaching藏教to their “unbornness” 無生in the Shared Teaching通教, to the “limitless” forms of suffering and endings of suffering 無量in the Separate Teaching別教, to their “unmadeness” 無作in the All-Around Teaching圓教, these teachings do not replace each other so much as intersubsume, each teaching retaining the previous teaching while opening up its provisional character to reveal that it is itself just one side of the truth of the following teaching: the radical impermanence seen in the first teaching is simply seen more fully in the final teaching. Precisely the fact about all dharmas that is named “impermanence” in the first teaching is renamed “permanence” in the final teaching. Both are always not only coextensive but even synonymous, i.e., each is a one-sided name for the intersubsumptive totality of the two. This simultaneous permanence and impermanence of every moment of experience can be given a feasible and intuitive exposition precisely by means of the Tiantai Three Truths, and bears fruit in the teaching of the “Middle Way Buddha-nature” derived from the Tiantai reading of the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra, with its implication the presentness of futurity as the necessary already-but-not-yet Buddhahood of all sentient and insentient beings.

Brook Ziporyn is Professor of Chinese Religion, Philosophy and Comparative Thought at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. He has authored several books on Chinese Buddhist thought, the most recent being Emptiness and Omnipresence: An Essential Guide to Tiantai Buddhism (Indiana, 2016). He is also the translator of the Daoist classic Zhuangzi: The Complete Writings (Hackett: 2020).

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