Speaker: Ann Heirman, Ghent University Buddhist texts generally prohibit the killing of all sentient beings. This is certainly the case in vinaya (disciplinary) texts, which contain strict guidelines on the preservation of all human and animal life. When these vinaya texts were translated into Chinese, they formed the core of Buddhist behavioural codes, influencing both monastic […]

Speaker: Sonam Kachru, University of Virginia My goal is practical—How shall an intelligent reader make use of the remarkable though forbidding work, The Questions of Milinda (Milindapañha)? The Pāli work […]

Speaker: Eviatar Shulman, Hebrew University of Jerusalem We commonly speak of the Buddha’s “discourses” – sutta, sūtra – knowing that they were not just spoken by him (or “him”) in […]

Speaker: Xingyi Wang, PhD Candidate, Harvard University Modern scholarship often compares Buddhist monastic rules to legal codes or treats them mainly as nominal prescriptions. The reality, however, was more complex […]

Speakers: Amy Langenberg, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Eckerd College Ann Gleig, Associate Professor of Religion and Cultural Studies, University of Central Florida Since the 1980s, American Buddhist convert communities […]

Speaker: James Benn, Professor and Director of the Centre for Buddhist Studies, McMaster University Please note earlier start time. In the later Chinese Buddhist tradition one text above all others has […]

Speaker: Trent Walker, Lecturer, Department of Religious Studies; Postdoctoral Fellow, The Ho Center for Buddhist Studies, Stanford University Presented via Zoom Registration Required Register at: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0ucuCrqjIvGdHcV9R5NW15u5jLGwLD4M7j

Speaker: Matthew King, Associate Professor of Transnational Buddhism and Director, Asian Studies Program, University of California, Riverside After the fall of the Qing empire, amid nationalist and socialist upheaval, Buddhist monks in the Mongolian frontiers of the Soviet Union and Republican China faced a chaotic and increasingly uncertain world. In this book, Matthew W. King […]

Speaker: Elizabeth Angowski, Assistant Professor of Religion, Earlham College For an eager bodhisattva intent on honing the virtue of generosity, there would appear to be no shortage of starving tigresses to feed, or so it must have seemed to Yeshé Tsogyal, an eighth-century tantric adept renowned for her role in disseminating Buddhism throughout Tibet. Within […]

Speaker: Aaron Proffitt, Assistant Professor of Japanese Studies, University at Albany-SUNY The recitation of the name of a buddha (nenbutsu) is often associated with deathbed practices and traditions commonly grouped under the rubric Pure Land Buddhism. In this talk, Professor Aaron Proffitt will consider this widely popular practice as understood by practitioners of mantra, focusing […]