Seminar Schedule for Spring 2013
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Fabio Rambelli
University of California, Santa Barbara
"Of Matter, Spirit, and Place: The Bodies of the Gods in Premodern Japan"
Friday, April 12th, 5:00-6:30pm
Columbia Faculty House, Garden Room 2 (1st floor)
One of the striking aspects of Shinto is the vagueness and multiplicity that characterize descriptions of the kami. The general understanding is that kami are spiritual entities that “attach” themselves to objects; however, there are also widespread beliefs that natural objects (water bodies, stones, mountains, stars, etc.) themselves are also divine. This ambiguity is already present in the earliest sources on the origin and nature of the kami; in these accounts, the kami are variously described as the result of the unfolding of spiritual substance, of some kind of cosmic matter, or of some kind of divine nature. Later commentaries and treatises further complicated the issue by combining these early accounts with Chinese and Indian ideas about deities. In this paper, I will present some aspects of premodern Japanese theology, namely, discussions about the body of the kami (shintai), their spiritual aspects, and their physical location in this world. I will suggest that one possible shared feature among various conceptual representations is an emphasis on the materiality of the sacred, but that in any case there seems to be an insoluble dualism between spiritual and material hypotheses.
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This list will be periodically updated to reflect new speakers, meeting times, and dates.
Thanks to funding from Columbia University Seminars, all lectures are free and open to the public.
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The Center for Buddhist Studies Weblog >>
March 7th, 2013
Juhyung Rhi
Seoul National University
"Presenting the Buddha: Images and Conventions in Early Indian Buddhism"
November 30th, 2012
Todd Lewis
College of the Holy Cross
"Sources and Sentiments in Sugata Saurabha, a mid-20th Century Narrative on the Buddha’s Life from the Kathmandu Valley"
October 26th, 2012
T. Griffith Foulk
Sarah Lawrence College
"Rujing's 'Just Sit' and other Kōans used by Dōgen"
September 21st, 2012
Venerable Yifa
University of the West
"Buddhism in Contemporary China"
May 3rd, 2012
Giuseppe Vignato
Peking University
"Reconstruction of Buddhist monasteries in the Kingdom of Kucha, Xinjiang"
April 27th, 2012
Heather Blair
Indiana University
"The Power of Rites: Buddhism, kami worship, and lordship in early medieval Japan"
March 30th, 2012
Charlotte Eubanks
Pennsylvania State University
“What Sutras Want: The Ontology of an Anxious Genre”
February 3rd, 2012
Barbara Ambros
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
“Embodying Hybridity: The Necrogeography of Pet Memorial Spaces”
April 8th, 2011
Justin T. McDaniel
University of Pennsylvania
"Affixing Gold to Ghosts: Overlapping Narratives and Intertwined Agencies at a Monastery in Bangkok"
December 3rd, 2010
Jin Park
American University
"Zen and Reality: Questioning the Identity of Korean Zen Buddhism"
December 2nd, 2010
Wendi Adamek Stanford Humanities Center
"Zen and the Environment: It's Not What You Think"
November 12th, 2010
Jason Ānanda Josephson
Williams College
"Heretical Anthropology: Imagined Buddhisms in Early Modern Japan"
October 14th, 2010
James Robson
Harvard University
"Monasteries and Mental Illness: On Some Buddhist Monasteries and their Curious Neighbors in East Asia"
May 6th, 2010
Angela F. Howard
Rutgers University
"The Visual Language of Meditation: Kucha Caves in Sinkiang"
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March 29th, 2010
Lori Meeks
University of Southern California
"Changing Views of Women's Salvation: Tracing the Transformation of Gender Discourse in Premodern Japan"
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March 2nd, 2010
Rebecca Nedostup
Boston College
"Buddhism and the Boundaries of 'Religion' as a Category of Modern Chinese Governance"
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December 3rd, 2009
Ute Hüsken
University of Oslo
"Global or Local or Both? On the Establishment of the Tibetan Nuns' Order"
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November 19th, 2009
Michael Walsh
Vassar College
"The Intimate Religious Life of the Nation: Visions of Buddhism in Colonial Missions to China"
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October 22nd, 2009
Dominic Steavu
Stanford University; McGill University, Centre for Asian Research
"The Tao of Tea: Macrobiotic Hygiene in the 'Kissa yojo ki' of the Zen Master Eisai"
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April 30, 2009
Fredrick M. Smith
University of Iowa
"Indian Buddhist Sociolinguistics and Buddhist Notions of Possession: A Fragment from the Mañjuśrīmūlakalpa"
April 16, 2009
Jongmyung Kim
Academy of Korean Studies; visiting scholar at UCLA
"Buddhist World Heritage Properties in Korea: Thoughts and Significance"
April 9, 2009
Imre Hamar
Eötvös Loránd University (Budapest); visiting Fulbright scholar at Stanford
"The Interpretation of Yogacara Philosophy in Huayan Buddhism"
April 2, 2009
John McRae
Komazawa University
"Rethinking the Rhetoric of Meditative Experience in Chinese Buddhism"
Feb. 19, 2009
Paul Copp
University of Chicago
"Amulets of the Wish-Fulfilling Spell and Their Traditions"
Oct. 16, 2008
Bhikku Vipasama
The Original Buddhism Meditation Society
"The Law of Dependent Origination and the Buddhist View of Life and Death"
Oct. 9, 2008
Oliver Freiberger
University of Texas at Austin
"Controversies on Asceticism in Early Buddhism"
Oct. 2, 2008
George Clonos
Yale University
"Negotiating a Rocky Road: Mount Omine Shugendo and the Okugake Route"
May 1, 2008
Pochi Huang
National Cheng-Chi University, Taiwan
"The Destiny of Theracada Buddhism in Sri Lanka and Burma"
April 3, 2008
Mark Blum
SUNY Albany
"Environmentalism, Buddhism, and Transcendentalism"
Feb. 28, 2008
Charles Hallisey
Harvard Divinity School
"The 'Golden Rule' and Moral Formation in South Asian Buddhism"
Jan. 31, 2008
Marcus Bingenheimer
Chung-hwa Institute of Buddhist Studies, Dharma Drum Mountain, Taiwan
"Concerning Buddhist Modernism: Historiography, Technology and Environmentalism"
Dec. 13, 2007
David Dilworth
SUNY Stonybrook
"The Yogacara and Hua-yen Infrastructure of Dogen's Shobogenzo"
Nov. 15, 2007
Yu Xin
Fudan University, China
"From Turfan to Nara: Figurines Discovered Along the Silk Road"
