The Fall schedule for the Buddhist Studies Seminar at Columbia University has been updated. More information about each seminar will be sent out periodicially to the email list. If you would like to receive email announcements about the seminar series, information on joining the list can be found on the schedule page. Looking forward to another semester of engaging and thought-provoking seminars!
Pochi Huang from National Cheng-chi University in Taiwan presented this talk on May 1st, 2008. In it he explores the development of Theravada culture in South and Southeast Asia and the continuing linkages between Buddhist doctrine and political rule. The talk focuses on Sri Lanka but also touches upon Burma as well.
Mark Blum from SUNY Albany presented a talk on "Environmentalism, Buddhism and Transcendentalism;" on April 3rd, 2008 as part of the Buddhist Studies Seminar at Columbia University. He explores how views of ecology among modern Eco-Buddhists might be grounded more in the philosophies of Transcendentalists such as Emerson and Thoreau than in Buddhist traditions. A recorded version of this lecture is available for download:
The 'Golden Rule' and Moral Formation in South Asian Buddhism
Professor Charles Hallisey from Harvard Divinity School delivered a lecture on "The Golden Rule in South Asian Buddhism" on February 28th, 2008, as part of the Buddhist Studies Seminar series at Columbia University. A recorded version of the lecture is available for download below.
"Concerning Buddhist Modernism: Historiography, Technology and Environmentalism"
The relationship between Buddhism and modernism has been reflected in various aspects of Buddhist belief and practice, including the adoption of new historiographical methods, new technologies, and a new awareness of the importance of environmental protection. In this seminar, Dr. Marcus Bingenheimer of the Dharma Drum Buddhist College (法鼓佛教研修學院) at Dharma Drum Mountain (法鼓山) in Taiwan presents some examples of how Buddhism has adapted to and appropriated modern developments in these fields.
The seminar was given on January 31st, 2008 as part of the Columbia University Buddhist Studies Seminar series. Prof. Wendi Adamek, the chair of the seminar, introduced Dr. Bingenheimer.
Edit: Dr. Bingenheimer's affiliation was given incorrectly in an earlier version of this post.
From Turfan to Nara: Figurines Discovered
along the Silk Road
On November 15th, 2007 Professor Yu Xin from Fudan University gave a seminar on a certain type of
figurine that has been found in archaeological excavations in sites
along the route of the Silk Road, as well as near the Han dynasty (206 BCE -220 CE) foundations of the Great Wall. The key term for
these artifacts is dairen (代人,
human substitutes), but many other terms have been used to describe
them in various studies. These figurines (which is the English term
preferred by Yu Xin) are carved from wood into a figure with roughly
human features, the bottom half sharply pointed and a face painted on
the top in dark ink. Much of the speaker's initial discussion
centered on the archaeologist Sir Aurel Stein's 1908 work Serindia,1
which contains many pictures and descriptions of these artifacts. He
also noted that they were produced over a period spanning from the
20th century BCE to the 12th century CE. Yu Xin
has seen many examples of these figurines which are now located in
the National Museum of India, the British Library, and museums in
China and Japan. He was also able to access several sites in
Northwest China which have restricted access because of their
proximity to military bases and research centers.
Yu Xin's main argument is that these figures were used as part of a “life-sustaining religion”, that is, a system of religious belief that chiefly aims to protect and secure the life and prosperity of its adherents. He noted the key fact that most of these figurines were originally produced along the Great Wall, and have been found in great numbers in the ruins of military forts where soldiers would have been stationed. From this and other factors he argues that these figurines were designed as a spiritual protection against invasion. They would be stuck into the ground at intervals along the Great Wall or in the walls of a fort to repel human and spiritual enemies. This is not associated with any particular religious teaching in China, but later examples of the figurines do incorporate Daoist terminology in the characters painted on them. These pieces have also been found along the trade route that brought Buddhism to Japan, and indeed several examples have been found there as well.
The material used to construct the pieces is also significant, as most of them were made of peach wood. Yu Xin connects this material with traditional Chinese religious beliefs that ascribe to it the powers of longevity, part of the practice of fangshu (方術, or popular magical rites). Where the figurines were constructed of other materials, it was only because of the scarcity of peach wood in certain areas. The talk concluded with a list of unanswered questions which the speaker hopes to address in the future, including the significance of using different colored inks for the painted faces, and the whether the ultimate origin of this artform was in China or a foreign country.
1 Sir Marc Aurel Stein (1862-1943), Serindia: detailed report of explorations in Central Asia and westernmost China, carried out and described under the orders of H.M. Indian Government by Aurel Stein (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1980). Sir Stein was also one of the archaeologists who discovered the cache of documents in the Mogao caves near Dunhuang.
'Transcendence & Immanence in
Kūkai's Vision of Shingon'
Philosophy in a New Key, according to at least one source, was a "bestseller" in 1942. And yet it is unlikely that you've ever heard of the philosopher Susanne Langer (1885-1985). Dwarfed by philosophical giants like Ludwig Wittgenstein, her unique ideas about the symbolic nature of art have received little attention. However, in a recent lecture to the Buddhist Studies Seminar at Columbia University (March 6, 2007), David Gardiner (Professor of Religion, Colorado College) made use of Langer's ideas to shed new light on our understanding of the Japanese Buddhist thinker Kūkai (774-835 C.E.). (Audio podcast below.)
In his explication of Kūkai, Professor Gardiner highlighted his polemical use of the term ri 離 "separate, apart, transcendent" in his presentation of the Nikyōron. Abandoning the more popular theory that Kūkai was simply being "antagonistic" in his derision of Yogacara, Madhyamaka, T'ien-t'ai, and Hua-yen as "ontologically challenged by an unsophisticated dualism," Gardiner opted for more a nuanced hermeneutic. According to Gardiner, Kūkai's critique of these "Exoteric" schools may in fact be a strategic response to a growing tendency to reify non-dual ontology (shades of the Tibetan gzhan stong pa school). Kūkai's rhetoric, explained Gardiner, "seems intent upon highlighting a purported exoteric obsession with the transcendent character of ultimate reality... " Though Gardiner admits that his theory is perhaps impossible to prove, what is clear—at least to Gardiner—is that Kūkai's literary strategy is to bring the reader's attention to the "immanental" orientation of Shingon ("Esoteric") practice. For Kūkai, the path to Buddhahood relies on a realization of the immanent "mandalic" nature of one's material body, and a turning away from conceptual interpretations of the transcendent.
Enter Susanne Langer.
As with the earlier works of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Langer sees the impossibility of language to convey subjective states. The reader will recall the following from Wittgenstein's Remarks on Colour, “When we’re asked ‘What do 'red', 'blue', 'black', 'white' mean?' we can, of course, immediately point to things which have these colours,—but that’s all we can do: our ability to explain their meaning goes no further” (v.102). Or the oft quoted seventh proposition, "What we cannot speak of we must pass over in silence" (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus).
For Langer, an artist and lover of the arts, there is a "genuine semantic beyond the limits of discursive language." Langer believes art (i.e. music, painting, drama, etc...), is a symbolic form of human feeling that is semantic and rational. Kūkai, also a lover of the arts and an artist, might have seen eye to eye with Langer. Gardiner clearly thinks so, and juxtaposes the following passages from Langer's book and Kūkai's Shōraimokuroku to make the point.
From Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art:
Visual forms — lines, colors, proportions, etc. — are just as capable of articulation, i.e. of complex combination, as words. But the laws that govern this sort of articulation are altogether different from the laws of syntax that govern language. The most radical difference is that visual forms are not discursive. They do not present their constituents successively, but simultaneously, so the relations determining a visual structure are grasped in one act of vision. Their complexity, consequently, is not limited, as the complexity of discourse is limited, by what the mind can retain from the beginning of an apperceptive act to the end of it. Of course such a restriction on discourse sets bounds to the complexity of speakable ideas. An idea that contains too many minute yet closely related parts, too many relations within relations, cannot be “projected” into discursive form; it is too subtle for speech. A language-bound theory of mind, therefore, rules it out of the domain of understanding and the sphere of knowledge (93).
(Ironically, Langer's description of simultaneity calls to mind Bhartrihari's "sphota theory" of language.) Turning to Kūkai's Shōraimokuroku:
The Dharma is originally without words, and yet it cannot be expressed apart from words. Suchness is beyond form, and yet it is by attending to forms that it is realized… The esoteric teachings are very profound and it is difficult to convey them in writing. Thus they are provisionally revealed to the unenlightened via paintings. The myriad forms of sacred deportment and the myriad gestures have their origin in great compassion. With a single look [at them one may] realize Buddhahood. [The meanings of] the sutras and commentaries are secretly and intricately depicted in the images. The heart of the esoteric teachings is verily contained therein. What master or student could dispense with them? The root source of the Ocean-like assembly [of enlightened ones] corresponds to just this (1:31).
Gardiner concludes that, like Langer, Kūkai is "eminently anti-mystical." So while there may be subjectivities that are best realized through the body, that does not necessarily entail an absence of rational semantics. In short, "transcendence," albeit transcendental, should not be reified as some nebulous mystical state.
The Spring series of Buddhist studies seminars continued on April 12th with a talk by James Benn from McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. (Download the full audio podcast below.) James' talk detailed one aspect of a much larger project with which he is involved that examines the cultural and social history of tea in China. This project has received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. On Thursday night Prof. Benn spoke on the development of a tea-drinking culture in the Tang dynasty, and the important role that Buddhist laymen (the sources unfortunately make little mention of women's contribution) played in that process. James joked that his appearance began a series of “basement lectures” here at Columbia, but the cramped quarters were easily forgotten once he had gotten into his talk.
The rise of tea as a socially acceptable and often prized beverage in China happened in a historically brief period of time, what James referred to as a “tea craze” that occurred in the 8th century. Whereas alcohol had been the traditional drink of choice when it came to entertaining friends, making ritual sacrifices or to be enjoyed while composing poetry, the brewed drink that originated in Sichuan province suddenly became a popular substitute. Tea was strongly associated with Buddhism, as both clergy and lay followers were expected to follow the precept against ingesting intoxicants and were thus motivated to replace alcohol as a beverage; James was quick to point out the often overwhelming effects of strongly caffeinated tea, arguing that it was an acceptable stimulant that helped ardent Buddhists in their all-night meditation binges. Tea was also able to serve as a social lubricant between the Buddhist clergy and secular officials; Buddhists could offer their influential and educated guests a beverage which they could all appreciate and enjoy. Laymen who were strict in following their precepts could also compose poetry while drinking tea, and gain pride in their connoisseurship of rare and expensive types of tea.
It is interesting to note, however, that James found little mention of Lu Yu, the author of the /Chajing/ (The Classic of Tea) within Buddhist historiography. Indeed the Buddhists, while strongly associated with tea from its initial period of popularity, never monopolized the cultural and social meanings of the beverage within Chinese society. The talk also related a composition that describes a dialogue between Mr. Tea and Mr. Alcohol over which is the superior drink, an argument which is eventually won by a surprise third contestant. James also outlined the importance of tea in Tang poetry as well as the evidence of the type of material culture that developed around the popular drink. If this talk on Tea and Buddhism in China is any indication, then the finished project will certainly be a wide-ranging and important contribution to our understanding of China's cultural history.
Click here for podcast by James Benn >>
See lecture hand-out >>
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Gregory Scott is a first year PhD student in the department of religion at Columbia University. He researches the history of modern Chinese Buddhism and Buddhist historiography. He enjoys tea..
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Before a room packed with Columbia faculty, graduate students, and interested undergraduates, on February 22nd Serinity Young gave an articulate and thought-provoking talk titled “Apsaras, Ḍākinīs, & Yoginīs: Aerial Women and Buddhist Utilizations of Sexuality” (full audio podcast below). Illustrating her discussion with vivid images of these ambivalent, wrathful, and serene South Asian female divinities, Young traces a historical trajectory in which these celestial females lost their autonomous status as they were incorporated into the increasingly male-identified traditions of Buddhism and Hinduism. Young links the aerial associations of apsaras, ḍākinīs, and yoginīs to the bird-goddesses of ancient India, highlighting their ambivalent powers such as bestowing and renewing life as well as spreading pestilence and usurping vitality.
Using diverse sources including iconography found in Khajuraho and Ajanta as well as scriptural references from the Mahābhārata, the Rāmāyaṇa, the Upaniṣads, and the Vedas, Young portrays apsaras to be intermediate figures occupying the interstice between divine and worldly, acting as both dangerous seductresses for male ascetics aiming for the celibate religious life and as beautiful goddesses who were the reward of spiritual or military heroes. She adds that apsaras had a role in the Buddhist context as well as goddesses hovering around the Buddhist deities or saints depicted in Tibetan cloth paintings (thangkas). She links Māra’s daughters who tempted the meditating Buddha and the harem of palace women who sought to distract the Buddha to the apsaras’ age-old role as seductresses.
Serinity Young highlights ḍākinīs’ ancient Indian roles as blood-thirsty demonesses who haunted cemeteries and fed on human flesh to refuel their power of flight. Etymologizing their name as “she who flies,” she explains how Buddhism incorporated these potentially malevolent female divinities into initiation goddesses and guardians of Buddhism. In Buddhist iconography and biographical literature, ḍākinīs are figures who appear in the sky at the birth or the death of a saint, bestow wisdom upon meditators, and possess female practitioners. ḍākinīs are associated with the female principle of wisdom, prajñā, a necessary counterpoint to the male principle of skillful means, upāya. These two essential ingredients for Buddhist enlightenment are depicted in the ubiquitous Tantric iconography of the yab yum couple in sexual union. Serenity Young argues that the representation of the female consort as smaller than the male indicates her subordination to the predominantly male subject of Buddhist iconography and religious doctrine. She suggests that the ḍākinīs’ prominence in Buddhist art is a sign of the supremacy of the male practitioner for whom she acts as a necessary counterpart. According to Young, rather than indicating a positive valuation of the feminine, ḍākinīs prevalence and their association with wisdom “has never, however, translated into a higher status for women in social reality because empowering imaginary women disempowers actual women.”
The third category of female divinity Young describes, the yoginī, appears on the Indian religious landscape around the fourth century CE. Young associates yoginīs largely with Hinduism, in particular with the wild, blood-drinking female spirits connected with Śiva and emanations of the powerful and wrathful goddesses Kālī and Durgā. She mentions the fascinating archeological evidence of circular roofless stone temples associated with the Indian yoginī cult and speculates about the types of practice that took place in these temples that are ringed on the insides with sculptures of curvaceous female bodies often with animal heads. Young argues that yoginī temples were less involved with sacrificial rites than sexual rites in which male devotees exchanged their own sexual fluids for the ritually powerful sexual fluids of human women who were possessed by divine aerial yoginīs. Young rightfully acknowledges the dearth of source material explaining the role of human women who may have participated in the yoginī cult, an admission that her audience will do well to keep in mind.
Serinity Young’s talk explores the intriguing and colorful roles that apsaras, ḍākinīs, and yoginīs have had as mothers, destroyers, bearers of disease, bestowers of boons, sexually voracious demonesses, and consorts benefiting male meditators in the South Asian traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism. Although she suggests that all of these female guises stem from the unpredictable ancient Indian bird-goddesses, her lecture raises many questions about the origins of these undoubtedly intriguing celestial forces. Young’s claim that “these aerial beings flew through ever constricting space as they were encompassed by male gods and male traditions” implies that pre-Hindu and pre-Buddhist Indian religion afforded women greater independence than they later had in these “male” traditions. Given the minimal archeological or textual sources to substantiate this claim, the “ambivalent” position of these at times benevolent and at times malevolent goddesses should warn us that we, too, may want to remain ambivalent about claims of a prior, more female-friendly epoch. If Indian and Tibetan religion’s penchant for iconographic and literary depictions of female goddesses tempts us to conclude that human women within these traditions once enjoyed an exalted status, Serinity Young’s statement that “empowering imaginary women disempowers actual women” reminds us that the link between representations of the divine feminine and the social position of human women is far from clear and much in need of further inquiry.
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Sarah Jacoby recently received her Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies. Her dissertation analyzes the biographical writings of an early twentieth-century female Treasure revealer (gter ston) named Sera Khandro. She is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at Columbia University’s Society of Fellows in the Humanities.
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Serinity Young Podcast (13.9 MB mp3) > >
Hundreds of years before Sigmund Freud diagnosed the human predicament as a tug-of-war between one's id and superego, popular theology in medieval Japan conceived of a similar notion in the form of the deity named kōjin ("Raging Deity").
In his lecture "The Watchful Twins: Gods and Destiny in East Asian Buddhism," Kao Professor in Japanese Religion Bernard Faure (Columbia University) put forth a challenge to the classic expression of Buddhas and Kami and proposed a "latent" pantheon in which kōjin plays a central role. Faure argued that kōjin "undermines the neat distinction and hierarchy established by the Honji Suijaku theory between these two types of sacred beings. It is a Janus-faced deity, whose nature encompasses both good and evil . . . " Among the deity's various features, the one Faure highlighted is the control kōjin wields over human destiny throughout all rebirths until nirvana.
Faure examined several instances of kōjin, and explained that one in particular, ena kōjin ("placenta god"), has the "embryological function" of nurturing and protecting a baby in utero. In this form it represents a protective twin which, at birth, becomes a gushōjin ("guardian spirit"). As gushōjin, Faure added, they are "silent witnesses of all our acts, and are thus 'closer to ourselves' than we ourselves are — even though they remain invisible and alien to us." However, they can also be harmful, "either through ill intent, or merely through their eagerness in reporting our misdeeds." Kōjin, according to Faure, appears as a peaceful buddha to those who are virtuous and as a wrathful one to those who are not. Iconographically the gushōjin are portrayed as a pair — one to record good deeds and one bad.
The duality, Faure remarked, "becomes a ternary structure, in which the central figure (the individual, or the Buddha on the mythological plane) is flanked by two morally opposite figures . . . The two images tend to overlap, so that the Kōjin himself, who was initially the doppelganger of the individual, becomes identical with him, becoming as it were his the inner truth, the true nature of the individual, his buddha-nature." Thus the two — good and evil — reflect temporal dualities on the path to enlightenment.
Listen to a podcast (mp3 29.3 MB) >>
Read minutes >>
(coming soon)
In 1996 a huge cache of Buddhist statuary was discovered beneath a basketball court in the town of Qingzhou in the Shadong Province of China. Almost immediately the news attracted the attention of art historians, archeologists, collectors, and thieves. "We were surrounded by dealers from the moment we began excavating," reported Wang Huaqing, Director of the Qingzhou Municipal Museum.
Aside from the immense monetary value that Qingzhou statuary fetch on the open market (in 1989 a marble stele from a similar collection sold for £850,000 at Sotheby's in London), the statues from Qingzhou are important because they offer an opportunity to study the stylistic changes that experts believe will shed light on the complex histories of the Northern Wei and Northern Qi dynasties.
Yao Chongxin (visiting scholar to Columbia University from Chongsham University in China), has studied the garment styles of the Qinzhou collection, and has discovered similarities between those made during the Northern Qi dynasty and Indian sculptures from the Gupta era. Contrary to popular opinion, he attributes the unique robe styles of the Northern Qi statues not to Chinese influences from within the mainland— but directly to India.
Last October Dr. Chongxin presented his findings to the Buddhist Studies Seminar at Columbia University. The audio for his lecture, "A Reexamination of Northern Qi Buddhist Stone Sculpture of Qingzhou, Shantong" (with translation from Dr. Eileen Hsu of the Princeton Museum of Art), is available for download below.
Listen to podcast (19.3 MB mp3) >>
Read minutes from meeting >>
(coming soon)
"Karma is a funny thing."
-Earl Hickey (protagonist of My Name is Earl)
A college student, on summer-break from Harvard, is making his way through the stacks of his hometown public library in Jefferson County, Colorado when a book inexplicably drops from one of the shelves. Retrieving it from the ground, he is intrigued by what he sees — a translation of an ancient Sanskrit text. Curious, he discovers that the translator, Daniel Ingalls, is a professor at Harvard. The following fall, the young man shocks his family and friends by electing to abandon his curriculum in science (he had a grant from an aerospace company), and make Sanskrit literature the focus of his studies. Today the student is a teacher — Gary Tubb — and is universally considered one of the field's finest scholars.
Ten years later, a second book mysteriously falls from a shelf. This time the book is Je Tsong Khapa's commentary on the Cakrasamvara Tantra, and it hits Robert Thurman's head while he is preparing for a meeting with his graduate student David Gray. Interpreting the incident as a sign, Thurman strongly urges Gray to translate the text for his dissertation. Today Gray is a professor at Santa Clara University, and his forthcoming book, The Cakrasamvara Tantra: A Study and Annotated Translation from Sanskrit and Tibetan is to be released later this year from the American Institute of Buddhist Studies (AIBS).
It would seem that there is some sort of translator-terma lineage here at Columbia. Gray, a former student of Tubb, says only that "serendipity works in funny ways" (shades of Early Hickey). As the most recent guest speaker to the Buddhist Studies Seminar at Columbia University, and a former rapporteur, Gray was at home in Barnard's Altschul auditorium earlier this month. In his lecture "The Illumination of the Hidden Meaning: Tsong Khapa and the Art of Interpretation," Gray gives the acclaimed Tibetan Buddhist thinker a new look; speculating that Tsong Khapa was in fact a "radical" in his treatment of tantric practices in his writings, and was in turn politically motivated.
Download complete synopsis here (PDF) >>
(File coming soon!)
Ironic empathy is perhaps the best way to describe Joseph Walser’s (Chair of the Department of Comparative Religion at Tufts University) use of the dictum ‘to publish or perish’ as the main title of his lecture to the Buddhist Studies Seminar at Columbia University (Sept. 21, 2006). An abbreviation of his newly published book Nāgārjuna in Context: Mahāyāna Buddhism & Early Indian Culture (CU Press, 2005), Walser’s talk was aimed at elucidating the socio-political influences on the writings of the philosopher-saint Nāgārjuna.
Walser’s erudite reexamination of works attributed to the acclaimed 2nd century Buddhist thinker, strives to answer such questions as: “just how is it that something that was written 1800 years ago in Brahmi script on palm-leaf parchment, sits today in Devanagri script in a library in New York City?” According to Walser, the answer involves a deep appreciation for social context, and is not altogether different from why his own book now sits in the Labyrinth Bookstore on 112th Street.
Conceived and written while applying for tenure at Tufts, the impetus for Walser’s book came out of feedback he received during that time. Thus the very act of writing about the social factors that facilitated the redaction of Nāgārjuna’s ideas were, for Walser, instrumental in whether or not he himself would be published and in turn tenured (circumstance that may have also allowed Walser some degree of empathy with his subject).
Just as it woud be a grievous error to reduce Walser’s interest to career advancement, an examination of Nāgārjuna in context does not take away from the philosophical import of the Mahāyāna’s most esteemed philosophical thinker. On the contrary, Walser’s study enhances our understanding of Nāgārjuna, providing a refreshing and novel perspective.
This Fall (2006) the Buddhist Studies Seminar will resume its monthly series of public lectures with a stellar line-up of guest speakers. Starting September 21st, Joseph Walser will kick things off with a presentation of materials from his recently published book Nagarjuna in Context: Mahayana Buddhism & Early Indian Culture (Columbia Press, 2005). On October 5th David Gray will give a talk entitled "The Illumination of the Hidden Meaning: Tsong Khapa and the Art of Interpretation." (Gray is an alumnus of the Buddhist Studies program at Columbia, and his forthcoming translation of the Cakrasmvara Tantra will be published this Spring by the American Institute of Buddhist Studies. Later that month on the 26th, visiting scholar Yao Chongxin will present on Buddhist art and archaeology--"A Reexamination of Northern Qi Buddhist Stone Sculptures of Qingzhou, Shantong." And for our final meeting before the winter break, we are pleased to welcome Bernard Faure. Professor Faure has recently joined the faculty at Columbia University, and will be presenting a lecture entitled "The Silent Witnesses: Twin-Devas in East Asian Religions".
The Spring series will start in February with Serinity Young, Wendi Adamek, and Kevin Trainor.
The Buddhist Studies Seminar generally meets the third Thursday of every month at 5:30 in the Faculty House on the campus of Columbia University. If you would like to attend a session of the Buddhist Studies Seminar, please join our mailing list via the email field in the blue box in right hand column of this blog. And for a complete schedule of the fall series, please click here.
John Campbell was the rapporteur for the Buddhist Studies Seminar from 1999-2002. Click on the links below to download and read his minutes from those meetings.
Professor Janet Gyatso
“Buddhist Monasticism and the role of sex.”
David Loy
"A Buddhist Perspective on the New Holy War.”
Richard Salomon
“Fragments of a lost canon: Interpreting the newly rediscovered Buddhist Literature of Gandhara.”
Wendi Adamek
“The Impossibility of the Given: A Look at Chinese Buddhist Donor Inscriptions.”
Ronald M. Davidson
“Political Metaphors in Indian Esoteric Buddhism.”
Georges B. Dreyfus
“The Sound of Two Hands Clapping: Debate in Tibetan Monastic Tradition."
Anne C. Klein
“The Logic of Unbounded Wholeness: Doing and Knowing in a Bon Dzogchen Text."
