American Academy of Religion (AAR) 2009 – Montréal

I will be attending the AAR meeting in Montreal this week. Please take a look at this list and let me know which sessions you would most like to hear about. I’ll try my best to get to as many as I can.

Enjoy!
~Marcus

Some of the sessions with presentations connected to the study of Buddhism:

A7-303  Buddhism Section

Saturday – 4:00 pm-6:30 pm

PDC-511E

Janet Gyatso, Harvard University, Presiding

Theme: New Perspectives in Buddhist Studies

Abraham Zablocki, Agnes Scott College

Tibetan Buddhism in Taiwan: Political, Economic, and Religious Implications

Ryan Bongseok Joo, Hampshire College

Countercurrents from the West: Blue-eyed Zen Masters, Vipassana Meditation, and Buddhist Psychotherapy in Contemporary Korea

Ruth Gamble, Australian National University

“Look Over at the Mountains”: Sense of Place in the Third Karmapa’s Songs of Experience

D. Neil Schmid, North Carolina State University

Both Five and Six Paths: Revising the Realms of Rebirth in Medieval China

Kristin Scheible, Bard College

Desawarana and the Emanation of Power

Business Meeting:

Janet Gyatso, Harvard University

Charles Hallisey, Harvard University

A7-323 Sacred Space in Asia Group

Theme: Pilgrimage and Globalization: Affirming and Contesting Boundaries through Movement and Performance

Saturday – 4:00 pm-6:30 pm

PDC-510C

Sujata Ghosh, McGill University, Presiding

Theme: Pilgrimage and Globalization: Affirming and Contesting

Boundaries through Movement and Performance Religion is a bounded category of action, affiliation, and meaning that can be contested through the twenty-first century pilgrimage phenomenon. In this panel we explore the complexity of pilgrimage activities and pilgrims’ statuses in global society with reference to field research in urban, suburban, and rural sites in Quebec, India, and Japan. A core assumption underlying all three papers is that pilgrimage-related and (seemingly) nonpilgrimage-related spaces are bound together by the performances of people – pilgrims, tourists, social workers, and scholars – who thread a meaningful path for themselves and their communities by means of movement through these spaces. Central to this argument is that pilgrimage is not a “discrete experience” set apart from everyday life, but integrated into the fabric of one’s quotidian existence. The categorical distinctions between pilgrim, tourist, social worker, educator, and researcher are blurred, and may well serve as a metaphor for contemporary global religious identities.

J.F. Marc des Jardins, Concordia University

The “Reopening” of the White Cliffs Mountains in Nyag-rong (Eastern Tibet) or New BF6n Reinventing Tradition: The Case of Sang Nga Ling Pa.

Kory Goldberg, University du Quebec E0 Montreal and Champlain College

Buddhists Without Borders: Intersecting Boundaries in Bodhgaya’s Global Religioscape

Mark McGuire, John Abbott College

46rom the Mountain to the City and Back Again: The Creative Reinvention of a Japanese Ascetic Tradition (ShugendF4) for Diverse Urban Pilgrims

Responding:

Melissa Anne-Marie Curley, McGill University

M9-401  Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy

Reflections on The Heart Sutra

Monday – 7:00 pm-8:30 pm

FQE-Richelieu

Gereon Kopf, Luther College, Presiding

Yansheng He, Koriyama University

The Heart Sutra in Dogen’s Shobogenzo

Ralf Mueller, Humboldt UniversitE4t, Berlin

The Heart Sutra in the Kyoto School

John Krummel, Hobart and William Smith Colleges

The Prajnaparamita Logic of Soku-hi in Nishida Kitaro

Naoko Sasaki, Ohio Northern University

The Heart Sutra in Kukai Linda Wang, University of Hong Kong

Understanding the Term “Sunyata” in The Heart Sutra: Teaching the Doctrine of Emptiness to Secondary School Children

A7-116  Science, Technology, and Religion Group and Buddhist Philosophy Group

Theme: The Science of Meditation?: Findings, Problems, and Future Potential

Saturday – 9:00 am-11:30 am

PDC-511F

Lea Schweitz, Lutheran School of Theology, Presiding

In the last several years, Buddhist meditation has received considerable attention in scientific contexts that include both clinical and basic research. Recent findings suggest that some Buddhist practices – or therapies derived from them – may induce changes in the brain, immune system, and behavior. Drawing on expertise in both science and religion, this panel presents some of these recent findings as a means to raise a number of key questions.

What, for example, is the overall cultural context in which this research is embedded, and what role is played by assumptions about the nature of Buddhist practice? For scientific research, is it useful to analyze practices through traditional Buddhist theory, or do such attempts raise debates, such as questions about the “true” nature of “mindfulness,” that may obscure more than they illumine? Beginning with brief presentations, the panel will be devoted to an open discussion on these and other such questions.

Panelists:

Pierre Rainville, University of Montreal
Joshua Grant, University of Montreal
Willoughby Britton, Brown University

Responding:

Francisca Cho, Georgetown University
Daniel A. Arnold, University of Chicago
John D. Dunne, Emory University

A7-203  Buddhism Section

Theme: Making Money, Making Meaning, Making Merit: Exploring the Fit between Tourism, Development, and the Buddhist Revival in China Today

Saturday – 1:00 pm-3:30 pm

PDC-511E

Charles B. Jones, Catholic University of America, Presiding

Since the beginning of China’s policies of opening and reform in the late 1970s, restrictions on the practice of religion have been relaxed. While monastics and lay Buddhists have taken advantage of these relaxed policies to revive Buddhist institutions and practices, both the central state and local governments now consider the rehabilitation of Buddhist temples as tourist sites an attractive means of economic development. Drawing on extensive field research at temples throughout China, this panel will address the complicated relationship between tourism, development, and Buddhism’s revival in China today. Among the questions the panelists will consider are whether state-initiated development of temple sites is compatible with sangha-initiated projects of religious renewal, how Buddhist adherents have both resisted and made use of state interest in temples as tourist sites, and whether the interests of tourists themselves in Buddhism are part of the religion’s revival or as pects of its commodification.

Thomas Borchert, University of Vermont

A Temple of Their Own? Minority Buddhists, Economic Development, and Autonomy in Southwest China

Gareth Fisher, Syracuse University

Bringing Back the Buddha: Lay Buddhist Contestation of Tourist Temple Space in Beijing

Brian J. Nichols, Rice University

The Ballad of the Curator and the Revivalist: Being Old and Famous Cuts Both Ways, Especially If You’re a Buddhist Monastery

Sun Yanfei, University of Chicago

The Yichun Model: The Role of Local Cadres in the Buddhist Revival

Responding:

Kang Xiaofei, Carnegie Mellon University

A7-204  Comparative Studies in Religion Section

Theme: Relic Practices Across Traditions

Saturday – 1:00 pm-3:30 pm

PDC-511D

This session will examine four examples of relic-related practices from a comparative perspective. The examples include relic veneration among contemporary Jains, the uses and symbolism of reliquaries in medieval Europe, traditions connected with camel sacrifice and the distribution of the Prophet Muhammad’s hair before his death, and the role of Buddhist relic practices in political formations in South and Southeast Asia. The concluding response will identify several themes that emerge from a comparative analysis of the material presented in the papers, including the sacralization of the landscape, dynamics of access and control, and the creation of temporal continuities and linkages through narratives constructed around sacralized objects.

Anne M. Blackburn, Cornell University

Buddha Relics in the Lives of Southern Asian Polities

Responding:

Kevin Trainor, University of Vermont

A7-234  Yoga in Theory and Practice Consultation

Theme: Contextualizing the History of Yoga in Geoffrey Samuel’s The Origins of Yoga and Tantra

Saturday – 1:00 pm-3:30 pm

PDC-518B

Stuart R. Sarbacker, Oregon State University, Presiding

This session will be dedicated to a thorough examination of Geoffrey Samuel’s recent work The Origins of Yoga and Tantra: Indic Religions to the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2008). Samuel’s work represents a sophisticated attempt to bring significant contextuality to the development of the traditions of yoga and tantra through its key formative eras in the ancient periods (meditation and yoga) and in the classical to medieval periods (tantra), within the “Indic” traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. This session will provide a roundtable style discussion led by scholars representing the range of “Indic” traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, and the different “eras” of the development of yoga and tantra, principally the ancient, classical, and medieval periods.

Panelists:

Laurie Louise Patton, Emory University

Christopher Chapple, Loyola Marymount University

Gerald J. Larson, University of California, Santa Barbara, and Indiana University

Vesna Wallace, University of California, Santa Barbara

Daniel R. Gold, Cornell University

Responding:

Geoffrey B. Samuel, Cardiff University

A7-303  Buddhism Section

Saturday – 4:00 pm-6:30 pm

PDC-511E

Janet Gyatso, Harvard University, Presiding

Theme: New Perspectives in Buddhist Studies

Abraham Zablocki, Agnes Scott College

Tibetan Buddhism in Taiwan: Political, Economic, and Religious Implications

Ryan Bongseok Joo, Hampshire College

Countercurrents from the West: Blue-eyed Zen Masters, Vipassana Meditation, and Buddhist Psychotherapy in Contemporary Korea

Ruth Gamble, Australian National University

“Look Over at the Mountains”: Sense of Place in the Third Karmapa’s Songs of Experience

D. Neil Schmid, North Carolina State University

Both Five and Six Paths: Revising the Realms of Rebirth in Medieval China

Kristin Scheible, Bard College

Desawarana and the Emanation of Power

Business Meeting:

Janet Gyatso, Harvard University

Charles Hallisey, Harvard University

A7-318  Nineteenth-Century Theology Group

Theme: Theology and the Culture of War, Part I

Saturday – 4:00 pm-6:30 pm

PDC-516D

Betsy Perabo, Western Illinois University

The Army of God and the Army of the Buddha: Russian Theological Perspectives on the Russo-Japanese War

A7-323  Sacred Space in Asia Group

Theme: Pilgrimage and Globalization: Affirming and Contesting Boundaries through Movement and Performance

Saturday – 4:00 pm-6:30 pm

PDC-510C

Sujata Ghosh, McGill University, Presiding

Theme: Pilgrimage and Globalization: Affirming and Contesting

Boundaries through Movement and Performance Religion is a bounded category of action, affiliation, and meaning that can be contested through the twenty-first century pilgrimage phenomenon. In this panel we explore the complexity of pilgrimage activities and pilgrims’ statuses in global society with reference to field research in urban, suburban, and rural sites in Quebec, India, and Japan. A core assumption underlying all three papers is that pilgrimage-related and (seemingly) nonpilgrimage-related spaces are bound together by the performances of people – pilgrims, tourists, social workers, and scholars – who thread a meaningful path for themselves and their communities by means of movement through these spaces. Central to this argument is that pilgrimage is not a “discrete experience” set apart from everyday life, but integrated into the fabric of one’s quotidian existence. The categorical distinctions between pilgrim, tourist, social worker, educator, and researcher are blurred, and may well serve as a metaphor for contemporary global religious identities.

J.F. Marc des Jardins, Concordia University

The “Reopening” of the White Cliffs Mountains in Nyag-rong (Eastern Tibet) or New BF6n Reinventing Tradition: The Case of Sang Nga Ling Pa.

Kory Goldberg, University du Quebec E0 Montreal and Champlain College

Buddhists Without Borders: Intersecting Boundaries in Bodhgaya’s Global Religioscape

Mark McGuire, John Abbott College

46rom the Mountain to the City and Back Again: The Creative Reinvention of a Japanese Ascetic Tradition (ShugendF4) for Diverse Urban Pilgrims

Responding:

Melissa Anne-Marie Curley, McGill University

A7-326  Tantric Studies Group

Theme: Translation in the Context of Medieval Tantric Materials

Saturday – 4:00 pm-6:30 pm

PDC-515B

Glen Alexander Hayes, Bloomfield College, Presiding

This panel addresses the problems of translation for scholars working on medieval Tantric materials. All of the presenters work on some form of medieval Tantra, and each presenter highlights different issues involved with the translation of such materials. The issues discussed in this panel include matters of reception, translation theory, the difficulties associated with locating adequate source materials, including multiple editions of texts, the particular problems associated with translating particular genres of Tantric materials, the integration of textual studies with ethnographic and other scholarly methods, and the current biases in American academic institutions that deem translation as insufficiently “scholarly” or “original” to merit tenure.

Panelists:

Alberta Ferrario, University of Pennsylvania

Loriliai Biernacki, University of Colorado, Boulder

Shaman Hatley, Concordia University

John Nemec, University of Virginia

Responding:

David Gray, Santa Clara University

A8-128  Tibetan and Himalayan Religions Group

Theme: Strategies of Buddhist Knowledge Transmission: Texts, Techniques, and Technologies in Tibet

Sunday – 9:00 am-11:30 am

PDC-514B

Andrew H. Quintman, Yale University, Presiding

Transmission in the Tibetan Buddhist traditions involves a record of successive lineages, of who gave what knowledge to whom – not as a moribund doctrine but as a living episteme. Simultaneously, techniques for the transmission of knowledge have changed dramatically over time. On one hand, this panel addresses various forms of knowledge for transmission by looking at how concepts of knowledge are prioritized differently by scholars of the Geluk, Nyingma, and Jonang traditions of Tibetan Buddhism. On the other hand, it looks at the changing technologies for disseminating that knowledge. By taking a multifaceted approach to modes of knowledge, techniques for its transmission, and technologies employed for sustaining transmission, this panel considers how Tibetan Buddhist religious traditions transmit and receive meaning through time and across space.

Antonio Terrone, Northwestern University

Buddhist Teachings from Cyberspace: Reflections on Internet Technology and the Apparitions of Tibetan Visionaries’ Websites in China

Nicole Willock, Indiana University

Deconstructing Aspects of the Secular and Religious in the Transmission of Knowledge: A Glimpse into the Life of a Tibetan Buddhist Scholar in Modern China

Michael R. Sheehy, New School and Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center

Life After Taranatha: Priorities and Strategies for the Survival of Esoteric Knowledge Transmission among Jonangpa in Post-seventeenth Century Tibet

Holly Gayley, University of Colorado

All in the Dudjom (Bdud ‘joms) Family: Overlapping Modes of Authority and Transmission in the Golok Treasure Scene

Responding:

Leonard W.J. Van Der Kuijp, Harvard University

A8-255  Ethics Section

Theme: Ethics of Eastern Religious Experience

Sunday – 3:00 pm-4:30 pm

PDC-516B

Elijah Siegler, College of Charleston, Presiding

John Adams, University of California, Santa Barbara

Falun Gong: Cultivating Moral Character

Amy Holmes-Tagchungdarpa, University of Alabama

His Father’s Keeper: Ethics, Ambiguity, and Responsibility in the Life of Tibetan Buddhist Teacher Se Phagchog Dorje (1893-1943)

Responding:

Ruben L. F. Habito, Southern Methodist University

A8-277  Tantric Studies Group

Theme: Recent Research in Tantric Studies

Sunday – 3:00 pm-4:30 pm

PDC-514A

John Nemec, University of Virginia, Presiding

Tantric studies grows through a variety of scholarly activities, ranging from fieldwork to textual studies, and to the application of new methodologies. The first paper, based on recent fieldwork, examines the Tantric traditions of Assam and how, even within the context of South Asia, they have been viewed as “extreme” and “other” due to their connections with non-Hindu indigenous religions, blood sacrifice, and magic. The second paper, also using recent fieldwork, looks at the complicated layers of meanings and interpretations that may be attributed to the open-air Yogini temples of Central and Eastern India. Two case studies will be presented, one reflecting a South Asian perspective, while the other is that of two European travelers. The third paper uses both fieldwork and textual studies to explore the projection of sacred space onto the geographic planes of the Kathmandu valley of Nepal by Hindu and Buddhist Tantric traditions.

Sthaneshwar Timalsina, San Diego State University

Interface between Real and Projected Spaces: The Mandala of Nepal as a Shakta Pitha and the Buddhist Shrine

A8-278  Buddhism in the West Consultation and Tibetan and Himalayan Religions Group

Theme: Translating Tibetan Buddhism: Language, Transmission, and Transformation

Sunday – 3:00 pm-4:30 pm

PDC-511D

Sara L. McClintock, Emory University, Presiding

This panel studies translation of Buddhism from the Tibetan cultural world, not only in its narrow context as a linguistic process or historical event, but also in terms of its formative role of transmitting and transforming Buddhism across regional, social, and cultural boundaries. While such discussions do involve considerable linguistic analysis and historical perspective, the primary focus of the panel is on studying the effects of translation on the target culture and the religious consequences (intended as well as unplanned) that translation brings about. The panel therefore also studies contemporary translation issues through anthropological and sociological approaches. In this way the panel will shed light on the important consequences, often subtle and unnoticed, that translation brings about on Buddhism as a tradition. It will also explore the dynamics unfolding as concerns for religious authority and orthodoxy are negotiated along with the unavoidable prospect of innovation and heterodoxy.

James Blumenthal, Oregon State University

Translating Buddhism in the Academic Buddhist Academy

Thomas Doctor, University of Lausanne

On Sources, Targets, and the Middle Way: Is Madhyamaka Translatable?

Martijn van Beek, Aarhus University

Translating the Great Perfection: Anthropological Reflections on Authority and Authenticity

Andreas Doctor, Kathmandu University

Translating Esoteric Buddhism: Secrecy, Integrity, and the Role of the Translator

Responding:

Anne C. Klein, Rice University

A8-318  Buddhist Critical-Constructive Reflection Group

Theme: Activating Compassion: Educating the Buddhist Chaplain

Sunday – 5:00 pm-6:30 pm

PDC-515C

Judith Simmer-Brown, Naropa University, Presiding

Wakoh Shannon Hickey, Alfred University

Meditation Is Not Enough: Chaplaincy Training for Buddhists

Daijaku Judith Kinst, Institute for Buddhist Studies

Service, Particularity, and Emptiness: Theological and Practice Roots of Buddhist Interfaith Chaplaincy

Willa Miller, Harvard University

“Thus I Have Listened”: A Reflection on Buddhist Approaches to Pastoral Counseling

Angela Lutzenberger, Veterans Affairs Puget Sound Health Care System

Assessment from the Field: Paradigms of Chaplaincy Internship and Residency

A9-103  Buddhism Section

Theme: Buddhism in Quebec

Monday – 9:00 am-11:30 am

PDC-515A

The growth of Buddhism in Quebec resembles that of the growth of Buddhism across Canada and across North America. Quebec now has dozens of Buddhist temples and meditation centres, of which about half cater to a Western-born membership. Still, because Quebec is a francophone region, Buddhism in Quebec has some unique accents. Researchers in this session have been studying these features. Because Vietnam was long a colony of France, many Vietnamese immigrants settled in Quebec, giving Quebec Buddhism a very strong Vietnamese cast. Montreal has the only branch in Canada of Association Zen Internationale (AZI), the school of Zen founded by Taisen Deshimaru in France in 1970. Quebec has its own tulku (recognized reincarnation of a deceased teacher). Montreal Chinese Buddhist groups are ethnically heterogeneous and have a pluralist religious identity. Montreal groups participate in pilgrimages to Bodh Gaya marked by modern global adaptations.

Alexander Soucy, St. Mary’s University

46rom Bodhi to Birch Tree: The Great Pine Forest Monastery and the Nativization of Vietnamese Buddhism to Canada

Brigitte Robert, McMaster University

Lineage as an Approach to the Study of Zen Buddhism in Quebec

Elijah Ary, Harvard University

Inside-Out: Reflections on the Education and Experience of a Canadian Tulku

Manuel Litalien, McGill University

Montreal Chinese Buddhist Communities in Context

A9-115  Buddhist Critical-Constructive Reflection Group

Theme: Applying Modern Academic Findings to Help Inform Buddhist Understandings Today

Monday – 9:00 am-11:30 am

PDC-516B

David Robert Loy, Xavier University, Presiding

JosE9 I. CabezF3n, University of California, Santa Barbara

Toward a Buddhist Sexual Ethics for Our Time

Rita M. Gross, University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire

Buddhist History for Buddhist Practitioners

Christopher Ives, Stonehill College

Reconstructing Zen Social Ethics in the Aftermath of Wartime Buddhist Nationalism: A Critical Appraisal and Suggestion

Leah Weiss Ekstrom, Boston College

Effective Pedagogy of Tibetan Buddhism in Contemporary North America: Drawing on the Example of Milarepa

David Gardiner, Colorado College

Reevaluating the Centrality of Faith in Buddhism

Business Meeting:

John J. Makransky, Boston College

A9-204  Comparative Studies in Religion Section

Theme: Buddhist and Non-Buddhist Meditation Exercises: Comparative Perspectives

Monday – 1:00 pm-3:30 pm

PDC-511B

John P. Keenan, Middlebury College, Presiding

Contemplative exercises are an important part of world religions. Therefore, comparison of any distinct religions’ meditation practices could illuminate significant similarities between systems being examined. For focus, this panel looks at Buddhist meditation methods as the basis for uncovering revealing continuities between its usually nontheistically-centric techniques and theistically-centric systems of contemplation. While comparative studies of Buddhist meditation forms and those of other religions exist, there is need for more work examining specific, pointed exercises within the larger contemplative programs of the world’s spiritualities. This panel investigates particulars of certain Buddhist and non-Buddhist meditation exercises that have very similar objects of focus, to uncover larger similarities between systems typically regarded as antithetical in orientation. Discoveries emerging from these papers can be useful as signposts towards a deeper understanding of genuine common human religious impulses and concerns. Each paper applies different theories considered best suited to interpret the unique meditative subject being investigated.

Jared Lindahl, University of California, Santa Barbara

Illuminating Awareness: Meditations on Consciousness as Light in Tibetan Buddhism and Greek Orthodox Christianity

Stuart W. Smithers, University of Puget Sound

Windless Breathing: Speculations on Prana-related Practices in Hindu and Buddhist Meditations

Todd Perreira, University of California, Santa Barbara

Dying Before Dying: Death Meditation in Buddhism and Islam

Justin Whitaker, University of London

Meditation’s Ethics: Ignatian’s Spiritual Exercises and the Buddhist Metta-Bhavana

Responding:

Bradley S. Clough, University of Montana

A9-228  Buddhism in the West Consultation

Theme: Buddhism in the West: A Canadian Focus

Monday – 1:00 pm-3:30 pm

PDC-524B

Victor Sogen Hori, McGill University, Presiding

Buddhism came to Canada in 1904 when the Japanese Pure Land monk, Sasaki Senju, arrived in Vancouver to build the first Buddhist temple. Buddhism remained confined to the Japanese Canadian community until the 1960s and 1970s when the government adopted new immigration laws and an official policy of multiculturalism. Thereafter each immigrant group brought its form of Buddhism. During the 1960 and 1970s also, Western-born Canadians began serious Buddhist practice, adapting Buddhism to the culture of Westerners. Today, Vancouver, Toronto, or Montreal have many Buddhist temples and meditation centers, approximately half created for a Western membership. Until recently, only two full-length monographs on Buddhism in Canada had been published and only a handful of graduate theses and dissertations had been written. But now, researchers across the country are busy documenting the many faces of Buddhism in Canada. This session displays the variety of their projects and research met hodologies.

Mavis Lillian Fenn, St. Paul United College

Buddhism in a Canadian Multicultural Context

Mauro Peressini, Canadian Museum of Civilization

Uses and Specificities of the Life Stories of Buddhist Practitioners: Some Questions

John Harding, University of Lethbridge

Buddhism, Canada, and the Western Frontier

Lina Verchery, Harvard University

The Anomaly of Gampo Abbey: A Case Study on Canadian Buddhist Monasticism

Barbra R. Clayton, Mount Allison University

Buddha’s Maritime Nature: Shambhala Buddhist Environmentalism in Atlantic Canada

A9-233  Yogacara Studies Consultation

Theme: The Confluence and Conflicts between Yogacara and Tathagatagarbha in East Asia

Monday – 1:00 pm-3:30 pm

PDC-524A

Robert M. Gimello, University of Notre Dame, Presiding

This panel aims to clarify the complex relation between the Yogacara and the Tathagatagarbha traditions in East Asia. Contained herein is a complex mix of historical, philosophical, and religious problems. Historically, the question is to what extent was Tathagatagarbha a tradition distinct from Yogacara? Philosophically, we shall explore the disagreements between the two, and try to pinpoint the underlying causes. Religiously, what is involved in the disputes is the timeless problem regarding the intrinsic purity/defilement of the mind. Given the disagreements between these two traditions, we shall also investigate what the extent was of the actual confluence between them.

Methodologically, this panel suggests that it might be more fruitful if we examine the Yogacara-Tathagatagarbha relation first in the East Asian context. This is because part of what we know about the relation between these two traditions in India is based on their later transmissions to East Asia.

Ching Keng, Harvard University

On the Different Senses of Tathagatagarbha in ParamE2rtha and in the Awakening of Faith

A. Charles Muller, University of Tokyo

Wonhyo’s Approach to Reconciling Yogacara and Tathagatagarbha

Eyal Aviv, George Washington University

The Theory of srutavasana and the Debate about the Nature of the Hearing and Mind in Twentieth Century China

Lin Chen-Kuo, National Chenchi University

Truth and Consciousness in the Polemics of the Yogacara-Tathagatagarbha Controversy: A Comparative Approach

Responding:

Nobuyoshi Yamabe, Tokyo University of Agriculture

Business Meeting:

Dan Lusthaus, Harvard University

A9-313  Buddhist Philosophy Group and Yogacara Studies Consultation

Theme: Levels of Description in Buddhist Philosophy

Monday – 4:00 pm-6:30 pm

PDC-510D

John D. Dunne, Emory University, Presiding

The papers presented here commonly exemplify a significantly recurrent concern among Indian Buddhist philosophers: that of relating fundamentally different levels of description (e.g., ultimate and conventional, phenomenological and causal, metaphorical and referential) of the person and of reality. Three of them address such issues specifically with regard to the Yogacara tradition of philosophy, respectively addressing the significance of phenomenological versus ontological conceptions of the two truths; metaphorical versus direct reference; and the continuity and consistency of Vasubandhu’s Yogacara project with the Abhidharmika writings attributed to him. The first paper concerns the question of how it might make sense for Buddhists to affirm that persons are metaphysically unfree but nevertheless morally responsible for their actions.

Martin Adam, McGill University

Buddhism and Compatabilism

Douglas S. Duckworth, East Tennessee State University

Two Models of the Two Truths: Ontological and Phenomenological Approaches

Roy Tzohar, Columbia University and Tel Aviv University

Upacara in Early Yogacara: Towards a Philosophical Reconstruction of a Buddhist Theory of Metaphor

Jonathan Gold, Princeton University

Taking Up the Burden: Carrying Vasubandhu from the Treasury to the Three Natures

Business Meeting:

Daniel A. Arnold, University of Chicago

A9-325  Tantric Studies Group and Cognitive Science of Religion Consultation

Theme: Tantric Studies and the Cognitive Science of Religion: Conversation and Collaboration

Monday – 4:00 pm-6:30 pm

PDC-513C

Charles D. Orzech, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, Presiding

There is no doubt that emerging research provides us with an impressive database of empirical studies on the cognitive aspects of religion – but what can cognitive science, based on the theory that there is a deep and abiding “common core” or “deep grammar” of human experience (Slingerland, 2008) tell us about Tantric yoga? Conversely, what can Tantric yoga tell us about the “common core” or “deep grammar” of human experience – for this must be a two-way conversation rather than a monologue with science doing all the talking and Tantric studies doing all the listening (Cabezon, 2007). These papers, using some categories and methods from cognitive science and suggesting new ones, are by scholars of Tantric studies, not cognitive scientists. This panel will explore issues of conceptual blending, yogic ? consciousness, mystical physiology, sexual rituals, identity formation, and “reverse amnesia,” as well as negative emotions and disgust as vital “cognitive states. ”

Chris Hatchell, University of Virginia

Seeing Emptiness: Visionary Philosophy in Kalacakra and the Great Perfection

A10-102  Buddhism Section

Theme: The Lasting Impact of the Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra

Tuesday – 9:00 am-11:30 am

PDC-510B

Peter N. Gregory, Smith College, Presiding

This panel is a collection of five papers on Mahaparinirvana Sutra (Nirvana Sutra), one of the most influential scriptures in East Asian Buddhism since the sixth century, but little studied in the modern period because of its size and complexity. The dominant Buddhist paradigm in East Asia as expressed in the Tiantai/Tendai tradition centers on the input from three core sutras: the Lotus, the Prajnaparamita, and the Nirvana. The first two have received significant attention in modern scholarship, but not the Nirvana Sutra. This panel presents development of this emerging field of study. The papers include studies of its core from linguistic, doctrinal, and historical points of view as expressing an apparent agenda to overturn the most basic Buddhist beliefs, such as nonself, impermanence, suffering, as well as relevant text critical issues in  the manuscript history of the text’s transmission.

Luis O. Gomez, University of Michigan

The Viparyasas in the Mahayana Sutras

Hiromi Habata, University of Munich

Buddha’s Existence after His Death: The Meaning of “Nitya” in Mahaparinirvana Sutra

Naomi Sato, Center for Information on Religion

Features of the Phu Brag Tibetan Kanjur Edtion in the Mahaparinirvana Sutra

Mark L. Blum, State University of New York, Albany

Burning the Lotus at Both Ends: The Mahaparinirvana Sutra’s Relationship to the Saddharmapundarika Sutra

Jan Nattier, Indiana University

Recent Research on the Mahaparinirva?a Sutra: A Critical Assessment

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