Advanced Readings in Tibetan Buddhism This seminar examines a range of Tibetan Buddhist literature including doctrinal, historical, biographical, and polemical works. The focus will be on primary materials although relevant secondary sources on the study of Tibetan literature and literary genres will be included. Some knowledge of Classical Tibetan is required.
Biography in Asian Religions This seminar examines a variety of primary texts and secondary theoretical works on biography and autobiography in order to evaluate the significance of life writing in the religious traditions of Asia. We will cover a broad range of historical periods, from early medieval to modern, and geographic regions, including South, Southeast, and East Asia. Topics will include the structure, function, style, production, and reception of life writing, as well as more thematic questions of religious transmission, soteriology and praxis, formations of self-identity, and gender.
Buddhist Traditions of Mind and Meditation This seminar surveys a range of Buddhist meditation practices in the context of traditional theories of mind, perception, and cognition. Beginning with canonical descriptions of the mind and its variety of mental states, the course will then examine early scriptural expositions on the two principal types of meditation techniques: serenity or concentration meditation (samatha) and insight meditation (vipassana). We will then examine techniques for cultivating compassion and the view of emptiness that were central to the later Indian traditions of the Mahāyāna or Great Vehicle. The course will finally turn to the elaborate systems of Tantra that developed in India and spread through Tibet, which incorporate the visualization of deities and recitation of mantras. Readings will include both primary Buddhist canonical works and commentaries by contemporary Buddhist teachers in English translation as well as secondary scholarship on the historical context of Buddhist meditation systems, cognitive theory, and ritual practice.
Classical Tibetan Literature Graduate level seminar for reading Classical Tibetan texts at an advanced level.
Himalayan Buddhism (RLST 566) This seminar undertakes a critical examination of Buddhist traditions in the Himalayan world, including North India, Nepal, Bhutan, and Tibet. Readings will focus on works of philosophy and literature, ritual, sacred geography, and material and visual culture to address the production of local Buddhist ideas and practices and their circulation across geo-political boundaries. The course will foreground the role of borders and borderlands in the formation of Himalayan religious culture and identity. It will also reflect on the definition and location of the Himalaya as a geographical site in the formation of academic disciplines such as Area Studies, Buddhist Studies, and Tibetan Studies.
Himalayan Pilgrimage This freshman seminar explores the many ways in which the Himalayan landscape has been imagined as a sacred space, and that humans have interacted with it. The seminar begins from a series of broad questions: What defines a place as sacred and who gets to define it? How are sacred sites created, changed, and maintained? How do Buddhism and other religious traditions establish sacred places? What underlying social and political pressures contribute to their production? The seminar thus introduces various modes of critical inquiry for the study of Buddhist traditions, religious texts, and ritual practices spanning the geography of Tibet, Nepal, North India, and Bhutan. To do so, it draws upon traditional literature and Buddhist practice as well as representations in popular Western culture.
Introduction to Buddhist Thought and Practice This course will introduce significant aspects of Buddhist thought and practice, primarily as it manifested in India and South Asia. It begins with an overview of the historical Buddha’s life and the development of early Buddhist ideas and practices. The course then introduces the Mahāyāna or Great Vehicle tradition that began to emerge around the first century BCE, as well as later forms of esoteric Buddhism known as Tantra. The course concludes with the development of modern Buddhism in Asia and its manifestation in the West. Readings consist mainly of primary Buddhist texts in translation, which are supplemented as necessary by works of secondary scholarship. The course broadly examines the topics of Buddhist philosophy and ethics, monastic and ascetic life, meditation and ritual practices, and the material culture of Buddhist societies, including artistic traditions, architecture, and book culture.
Monasticism in Comparative Perspective: World Religions in Practice ) This seminar undertakes a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary study of monasticism from antiquity to the present day, drawing upon a broad range of historical, ethnographic, archaeological, literary, and visual sources. Students will address basic questions about monastic spirituality, practice, and institutional organization: What is monasticism and how is it distinguished from other kinds of religious and non-religious practice? What is our earliest evidence for monasticism and what different types have developed from antiquity to the present day? How are monastic communities organized and how are aspects of life like food, sleep, sex, work, and prayer regimented? Why do men and women decide to enter the monastic life and what special challenges do they face as monastics? What do stories and visual images communicate about monastic ethics and theologies? Where and in what kinds of physical settings are monasteries located? How do these settings impact everyday life for the monks and nuns who dwell there? In what distinctive ways have monastic communities responded to the challenges of modernity?
Pilgrimage in China and Tibet A comparative study of historic and contemporary religious pilgrimage rituals among Tibetan Buddhist and Roman Catholic communities in China, including visual and textual representation as well as theological meaning. The course will involve lectures during Spring semester 2018 on Tibetan Buddhist and Chinese Catholic ritual practices surrounding religious pilgrimage, including natural and built sacred sites, their textual and visual representations, and theological interpretations. During Spring Break 2018 the class will travel to Beijing and Lhasa, visit Donglu pilgrimage site, then continue to Lhasa. Students will visit the Lhasa Jokhang (epicenter of Tibetan Buddhist pilgrimage), the Potala Palace (winter residence of the Dalai Lamas), and the nearby pilgrimage lake Namtso. Students will study ritual, visual, and material depictions of the rituals that occur in at those sites, with lectures conducted in situ.
Pilgrimage in Comparative Perspective: World Religions in Practice This course provides a methodological and historical introduction to the practice of pilgrimage in different cultural and religious settings, beginning with a consideration of anthropological perspectives on the phenomenon of pilgrimage, and then continuing with investigations of Greco-Roman, Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Indian, and Buddhist traditions, as well “secular” forms of ritualized travel.
Reading Tibetan Buddhist Texts This course explores the foundational doctrinal and philosophical systems of Tibetan Buddhism, combining a systematic study of traditional Buddhist exegetical works in English translation with an immersion in the basic vocabulary and grammar of classical Tibetan. The course adopts as its principal texts Gampopa’s The Jewel Ornament of Liberation and Tsongkhapa’s The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment. These seminal works represent two of Tibet’s best-known religious traditions and set forth related, though frequently divergent, approaches to engaging with the Buddha’s teachings in the Tibetan Buddhist world.
Readings in Tibetan and Inner Asian Studies A graduate level seminar surveying scholarship on the history and traditions of Buddhism in Tibet, Inner Asia, and neighboring regions including Mongolia, Buryatia, Kalmykia, and the Silk Road.
Rituals of Buddhist Tantra This seminar explores Buddhist ritual traditions, focusing on the cultural centers of India and Tibet and examining both theoretical frameworks and practical applications. The seminar begins with a brief introduction to the ritual field of pre-Buddhist India before covering the traditions of early Buddhism in India as well as later Mahāyāna developments in India and Tibet, including monastic protocol, social and institution-sponsored practices, cults of the book, and the use of prayer and mantra. A large portion of the course will be devoted to exploring the rich traditions of Buddhist tantra in India and Tibet, focusing on their ritual communities and the practices they developed and transmitted.
Tibetan Buddhism This course serves as an introduction to major themes of Tibetan Buddhist thought and practice. Beginning with a close study of Patrul Rinpoche’s classic nineteenth-century guide to Tibetan Buddhism, the early part of tahe course focuses on the doctrinal foundations of the tradition. This will be followed by a historical and more critical examination of Tibetan religious history, proceeding from Buddhism’s Indian antecedents and its initial arrival in Tibet during the seventh century through the present day. The course will explore a wide range of Tibetan religious culture and practice including Buddhist ethics, systems of monastic and ascetic life, ritual activities, sacred geography and pilgrimage, lay religion, as well as the status of Tibetan Buddhism under Chinese occupation and in the West. The majority of readings will consist of primary texts in translation, and will concentrate on Tibet’s rich narrative literary tradition. These will be supplemented by secondary literature on the study of religion and Tibetan Buddhism.
Tibetan Historical Texts This graduate reading seminar focuses on a variety of traditional Tibetan sources for Buddhist religious history.
Visual Worlds of Himalayan Buddhism How do Tibetan Buddhists look at religious images? What do pilgrims in Nepal see when faced with sacred monuments? Why do devotees in Bhutan display erotic caricatures in public? This seminar will explore the ubiquitous role of images and imagining in the religious traditions of the Himalayan region. Readings and viewings will examine the painting, sculpture, architecture, and performing arts of the Himalaya (including Tibet, Nepal, north India, and Bhutan), placing them in the context of local religious beliefs, ritual practices, and literary canons. The seminar aims to understand how Himalayan cultures produce religious images and the ways of seeing that invest them with meaning. Classes will address specific modes of visual representation, the relationships between text and image, the social lives of images, as well as processes of reading and interpretation. Later sections will survey broader visual representations of the Himalaya, both as self-reflections and in the imagination of the western gaze.
Who is the Dalai Lama? This Freshman Seminar introduces the institution of the Dalai Lama and the individuals who filled that role from a wide range of sources and perspectives. Topics include regional histories of Buddhism; the unique Tibetan tradition of recognized reincarnations (tulkus) and the Buddhist philosophical principles that support it; and a survey of the most important Dalai Lamas from the fifteenth century to the present day. The seminar examines the activities of the current Dalai Lama in his role of traditional Buddhist teacher, political leader, and international superstar, through the lenses of the PRC government media, Indian exile communities, and the modern West. Readings include writings of the past and current Dalai Lamas as well as supporting secondary literature.
Yoga: Art, Text, and Practice This seminar investigates the relationship between texts, images, and the practice of yoga, focusing on the Indian traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, as well as modern manifestations in the west. Readings emphasize primary sources from the Indian visual and literary traditions, together with secondary scholarship on the historical, religious, social, and political contexts in which those traditions arose. Readings also address the theoretical frames through which yoga has been studied and discussed. Themes include contemplative practices, bodily disciplines, ritual, role of yoga in tantra, narrative painting, and architecture.
