Smith College Buddhist Studies

Nick Witkowski's lecture is now available on our YouTube channel:

The Challenges of Returning Buddhist Women Monastics to Historical Visibility by Nicholas Witkowski

This Monday, March 27 at 5 pm in Seelye 201, another lecture!

Jessica Starling (Lewis & Clark College) will speak on "Making Modern Buddhist Women: Jōdo Shinshū’s Modern Fujin Kyōka Discourse".

By late in the Meiji period (1868-1912), Buddhist lay women's groups, like other kinds of women’s associations, were flourishing all over Japan. The two major True Pure Land Buddhist sects, the Honganji-ha and Ōtani-ha, produced a wealth of religious educational materials aimed specifically at women, a genre of propagation known as fujin kyōka. However, these tracts contained overwhelmingly negative messages about the spiritual status of women, with doctrinal content mostly taken verbatim from the sermons of medieval and early modern teachers. This talk examines the dynamics of Buddhist doctrinal production during a period of increasingly visible roles for women in Japanese society, uncovering the story of what it meant to be a “modern Buddhist women” in Japan at the turn of the 20th century.

Jessica Starling received her PhD from the University of Virginia in 2012, and is currently Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Lewis & Clark College. Starling’s research is on Buddhism as lived in contemporary Japan, with a focus on the Jōdo Shinshū and special attention to themes such as gender, family, ethics, emotion and illness. A recently published article in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion called “Audience, Authorship, and Agency: Religious Educational Materials for Modern Buddhist Women’s Groups in Japan,” is about Buddhist lay women's groups in late Meiji (1868-1912) Japan. Her analysis highlights the dynamics of the production of doctrinal materials by male monks in response to the voracious demand of these well-educated and well-organized women’s groups, and suggests that in the absence of female-authored texts, audienceship and readership might be considered as important agentive actions by women religious. A second, ongoing research project engages ethnographic fieldwork to understand contemporary Buddhist responses to stigma and discrimination. Starling profiles Shin Buddhist volunteers who have taken up the cause of leprosy (also known as Hansen’s Disease) awareness and advocacy, working both inside and outside of Buddhist institutions to redress the past and current suffering of Hansen’s Disease patients.

Sponsored by the Smith College Buddhist Studies Program, Religion Department and Lecture Committee. Open to the public.

Next week, Nick Witkowski joins us for his lecture "The Challenges of Returning Buddhist Women Monastics to Historical Visibility" -- Wednesday, March 22 at 5 pm in Seelye 201.

This talk will focus on two challenges faced by the reader/translator of representations of female monastics who appear in the narratives of the Buddhist monastic law codes, or Vinaya. The first challenge will be to consider how best to bring Western, or “liberal,” feminist theory into dialogue with South Asian female monastics who employ a discourse of agency that does not take for granted broad critiques of institutionalized gender hierarchy. The second task will be to determine how one might look for “religious feminisms” in the world of early medieval South Asian Buddhism, when many, if not all, of our extant textual sources seem to represent institutional (and profoundly patriarchal) impulses.

Nicholas Witkowski received his PhD in 2015 in the Department of Religious Studies at Stanford University. His dissertation is a social history of subaltern ascetic practices in the Buddhist monastic institutions of first millennium South Asia. Before joining the University of San Diego in August of 2022 as Assistant Professor of Buddhist Studies and South Asian religions, Dr. Witkowski was Assistant Professor of South Asian History at Nanyang Technological University of Singapore (2018-2022). Dr. Witkowski was also a JSPS Postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia at Tokyo University (IAS), where he completed a two year project studying the representations of subaltern communities within South Asian legal traditions (2015–2017).

We are very pleased that the excellent lecture delivered by Sonya Rhie Mace on March 2 is available for viewing.

Sonya Rhie Mace, "Sandalwood and Radiance" (March 2, 2023) Full title: "Sandalwood and Radiance: Tracing the Transmission of Early Buddha Images"In a lecture inspired by the life and scholarship of Marylin Martin Rhi...

From Woodenfish and Venerable Yifa:

Humanistic Buddhist Monastic Life Program July 2023 in Taipei, Taiwan

A one-month monastic life and meditation program 2023 in Taipei, Taiwan. Based on our educational mission, this program is FREE for room and board, tuition of classes and cultural tours, even though each selected student will be charged $500 USD for supplies and admission fee, and be responsible for their own flight to and from Taiwan.

Woodenfish Foundation has been carrying out this program for twenty years and inspired many of attendees developing the interests in Mandarin and culture of Asia or Buddhism. We are glad to resume this long-waiting summer program in a friendly, supportive and culturally resourceful place Taiwan, after three years’ pandemic!

www.woodenfish.org/hbmlp

Join us tomorrow at 5 pm for this lecture by Sonya Rhie Mace!

Last week's lecture by Sonam Kachru is now available to watch on our YouTube channel:

The Truth about Poetry Some Buddhist Fictions by Sonam Kachru A lecture by Sonam Kachru, Yale University give on February 15, 2023 at Smith College.

Please join us next Thursday, March 2 at 5 pm in Seelye Hall 201 for a lecture inspired by the life and scholarship of Marylin Martin Rhie in which her daughter Sonya Rhie Mace will discuss the multi-sensorial aspects of the Buddha image as it moved from India to China in the first centuries of the common era. Drawing from both visual and textual sources, Rhie Mace will show how scent and light were potent signifiers of the Buddha’s presence, possibly of greater importance than the appearance of his physical form. With a focus on the material evidence from South Asia, Rhie Mace's lecture will reveal how artists conveyed the intangible qualities of enlightenment.

Sonya Rhie Mace (Smith class of ’93) is the George P. Bickford Curator of Indian and Southeast Asian Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art and adjunct professor of art history at Case Western Reserve University. She received her Ph.D. at Harvard University in the history of Indian and South Asian art in 1999, and the book based on her dissertation, History of Early Stone Sculpture at Mathura (c. 150 BCE – 100 CE) was published in 2007.

Sponsored by the Buddhist Studies Program, Art Department and Lecture Committee. Open to vaccinated members of the public.

Tomorrow at 5 pm in Seelye 201, Sonam Kachru's lecture on "The Truth about Poetry: Some Buddhist Fictions". Join us!

This talk explores the nature and salience of poetry from the point of view of some Indian Buddhists, beginning with invocations of poetry as a natural phenomenon, found wherever humans exist, and invocations of poetry as a culturally specific achievement, sometimes expressive of, and sometimes in tension with, Buddhist normative ideals. But then we turn to stories in which the discovery of poetry counts as something of a world-historical event. We’ll listen as Rahul Sankrtyayan tells of the birth of Buddhist poetry in the civilizational contact of Greek and Indic cultures, and consider what Buddhists learnt about poetry—and art more generally—when one Buddhist succeeded in converting the devil.

Next Wednesday, February 15 at 5 pm in Seelye Hall 201, a lecture by Sonam Kachru: "The Truth about Poetry: Some Buddhist Fictions"

This talk explores the nature and salience of poetry from the point of view of some Indian Buddhists, beginning with invocations of poetry as a natural phenomenon, found wherever humans exist, and invocations of poetry as a culturally specific achievement, sometimes expressive of, and sometimes in tension with, Buddhist normative ideals. But then we turn to stories in which the discovery of poetry counts as something of a world-historical event. We’ll listen as Rahul Sankrtyayan tells of the birth of Buddhist poetry in the civilizational contact of Greek and Indic cultures, and consider what Buddhists learnt about poetry—and art more generally—when one Buddhist succeeded in converting the devil.

Sponsored by the Smith College Buddhist Studies program and Lecture Committee and open to the public.

Connie Kassor, Smith alum ('05) and former Smith faculty, is in the news for a new course.

Why a Class on "Doing Nothing" So Popular Prof. Constance Kassor's class, "Doing Nothing," is the most popular course at Lawrence University in Wisconsin. Here's what that says about college students today.

Last week's lecture at Smith by Robert A. F. Thurman!

Robert A. F. Thurman, "The Art of Wisdom and Compassion Revealed" (April 7, 2022) Full Title: "The Art of Wisdom and Compassion Revealed: Marylin M. Rhie’s Breakthrough Key Insight that Expanded the Appreciation of Tibet’s High Art and Cu...

Today at 5 pm! Robert A.F. Thurman will give the first Marylin Rhie memorial lecture in Seelye 201. Open to the public on proof of vaccination. To attend by Zoom, register here: https://smith.zoom.us/.../register/WN_93ulKGhcRwaYYECIlugACw

Robert A.F. Thurman will give the first Marylin Rhie memorial lecture on April 7 at 5 pm in Seelye 201. Open to the public on proof of vaccination. To attend by Zoom, register here: https://smith.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_93ulKGhcRwaYYECIlugACw

"Smith College’s eminent art historian, the late Professor Marylin M. Rhie, is well known in scholarly circles for her consummate expertise in tracing the development of Buddhist art, particularly the transformative vision of the Buddha and the great bodhisattvas, as the tradition traveled within India and beyond, through Central Asia and into China. Not so well known is her historical discovery and elucidation of the distinctive vision of the seers and artists of Tibet. As Buddhist civilization was transmitted into Tibet during the period from the 7th to the 14th centuries, the Tibetan seers and artists carefully absorbed the visionary and artistic traditions from the Post-Gupta empires from Bengal to Nepal and Kashmir, from Central Asia, and eventually from Buddhist China as well. With the Tibetan Renaissance of the 1400’s, they integrated these disparate traditions with their own, spiritual and material “high-altitude” sensibility and created unique styles and masterpieces that brought the Buddhist celestial imaginary of enlightened beings and pure lands down to earth, so to speak, evolving a visionary aesthetic style that Professor Rhie elucidated as what we called “surrealistic naturalism,” or just as validly, “naturalistic surrealism.” That is to say, she opened our eyes to enable us to see how the Tibetans made the inconceivably beautiful imagined celestial figures of buddhas and bodhisattvas and gods and goddesses seem at least subliminally credible as vividly alive and immediately present to the viewer, by depicting their supernormal bodies and environments with a precise realism of form and color. This illustrated lecture will draw on Professor Rhie’s seminal works in this area to highlight her remarkable insight, and its breakthrough contribution to the appreciation of Tibetan art and culture."

Duncan Ryuken Williams lecture is tonight at 7 pm!

A Contemporary Buddhist Monument to the Names of Japanese Americans Incarcerated during WWII Duncan Ryuken Williams Professor of Religion, Professor of American Studies & Ethnicity, and Professor of East Asian Languages and Culture University of Sout...

Next Wednesday, March 2 at 7 pm, Duncan Ryuken Williams delivers the annual Taitetsu Unno Memorial Lecture.

In person attendance at Neilson Library Browsing Room restricted to members of the Smith community in the testing program and Five College students and staff. But livestream will be available on the Smith College Buddhist Studies YouTube channel!

A few months after the Pearl Harbor attack, Taitetsu Unno turned 13 years old. Around his birthday, his family was forcibly removed from their home by the U.S. Army and incarcerated in a concentration camp in Arkansas, purportedly as threats to national security. The incarceration of roughly 125,000 persons of Japanese ancestry during WWII has been widely recognized as one of the most extensive denials of due process for U.S. citizens ever recorded. Yet despite the attempts to remedy this harm through such means as reparations legislation and more recently the Supreme Court overruling of the Korematsu case, there has never been a comprehensive and accurate list of the individuals who were caught up in this mass incarceration. Professor Williams will speak about his research in making such a list and a project to display these names in a Buddhist-inspired monument that draws on memorials designed by Buddhist priests during WWII at the concentration camps.

Check out this great interview with Smith's very own Ruth Ozeki.

Opinion | What We Gain by Enchanting the Objects in Our Lives The novelist and Zen Buddhist priest Ruth Ozeki draws connections between meditation, writing and the art and practice of listening.

Sandy Huntington, who was an active member of our Buddhist Studies community and a dear friend, died last year. In the time before his passing, he wrote a deeply poignant book about encountering death. It is a distillation of his many years of Buddhist practice and study; it's a wise book, sure to inspire many readers.

NEW RELEASE: WHAT I DON’T KNOW ABOUT DEATH

Experience a deeply personal and philosophically profound exploration of death through the words of C. W. “Sandy” Huntington Jr. In his final writing, Sandy—scholar, lifelong meditator, and novelist—guides you on a journey of loss and acceptance through his cancer diagnosis, grief, and learning to let go. Faced with his own impending death, he reconsiders the teachings and practices, as well as philosophy and literature, he had spent a lifetime pursuing. With brutal honesty and bittersweet remembrance, he shares his life with you, weaving the threads of his story with the threads of those stories, both Buddhist and secular, that hold such significance for him in the final moments of his life. In What I Don’t Know about Death, Sandy offers you his humbling wisdom about what he doesn’t know about life with illuminating clarity.

“The attempt to find happiness by ignoring or minimizing the truth of aging, sickness, and death ends by stunting our humanity, rendering us unable to live with authenticity and grace. In our fear of loss, we fear the grief that accompanies love, and so we fear love itself. If, however, we can find the strength to open our hearts both to the complexities of our own suffering and to the unbearable sorrow of the world—which are not truly different—then life becomes increasingly susceptible to the wonder of a renewed innocence.”—C. W. “Sandy” Huntington Jr., What I Don’t Know about Death

Learn more at
https://wisdomexperience.org/product/what-i-dont-know-about-death/

Professor Andy Rotman and the editor-in-chief of Tricycle magazine talk about hungry ghosts. Check out the podcast!

The Hungry Ghosts Among Us In the latest episode of Tricycle Talks, Andy Rotman, author of "Hungry Ghosts," introduces us to the denizens of Buddhist hell who are driven by greed and meanness.

A year-long meditation and social-change fellowship opportunity for College students (ages 18-25)! Deadline to apply is June 13. https://www.namchak.org/fellowship/?fbclid=IwAR3lMcKPcQRR3rhUwTXnEymwW_WwduxdRdWmwEQFcwopFKk42VnCv1vPXlk

Namchak Tibetan Buddhist Practice & Retreat - Fellowship Compassion In Action Fellowship A Yearlong Inner & Outer Change Program for Student Leaders July 2021 – June 2022 “When you change as an individual, you change the world.” – the Dalai Lama We are living at a critical moment in human history, facing complex challenges like no generation befor...

Repairing Generations of Trauma, One Lotus Flower at a Time The lotus flower, blooming out of muddy waters, has long been a symbol of rising above suffering. In the wake of Anti-Asian attacks, spiritual leaders hope it can help heal the trauma of racial violence in the U.S.

Professor Andy Rotman talks about hungry ghosts and his new book on the topic.

Bringing Hungry Ghosts Out of Hiding What the most wretched beings of the Buddhist cosmos can teach us about greed, suffering, and the dharma

Want to learn more about Buddhist Philosophy?

On April 23–25, 2010, Smith College hosted a conference called “Madhyamaka & Methodology: A Symposium on Buddhist Theory and Method.” The symposium addressed the question of how to read and interpret Buddhist Madhyamaka texts, extending a conversation begun in two seminal articles—one by C. W. “Sandy” Huntington, Jr. and the other by Jay Garfield. The symposium featured Sandy, Jay, and more than twenty scholars from across America and Europe, each of whom had the opportunity to respond to these two papers and to present their own ideas on the topic.

The conference was professionally filmed, and it was temporarily available on iTunes University. Now, after many years of being inaccessible, the entire proceedings have been made available on YouTube.

This past summer, Sandy Huntington died, and we thought it fitting that we relaunch the symposium as a tribute.

Jay and Sandy and all the participants have presented us with a model of spirited and respectful debate. We hope viewers will find it inspiring.

Madhyamaka & Method Symposium Share your videos with friends, family, and the world