New Books in Buddhist Studies
351 episodes - English - Latest episode: 22 days ago - ★★★★ - 29 ratingsInterviews with Scholars of Buddhism about their New Books
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/buddhist-studies
Homepage Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Episodes
Naomi Appleton, "Many Buddhas, One Buddha: A Study and Translation of Avadānaśataka 1-40" (Equinox, 2020)
August 14, 2023 18:57 - 47 minutesNaomi Appleton's new book Many Buddhas, One Buddha: A Study and Translation of Avadānaśataka 1-40 (Equinox Publishing, 2020) introduces a significant section of the important early Indian Buddhist text known as the Avadānaśataka, or “One Hundred Stories”, and explores some of its perspectives on buddhahood. This text, composed in Sanskrit and dating to perhaps the third to fifth centuries of the Common Era, is affiliated with the Sarvāstivāda or Mūlasarvāstivāda, and thus provides important e...
Yiwen Li, "Networks of Faith and Profit: Monks, Merchants, and Exchanges Between China and Japan, 839-1403 CE" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
August 13, 2023 08:00 - 55 minutesIn her book, Networks of Faith and Profit: Monks, Merchants, and Exchanges Between China and Japan, 839-1403 CE (Cambridge UP, 2023), associate professor of history at City University of Hong Kong Yiwen Li studies the period when the tribute relationship between China and Japan was suspended. Although this official, diplomatic relationship ceased, Li reveals the related development of a vibrant religio-commercial network of Buddhist monks and merchants, who greatly facilitated both trade and ...
Traditional Medicine in Laos (with Elizabeth Elliott and Ounkham Souksavanh)
August 08, 2023 08:00 - 49 minutesDr. Pierce Salguero sits down with two guests, Ounkham Souksavanh and Elizabeth Elliott, to talk about community engagement and community health in Laos. They discuss how Elizabeth as a medical anthropologist, and Ounkham as a physician, work together to build trust and improve healthcare access across an ethnically and religiously diverse landscape. Along the way, we learn about Elizabeth’s experience of foraging for herbs and Ounkham’s memories of growing up with traditional medicine in his...
Marnie Feneley, "Reconstructing God: Style, Hydraulics, Political Power and Angkor's West Mebon Visnu" (National U of Singapore Press, 2022)
August 01, 2023 08:00 - 47 minutesIn December 1936, a villager was led by a dream to the ruins of the West Mebon shrine in Angkor where he uncovered remains of a bronze sculpture. This was the West Mebon Visnu, the largest bronze remaining from pre-modern Southeast Asia, and a work of great artistic, historical, and political significance. Prominently placed in an island temple in the middle of the vast artificial reservoir, the West Mebon Visnu sculpture was an important focal point of the Angkorian hydraulic network. Interp...
Zhihua Yao, "Nonexistent Objects in Buddhist Philosophy: On Knowing What There is Not" (Bloomsbury, 2020)
July 30, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourCan we know what there is not? Zhihua Yao's Nonexistent Objects in Buddhist Philosophy: On Knowing What There is Not (Bloomsbury, 2020) examines the historical development of the concept of the cognition of nonexistent objects in several major Buddhist philosophical schools. Beginning with a study of the historical development of the concept in Mahasamghika, Darstantika, Yogacara and Sautrantika, it evaluates how successfully they have argued against the extreme view of their main opponent t...
Scott A. Mitchell, "The Making of American Buddhism" (Oxford UP, 2023)
July 21, 2023 08:00 - 58 minutesScott A. Mitchell is the Dean of Students and Faculty Affairs and holds the Yoshitaka Tamai Professorial Chair at the Institute of Buddhist Studies in Berkeley. He teaches and writes about Buddhism in the West, Pure Land Buddhism, and Buddhist modernism. As of 2010, there were approximately 3-4 million Buddhists in the United States, and that figure is expected to grow significantly. Beyond the numbers, the influence of Buddhism can be felt throughout the culture, with many more people practi...
Tenzin Dickie, "The Penguin Book of Modern Tibetan Essays" (Vintage Books, 2023)
July 20, 2023 08:00 - 45 minutesWhen Tenzin Dickie was growing up in exile in India, she didn’t have access to works by Tibetan writers. Now, as an editor and translator, she is working to create and elevate the stories she wished she had had as a young writer. Her new book, The Penguin Book of Modern Tibetan Essays (Vintage Books, 2023), offers a comprehensive introduction to modern Tibetan nonfiction, featuring essays from twenty-two Tibetan writers from around the world. Taken as a whole, the collection provides an intim...
Awakening the Body (with Willa Baker)
July 08, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourDr Pierce Salguero sits down with Willa Blythe Baker, a writer, translator, and teacher of meditation based on Himalayan Buddhist tradition. We talk about Willa’s early discovery of Buddhism with her mother, her time living as a nun, and our shared experience in graduate school at UVa. We then do a deep-dive into Buddhist tantra and the alchemical transformations of the body-mind that led to Willa’s most recent book, The Wakeful Body, published by Shambhala in 2021. If you find yourself in yo...
Brad Stoddard and Craig Martin, "Stereotyping Religion II: Critiquing Clichés" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
July 01, 2023 08:00 - 42 minutesBuilding on the success of Stereotyping Religion: Critiquing Clichés, this follow up volume dismantles a further 10 widespread stereotypes and clichés about religion, focusing on clichés that a new generation of students are most familiar with. Each chapter includes: A description of a particular cliché; Discussion of where it appears in popular culture or popular media; Discussion of where it appears in scholarly literature; A historical contextualization of its use in the past; An analysis ...
Nayanjot Lahiri, "Searching for Ashoka: Questing for a Buddhist King from India to Thailand" (SUNY Press, 2023)
June 29, 2023 08:00 - 47 minutesBlending travelogue, history, and archaeology, Searching for Ashoka: Questing for a Buddhist King from India to Thailand (SUNY Press, 2023) unravels the various avatars of India's most famous emperor, revealing how he came to be remembered—and forgotten—in distinctive ways at particular points in time and in specific locations. Through personal journeys that take her across India and to various sites and cities in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and Thailand, archaeologist Nayanjot Lahiri explores how As...
Andy Karr, "Into the Mirror: A Buddhist Journey through Mind, Matter, and the Nature of Reality" (Shambhala, 2023)
June 25, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourInto the Mirror: A Buddhist Journey through Mind, Matter, and the Nature of Reality (Shambhala, 2023) examines the materialism of the modern world through the profound teachings of Mahayana Buddhism and offers an accessible and powerful method for investigating the way our minds construct our worlds. Into the Mirror combines contemporary Western inquiries into the nature of consciousness, with classical Buddhist investigations into the nature of mind, to offer deep insights into the nature of...
Alexandra Kaloyanides, "Baptizing Burma: Religious Change in the Last Buddhist Kingdom" (Columbia UP, 2023)
June 21, 2023 08:00 - 48 minutesIn July 1813, a young American couple from Boston arrived in the Buddhist kingdom of Burma to preach the gospel. Although Burmese Buddhists largely resisted Christian evangelism, members of minority religious communities embraced Baptist teachings and practices, reimagining both Buddhism and Christianity in the process. In her new book, Baptizing Burma: Religious Change in the Last Buddhist Kingdom (Columbia UP, 2023), religious studies scholar Alex Kaloyanides explores this history of power ...
Douglas Ober, "Dust on the Throne: The Search for Buddhism in Modern India" (Stanford UP, 2023)
June 16, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourReceived wisdom has it that Buddhism disappeared from India, the land of its birth, between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, long forgotten until British colonial scholars re-discovered it in the early 1800s. Its full-fledged revival, so the story goes, only occurred in 1956, when the Indian civil rights pioneer Dr. B. R. Ambedkar converted to Buddhism along with half a million of his Dalit (formerly "untouchable") followers. This, however, is only part of the story. Dust on the Thro...
Embodied and Trauma-Aware Pedagogy
June 05, 2023 04:00 - 1 hourIn this episode I sit down with Frances Garrett, a scholar of Tibetan culture, history, and language. We talk about Frances’s interests in embodiment and movement, and how her experiences as ballet dancer, surfer, and rock climber connect with her work on religion and healing. Our conversation focuses on her commitment to embodied and trauma-aware pedagogy, and how in the interest of flourishing, she engages the whole person in the learning process. Along the way, we talk about Tibetan bards,...
Contemplative Psychotherapy: Intersections of Science, Spirituality and Buddhism
June 02, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourIn this episode we meet Joseph Loizzo, MD, PhD, who is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist and Columbia-trained Buddhist scholar with over forty years’ experience studying the beneficial effects of contemplative practices on healing, learning and development. Joe shares his story of founding the Nalanda Institute, in NYC, as an intersection between contemplative approaches from Buddhism, Psychology and Psychotherapy. The discussion focuses on the benefits and challenges of the practitioner model a...
Ashok Gopal, "A Part Apart: The Life and Thought of B. R. Ambedkar" (Navayana, 2023)
May 30, 2023 08:00 - 36 minutesBhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956) is perhaps the most iconised historical figure in India. Born into a caste deemed ‘unfit for human association’, he came to define what it means to be human. How and why did Ambedkar, who revered and cited the Gita till the 1930s, turn against Hinduism? What were his quarrels with Gandhi and Savarkar? Why did he come to see himself as Moses? How did the lessons learnt at Columbia University impact the struggle for water in Mahad in 1927 and the drafting of t...
Curtis White on Buddhism and Transcendence
May 29, 2023 08:00 - 53 minutesAcclaimed cultural critic Curtis White examines current fissures in Western Buddhism and argues against the growth of scientific and corporate dharma, particularly in the Secular Buddhist movement. Most of his career has been spent writing experimental fiction, but he turned to writing books of social criticism, the latest of which is Transcendent, Art and Dharma in a Time of Collapse (Melville House, 2023) Dogen: “Enlightenment is the intimacy of all things.” In this conversation we look at;...
Sagang Sechen, "The Precious Summary: A History of the Mongols from Chinggis Khan to the Qing Dynasty" (Columbia UP, 2023)
May 22, 2023 08:00 - 50 minutesBuddhist cosmological history of the universe, history of Chinggis Khan, history of China, and history of the Mongols — The Precious Summary, written in 1662 by Sagang Sechen, is many things. As a whole, it is the most important work of Mongolian history on the period before the rise of the Manchu Qing dynasty. The Precious Summary: A History of the Mongols from Chinggis Khan to the Qing Dynasty (Columbia University Press 2023), translated by Johan Elverskog, is not only a fluid and lucid tra...
Farah Godrej, "Freedom Inside?: Yoga and Meditation in the Carceral State" (Oxford UP, 2022)
May 18, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourAre meditation and yoga offered to prisoners merely to have them acquiesce to being incarcerated and degraded? Or can they help prisoners interrogate the political and social structures that incarcerate and degrade? In Freedom Inside? Yoga and Meditation in the Carceral State (Oxford University Press, 2022), Farah Godrej explores the tension between narratives of quiet contemplation and social or political liberation in meditative and yogic practice that the carceral condition exacerbates or...
Simon Cox on the Subtle Body
May 18, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourWhat links Vajrayana Buddhism and Vajrayogini to Alistair Crowley and the neo-Platonists? A topic of speculation, desire and imagination, the Subtle Body, also known as the energy body, is an odd phenomena with deep roots in Taoism, Hinduism and Buddhism, but many are unaware that it has a rich history in European thought too. Simon Cox traces its roots in his recent work entitled The Subtle Body: A Geneology (Oxford UP, 2021). In our conversation we tackle multiple themes. Is it real or mere...
Ken McLeod on the Magic of Vajrayana
April 28, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour“A moving description of a life in practice which goes far beyond text-based ideas of prayer, devotion, guru-connection, or meditation, and most especially of tantric practice." Anne Klein, former Chair of the Department of Religion at Rice University. A ground-breaking book, The Magic of Vajrayana (Unfettered Mind Media, 2023) opens new doors to the Tibetan Buddhist tradition of Vajrayana, one of the most vibrant traditions of mystical practice in the world today. Ken McLeod deploys his cons...
Doug Bates on the Ancient Greek Version of Buddhism
April 17, 2023 08:00 - 37 minutes“It is not events that disturb us, but what we believe about them.” Is this true? Well, apparently Pyrrho, a rather obscure Greek philosopher claimed it to be the case and he may have been influenced by Buddhism in his creation of what today is called “Pyrrhonism”. Pyrrho agreed with the Buddha that delusion was the cause of suffering, but instead of using meditation to end delusion, Pyrrho applied Greek philosophical rationalism. Pyrrho’s Way: The Ancient Greek Version of Buddhism (Sumeru Pr...
Healing Buddhist Studies (with Paula Arai)
April 14, 2023 08:00 - 56 minutesDr Pierce Salguero sits down with Paula Arai, a scholar of Japanese Zen, gender, and healing ritual. Paula is an inspiration in the way she blends critical analysis and compassion in her work. In this episode, we talk about how her journey into Zen began with her relationship with her Japanese mother, as well as her work on everyday Japanese healing rituals. Our discussion focuses on the ethics of empathetic scholarship and how Paula’s care for relationships has shaped her five books. Along t...
Incognito: The Astounding Life of Alexandra David-Neel
April 01, 2023 08:00 - 48 minutesI grew up with Alexandra David-Neel’s books on my mum’s bookshelf. She was part of the myth making process that led to my own fascination with Tibet, as something real, and as fantasy, a description that is often used to define Neel’s relationship and presentation of Tibet. She was either a key that helped open the door into the world of Tibet with its Lamas, Vajrayana Buddhism, and enormous mountains and planes, or another in the long line of westerners who turned Tibet into a romantic, west...
A Review of "A Critique of Western Buddhism"
March 28, 2023 08:00 - 51 minutesRegular guest to the podcast Glenn Wallis wrote A Critique of Western Buddhism: Ruins of the Buddhist Real (Bloomsbury) back in 2018. Time has flown since and in honour of the non-Buddhism project, and some interesting news coming up, the Imperfect Buddha Podcast presents this audio review of the text that will serve as a useful introduction to the topic itself for those new to the world of this controversial set of theories and practices. “The single most important book of contemporary Bud...
Ching Keng, "Toward a New Image of Paramartha: Yogacara and Tathagatagarbha Buddhism Revisited" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
March 25, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourToday I talked to Ching Keng about his book Toward a New Image of Paramartha: Yogacara and Tathagatagarbha Buddhism Revisited (Bloomsbury, 2022). Yogacara and Tathagatagarbha are often regarded as antagonistic Indian Buddhist traditions. Paramartha (499-569) is traditionally credited with amalgamating these philosophies by translating one of the most influential Tathagatagarbha texts in East Asia, the Awakening of Faith in Mahayana, and introducing Tathagatagarbha notions into his translation...
Trent Walker, "Until Nirvana's Time: Buddhist Songs from Cambodia" (Shambhala, 2022)
March 22, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourA unique Buddhist tradition, accessible in English for the first time—translations of forty-five Cambodian Dharma songs, with contextualizing essays and a link to audio of stunning vocal performances. Trent Walker's Until Nirvana's Time: Buddhist Songs from Cambodia (Shambhala, 2022) is the first collection of traditional Cambodian Buddhist literature available in English, presenting original translations of forty-five poems. Introduced, translated, and contextualized by scholar and vocalist...
Eugénie Mérieau, "Constitutional Bricolage: Thailand's Sacred Monarchy vs. The Rule of Law" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
March 06, 2023 09:00 - 33 minutesWhy has Thailand had 20 constitutions since 1932? What accounts for the remarkable veneration Thais often feel towards these short-lived documents? How is that military coups can be viewed as completely legal in Thailand? And what accounts for the leading role prominent legal experts play in Thailand’s political order? In this podcast, Thailand scholar Duncan McCargo talks to Eugénie Mérieau about her wide-ranging new book, Constitutional Bricolage: Thailand's Sacred Monarchy vs. The Rule of ...
Veena R. Howard et al., "The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Indian Philosophy and Gender" (Bloomsbury, 2019)
March 02, 2023 09:00 - 47 minutes'How do gender constructions transform religious experiences?' 'What is the role of bodily materiality in ethics and epistemology?' 'How does rethinking gender and sexuality force us to reconceptualise settled ontological frameworks?' The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Indian Philosophy and Gender (Bloomsbury, 2019) provides the first research resource to Indian philosophical gender issues, exploring a variety of texts and traditions from Indian philosophy where the treatment of gender is dy...
Contemplative, Existential Psychotherapy and Dzogchen
February 28, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourKen Bradford, Ph.D., has been a practitioner in the Theravada and Tibetan Buddhist traditions since 1975, and engaged in introducing meditative sensibilities and nondual wisdom streams into the experience-near practice of psychotherapy since 1988. Formerly, he was in private psychotherapy practice for 25 years, an Adjunct Professor at John F. Kennedy University and CIIS, Co-Director of Maitri Psychotherapy Institute, and a teaching associate with Jim Bugental. Bradford is a clinical psycholog...
Rick Repetti, "Routledge Handbook on the Philosophy of Meditation" (Routledge, 2022)
February 23, 2023 09:00 - 51 minutesRick Repetti's Routledge Handbook on the Philosophy of Meditation (Routledge, 2022) provides a comprehensive overview and analysis of the state of the field of the philosophy of meditation and engages primarily in the philosophical assessment of the merits of meditation practices. This Handbook unites novel and original scholarship from 28 leading Asian and Western philosophers, scientists, theologians, and other scholars on the philosophical assessment of meditation. It critically assesses t...
Monima Chadha, "Selfless Minds: A Contemporary Perspective on Vasubandhu's Metaphysics" (Oxford UP, 2022)
February 20, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourBuddhists are famous for their thesis that selves do not exist. But if they are right, what would that thesis mean for our apparent sense of self and for ordinary practices involving selves—or at least persons? In Selfless Minds: A Contemporary Perspective on Vasubandhu’s Metaphysics (Oxford University Press, 2022), Monima Chadha answers these questions by considering Vasubandhu’s arguments against the self. She argues that he—and Abhidharma philosophers like him—denies the existence of selve...
Justin W. Henry, "Ravana's Kingdom: The Ramayana and Sri Lankan History from Below" (Oxford UP, 2022)
February 16, 2023 09:00 - 25 minutesRavana, the demon-king antagonist from the Ramayana, the ancient Hindu epic poem, has become an unlikely cultural hero among Sinhala Buddhists over the past decade. In Ravana's Kingdom: The Ramayana and Sri Lankan History from Below (Oxford UP, 2022), Justin W. Henry delves into the historical literary reception of the epic in Sri Lanka, charting the adaptions of its themes and characters from the 14th century onwards, as many Sri Lankan Hindus and Buddhists developed a sympathetic impressio...
Andrea Acri and Peter Sharrock, "The Creative South: Buddhist and Hindu Art in Mediaeval Maritime Asia" (Iseas-Yusof Ishak Institute, 2022)
February 11, 2023 09:00 - 48 minutesAndrea Acri and Peter Sharrock's The Creative South: Buddhist and Hindu Art in Mediaeval Maritime Asia (2 volumes; Iseas-Yusof Ishak Institute, 2022) examines the creative contribution of Maritime Asia towards shaping new paradigms in the Buddhist and Hindu art and architecture of the mediaeval Asian world. Far from being a mere southern conduit for the maritime circulation of Indic religions, in the period from ca. the 7th to the 14th century those regions transformed across mainland and isl...
Buddhist Responses to COVID: A Discussion with Venerable Soorākkulame Pemaratana
February 04, 2023 09:00 - 56 minutesDr Pierce Salguero sits down with Venerable Soorākkulame Pemaratana, chief abbot at the Pittsburgh Buddhist Center and a scholar of modern Buddhism in Sri Lanka. We talk about his role in adapting Buddhist practices to address social and mental health needs during the Covid-19 pandemic. We also compare Buddhist responses to Covid in Pittsburgh and Sri Lanka. Along the way, we talk about how he became a monk, the health benefits of drinking boiled coriander water, and the dire situation in his...
Ute Hüsken, "Laughter, Creativity, and Perseverance: Female Agency in Buddhism and Hinduism" (Oxford UP, 2022)
February 02, 2023 09:00 - 47 minutesIn most mainstream traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism, women have for centuries largely been excluded from positions of religious and ritual leadership. However, as this volume shows, in an increasing number of late-20th-century and early-21st-century contexts, women can and do undergo monastic and priestly education; they can receive ordination/initiation as Buddhist nuns or Hindu priestesses; and they are accepted as religious and political leaders. Even though these processes still take p...
Brooke Schedneck, "Religious Tourism in Northern Thailand: Encounters with Buddhist Monks" (U Washington Press, 2021)
February 01, 2023 09:00 - 48 minutesThe city of Chiang Mai in northern Thailand has become the destination for a growing segment of the international tourism market: religious tourism. International tourists visit Buddhist temples, volunteer as English teachers, discuss Buddhism with student monks, and experiment with meditation. In her new book, Religious Tourism in Northern Thailand: Encounters with Buddhist Monks (University of Washington Press, 2021), Brooke Schedneck examines this growing phenomenon. While such interaction...
Mikel Burley, "A Radical Pluralist Philosophy of Religion: Cross-Cultural, Multireligious, Interdisciplinary" (Bloomsbury, 2020)
February 01, 2023 09:00 - 58 minutesA Radical Pluralist Philosophy of Religion: Cross-Cultural, Multireligious, Interdisciplinary (Bloomsbury, 2020) is a unique introduction to studying the philosophy of religion, drawing on a wide range of cultures and literary sources in an approach that is both methodologically innovative and expansive in its cross-cultural and multi-religious scope. Employing his expertise in interdisciplinary and Wittgenstein-influenced methods, Mikel Burley draws on works of ethnography and narrative fict...
100 Nietzsche, Wokeism, Non-Buddhist Mysticism
February 01, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourWhat does it mean to be a hundred? Perhaps Fredric Nietzsche would know. He’s in part the star of the show. Along with regular guest Glenn Wallis. We look at the ideal reader, the ideal thinker, and perhaps the ideal practitioner. We discuss his work in progress, Nietzsche NOW! A book that wonders what Nietzsche would have to say about Wokeism. We also discuss the podcast on its 100th birthday and I get asked a question or two to celebrate. Come along for a slice of Nietzschean cake and topic...
Nothing Matters: About the Idea of "Emptiness"
January 17, 2023 09:00 - 27 minutesBetween the Buddhist doctrine of ‘emptiness,’ the Jewish idea of Ayin, and the quantum mechanical zero-point energy of a vacuum, it turns out there’s quite a lot to be said about Nothing. Guests Janet Gyatso, Professor of Buddhist Studies at Harvard Divinity School Daniel Matt, Scholar of Jewish Mysticism Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/buddhist-studies
Zen Chaplaincy, Activism, and Scholarship
January 09, 2023 09:00 - 56 minutesIn this episode of the Blue Beryl Podcast, Pierce Salguero sits down with Wakoh Shannon Hickey, who is a Soto Zen priest, hospice chaplain, scholar, and activist. She talks about her early experiences with social violence in the 1980s, her work as a hospital chaplain, and her 2019 book Mind Cure, which is a groundbreaking social history of religion and mindfulness in the U.S. Resources: Wakoh's Academia.edu page Hickey, Mind Cure: How Meditation Became Medicine (Oxford UP, 2019) Helderman,...
Zen Buddhism, Mardi Gras, and the Metaphysics of Eternity: Talking about Buddhist and Christian Mysticism
January 07, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourDavid Basile (who was our guest in Episode 01) returns to talk about his ten years in as a Zen Buddhist monk at the Tassajara Zen Mountain Retreat Center in California. He tells the story of how he went from being a child in a lukewarm Catholic home, to a teenage atheist, to an ardent Buddhist at the monastery—where he encountered the Benedictine mystic, David Steindl-Rast—and finally back home to the Catholic Church. He and I discuss the commonalities and significant differences between Budd...
Buddhist Medicine in Tibet: A Discussion with Bill McGrath
December 26, 2022 09:00 - 1 hourIn this episode, I sit down with my friend Bill McGrath, a historian of Tibetan Buddhism and medicine. He's one of the most knowledgeable people in the world on this subject, and we get deep into the weeds in an academic conversation about traditional Tibetan medicine, the category of Buddhist medicine, and Bill's perspectives on magic, religion, and science. We also reminisce about the time that Bill once used a Tibetan mantra to save the day when we ran out of gas driving home from a confer...
Wendi L. Adamek, "Practicescapes and the Buddhists of Baoshan" (Hamburg Buddhist Studies, 2021)
December 23, 2022 09:00 - 1 hourHow should one dwell in endtime? In this SPIDER-spun web of a book, Wendi Adamek guides readers to the visual and textual traces left by Buddhist nuns, monks, and devotees on mountainsides in Baoshan, north central China, and through them, the soteriology of Buddhism in the medieval world. The convents have vanished and the stones weathered, but the skillful work in maintaining co-constitutive relations is as palpable as ever. Thoroughly researched and artfully written, Practicescapes and the...
Holly Walters, "Shaligram Pilgrimage in the Nepal Himalayas" (Amsterdam UP, 2020)
December 22, 2022 09:00 - 51 minutesToday I talked to Holly Walters about her new book Shaligram Pilgrimage in the Nepal Himalayas (Amsterdam UP, 2020). For roughly two thousand years, the veneration of sacred fossil ammonites, called Shaligrams has been an important part of Hindu and Buddhist ritual practice throughout South Asia and among the global Diaspora. Originating from a single remote region of Himalayan Nepal, called Mustang, Shaligrams are all at once fossils, divine beings, and intimate kin with families and worship...
Richard Brian Miller, "Why Study Religion?" (Oxford UP, 2021)
December 20, 2022 09:00 - 44 minutesCan the study of religion be justified? Scholarship in religion, especially work in "theory and method," is preoccupied with matters of research procedure and thus inarticulate about the goals that motivate scholarship in the field. For that reason, the field suffers from a crisis of rationale. Richard B. Miller identifies six prevailing methodologies in the field, and then offers an alternative framework for thinking about the purposes of the discipline. Shadowing these various methodologies...
Jingjing Li, "Comparing Husserl's Phenomenology and Chinese Yogacara in a Multicultural World: A Journey Beyond Orientalism" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
December 17, 2022 09:00 - 56 minutesComparing Husserl’s Phenomenology and Chinese Yogacara in a Multicultural World: A Journey Beyond Orientalism by Jingjing Li (Bloomsbury, 2022) starts its investigation with a longstanding question in the comparative studies of phenomenology and Yogacara. While phenomenology and Yogacara Buddhism are both known for their investigations of consciousness, there exists a core tension between them: phenomenology affirms the existence of essence, whereas Yogacara Buddhism argues that everything is...
Non-Duality: A Discussion with Peter Fenner
December 11, 2022 09:00 - 1 hourPeter Fenner, Ph.D, is an adapter and teacher of non-duality, and an author. His two books, Radiant Mind: Awakening Unconditioned Awareness (Sounds True, 2007) and Natural Awakening: An Advanced Guide for Sharing Nondual Awareness (Sumeru Press, 2015), draw on a dialectical method adapted from his monastic training with the Gelugpa School of Tibetan Buddhism. We discuss philosophical psychology, the Madhyamaka school of Buddhist thought, the challenge of patterns, meditation, and the relation...
Maria Heim, "Words for the Heart: A Treasury of Emotions from Classical India" (Princeton UP, 2022)
December 08, 2022 09:00 - 41 minutesWords for the Heart: A Treasury of Emotions from Classical India (Princeton UP, 2022) is a captivating treasury of emotion terms drawn from some of India’s earliest classical languages. Inspired by the traditional Indian genre of a “treasury”—a wordbook or anthology of short texts or poems—this collection features 177 jewel-like entries evoking the kinds of phenomena English speakers have variously referred to as emotions, passions, sentiments, moods, affects, and dispositions. These entries ...
The Future of Religious Studies: A Conversation with Russell McCutcheon
November 28, 2022 09:00 - 1 hourRussell McCutcheon shares his views on the academic study of religion, and the path ahead for religion graduates and the field itself. McCutcheon is a professor of religious studies at the University of Alabama and a contributor to the Religious Studies Project podcast. Raj Balkaran is a scholar of Sanskrit narrative texts. He teaches at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies and at his own virtual School of Indian Wisdom. For information see rajbalkaran.com. Learn more about your ad choices. ...