Buddhist Studies - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Buddhist studies, also known as Buddhology
Buddhology
Buddhology is the study of the Buddha or Buddhahood. The term is also used as a synonym for Buddhist Studies, contemporary academic investigation of Buddhism....

(although the latter term is sometimes reserved for the study of Buddhas rather than that of Buddhism as a whole), is the academic study of Buddhism

Buddhism

Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...

. The term applies especially to the modern academic field, which is a subset of Religious Studies

Religious studies

Religious studies is the academic field of multi-disciplinary, secular study of religious beliefs, behaviors, and institutions. It describes, compares, interprets, and explains religion, emphasizing systematic, historically based, and cross-cultural perspectives.While theology attempts to...

, and is distinct from Buddhist philosophy

Buddhist philosophy

Buddhist philosophy deals extensively with problems in metaphysics, phenomenology, ethics, and epistemology.Some scholars assert that early Buddhist philosophy did not engage in ontological or metaphysical speculation, but was based instead on empirical evidence gained by the sense organs...

or Buddhist theology. As with Religious Studies in general, scholars of Buddhist Studies represent a variety of disciplines including history

History

History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...

, anthropology

Anthropology

Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...

, and philosophy

Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...

.

In contrast to the study of Judaism

Judaism

Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...

or Christianity

Christianity

Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...

, the field of Buddhist Studies has been dominated by "outsiders" to Buddhist cultures and traditions. However, Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese universities have also made major contributions, as have Asian immigrants to Western countries, and Western converts to Buddhism.

Relationship to contemporary Buddhism

Charles Prebish, a scholar-practitioner, describes the academics who are also Buddhist practitioner as fulfilling a crucial traditional role that has gone otherwise unfilled in countries that are not traditionally Buddhist:

Throughout much of Buddhism’s history, Buddhist scholarship and practice have been two very distinct vocations in a highly polarized tradition. Not surprisingly, stories reflecting the study/practice dichotomy in Buddhism are abundant in both the primary and secondary literature on the subject. Walpola Rahula’s History of Buddhism in Ceylon provides a good summary of the issue. During the first century B.C.E., in response to a concern over the possible loss of the Tripitaka during a severe famine, a question arose: What is the basis of the Teaching (sasana)—learning or practice? A clear difference of opinion resulted in the development of two groups: the Dhammakathikas, who claimed that learning was the basis of the Sasana, and the Pamsukulikas, who argued for practice as the basis. The Dhammakathikas apparently won out.

The two vocations described above came to be known as gantha-dhura, or the “vocation of books,” and vipassana-dhura, or the “vocation of meditation,” with the former regarded as the superior training (because surely meditation would not be possible if the teachings were lost). Moreover, the vipassana-dhura monks began to live in the forest, where they could best pursue their vocation undisturbed, while the gantha-dhura monks began to dwell in villages and towns. As such, the gantha-dhura monks began to play a significant role in Buddhist education.

It would probably not be going too far to refer to the gantha-dhura monks as “scholar-monks.” Why is this distinction so important? It is significant because the scholar-monks were responsible for the education of the laity and cultivated a Buddhist literacy among the ordinary practitioners of the tradition. While this was a normative practice in the ancient Buddhist tradition, Buddhism in the Western world has not favored a monastic lifestyle. As such, the education of the laity has been left to teachers who are no longer trained as scholar-monks. In fact, while many of the leaders and authorized teachers in the various Western Buddhist groups have had formal monastic and scholarly training at some point, many—if not most—have abandoned the monastic and scholarly lifestyle altogether. This has fostered a “scholarship gap,” which to a large extent is being rapidly filled by scholar-practitioners who, although not living as full-fledged monastics, have solid scholarly and academic training grounded in a rigorous personal practice.

Geographical "Schools"

Prebish writes that:

...geographic associations seem to identify at least two 'schools' of Buddhology: the Anglo-German and the Franco-Belgian. The former (and older) was led by T. W. Rhys Davids and Hermann Oldenberg

Hermann Oldenberg

Hermann Oldenberg was a German scholar of Indology, and Professor at Kiel and Göttingen .His 1881 study on Buddhism, entitled Buddha: Sein Leben, seine Lehre, seine Gemeinde, based on Pāli texts, popularized Buddhism and have remained continuously in print since their first publication. With T. W...

, while the latter included primarily Louis de La Vallée Poussin, Jean Przyluski, Sylvain Lévi

Sylvain Lévi

Sylvain Lévi was an orientalist and indologist. Born in Paris on March 28, 1863, his book Théâtre Indien is an important work on the subject. Lévi also conducted some of the earliest analysis of Tokharian fragments discovered in Western China.-Biography:Sylvain Levi passed the agregation...

, Paul Demiéville, and Étienne Lamotte

Étienne Lamotte

Étienne Paul Marie Lamotte was a Belgian priest and Professor of Greek at the Catholic University of Louvain, but was better known as an Indologist and the greatest authority on Buddhism in the West in his time...

. To these schools, Edward Conze

Edward Conze

Eberhart Julius Dietrich Conze was an Anglo-German scholar probably best known for his pioneering translations of Buddhist texts.-Life and work:...

, quite reasonably, adds a third: the Leningrad

Leningrad

Leningrad is the former name of Saint Petersburg, Russia.Leningrad may also refer to:- Places :* Leningrad Oblast, a federal subject of Russia, around Saint Petersburg* Leningrad, Tajikistan, capital of Muminobod district in Khatlon Province...

school, including Stcherbatsky

Fyodor Shcherbatskoy

Fyodor Ippolitovich Shcherbatskoy or Stcherbatsky , often referred to in the literature as F. Th. Stcherbatsky, was a Russian Indologist who, in large part, was responsible for laying the foundations in the Western world for the scholarly study of Buddhist philosophy...

, Rosenberg

Otto Rosenberg

Otto Karl Julius Rosenberg was a Russian scholar who created a system of organizing Chinese characters in a dictionary format, which eventually resulted in the Four Corner Method....

, and Obermiller. The Anglo-German school almost exclusively emphasized the Pali

Páli

- External links :* *...

literary tradition, while the Franco-Belgian school utilized the Sanskrit

Sanskrit

Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...

ic materials, along with their corresponding translations and commentaries in Chinese

Chinese language

The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...

and Tibetan

Tibetan language

The Tibetan languages are a cluster of mutually-unintelligible Tibeto-Burman languages spoken primarily by Tibetan peoples who live across a wide area of eastern Central Asia bordering the Indian subcontinent, including the Tibetan Plateau and the northern Indian subcontinent in Baltistan, Ladakh,...

. The Leningrad school is clearly closer to the Franco-Belgian school than the Anglo-German. These are general classifications, but they nonetheless capture the style of the traditions as they have been maintained over the last century.

Prebish goes on to discuss developments in the USA:

Although some might consider Eugène Burnouf

Eugène Burnouf

Eugène Burnouf was an eminent French scholar and orientalist who made significant contributions to the deciphering of Old Persian cuneiform....

the founding father of Buddhist Studies as a discipline, the beginnings of Buddhist Studies in the United States seem inextricably bound to three primary individuals: Paul Carus

Paul Carus

Paul Carus, Ph.D. was a German-American author, editor, a student of comparative religion, and professor of philosophy.-Life and education:...

, Henry Clarke Warren, and Charles Rockwell Lanman

Charles Rockwell Lanman

Charles Rockwell Lanman was an American scholar of the Sanskrit language.-Early Life and Education:Charles Rockwell Lanman was born in Norwich, Connecticut, the eighth of the nine children of Peter Lanman III and Catherine Lanman on July 8, 1850...

. [...] Despite the work of these early educators, it was not until after 1960 that Buddhist Studies began to emerge as a significant discipline in the American university system and publishing industry. During the Vietnam War

Vietnam War

The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...

years and immediately thereafter, Buddhist Studies was to enjoy a boom, largely through the efforts of such leading professors as Richard Hugh Robinson of the University of Wisconsin–Madison

University of Wisconsin–Madison

The University of Wisconsin–Madison is a public research university located in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. Founded in 1848, UW–Madison is the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin System. It became a land-grant institution in 1866...

, Masatoshi Nagatomi of Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

, and Alex Wayman

Alex Wayman

Alex Wayman was a Tibetologist, and Indologist, and worked as a professor of Sanskrit at Columbia University....

of Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

. No doubt there were many reasons for the increased development of Buddhist Studies, not the least of which were the increase in area studies

Area studies

Area studies are interdisciplinary fields of research and scholarship pertaining to particular geographical, national/federal, or cultural regions. The term exists primarily as a general description for what are, in the practice of scholarship, many heterogeneous fields of research, encompassing...

programs in American universities; growing government interest in things Asian; the immense social anomie that permeated American culture in the 1960s; and the growing dissatisfation with (and perhaps rejection of) traditional religion.

Donald Lopez emphasizes the influence of Geshe Lhundup Sopa at Wisconsin, and Jeffrey Hopkins at Virginia.

University programs and institutes

According to Prebish, Buddhist studies in the United States prior to 1975 was dominated by the University of Wisconsin, Harvard University and the University of Chicago

University of Chicago

The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...

. Prebish cites two surveys by Hart in which the following university programs were found to have produced the most scholars with U.S. university posts: Chicago, Wisconsin, Harvard, Columbia, Yale, Virginia, Stanford, Berkeley, Princeton, Temple, Northwestern, Michigan, Washington, and Tokyo.

Other regionally-accredited U.S. institutions with programs in Buddhism include the University of the West

University of the West

The University of the West is a university in Rosemead, California. It was founded in 1991 by Venerable Master Hsing Yun, founder of the Taiwan-based Buddhist order Fo Guang Shan and Hsi Lai Temple, the North American order headquarters...

, Institute of Buddhist Studies

Institute of Buddhist Studies

The is a Jodo Shinshu-affiliated seminary and graduate school, located in Berkeley, California. It is an affiliate member of the Graduate Theological Union, also located in Berkeley. Its primary mission is to train Jodo Shinshu ministers for service in temples in the United States through the...

, Naropa University

Naropa University

Naropa University is a private American liberal arts university in Boulder, Colorado. Founded in 1974 by Tibetan Buddhist teacher and Oxford University scholar Chögyam Trungpa, it is named for the eleventh-century Indian Buddhist sage Naropa, an abbot of Nalanda.Naropa describes itself as...

, and the California Institute of Integral Studies

California Institute of Integral Studies

California Institute of Integral Studies is a private institution of higher education founded in 1968 and based in San Francisco, California. It currently operates in three locations just south of the Civic Center district...

. (A number of dharma centers offer semi-academic, unaccredited study; some of these seem likely eventually to win accreditation.)

Prominent European programs include Oxford and Cambridge, SOAS, the universities of Humbolt and Bonn, and the Sorbonne. In Asia, Tokyo University has long been a major center for Buddhist research.

Professional associations

Publications

Journals specializing in Buddhist Studies (in alphabetical order):

In addition, many scholars publish in journals devoted to area studies (such as Japan, China, etc.), general Religious Studies, or disciplines such as history, anthropology, or language studies. Some examples would be:

Major university presses that have published in the field include those of Oxford, Cambridge, Indiana, Princeton, SUNY, and the Universities of California, Michigan, Chicago, Hawaii, and Virginia. Non-university presses include Curzon Press, E.J. Brill, Asian Humanities Press, and Motilal Banarsidass. A number of scholars have published through "dharma presses" such as Snow Lion Publications, Wisdom Publications, or Shambhala.

Relationship to contemporary Buddhism

Geographical "Schools"

University programs and institutes

Professional associations

Publications

Further reading