Author: Mariia Lepneva

Doctoral school “Buddhism and Silk Culture”, May 28-June 1, 2018

Abstract: Doctoral school on “Buddhism and Silk Culture” features Stuart Young as a guest lecturer. The course aimed to enhance the PhD researchers’ understanding of key questions pertaining to the role of Buddhism in these contexts. While offering a thorough analysis of essential text material in the Chinese medieval period, the instructor, assisted by the organizers, will also introduce specific methodologies of research in medieval Chinese Buddhism, from an East Asian historical, as well as from a religious perpsective.

  • May 28 – June 1, 2018

Venue: het Pand, Onderbergen 1, 9000 Gent

  • DAY 1: Monday 28 May, 2018 (lunch break 12:00-13:30)

09:30: Welcome of the participants by the Doctoral School organizers (Ann Heirman, Christoph Anderl)
10:00 – 12:00: Course overview: Buddhism in the silk cultures of medieval China; The Chinese history, technology, and vocabulary of silk and sericulture* (lecture, with active participation)
12:00 – 13:30: lunch break
13:30 – 15:30: Research sources primary and secondary, textual, visual, and material; Archaeology of Chinese Silk, Dunhuang 敦煌 and Famensi 法門寺 (interactive presentation and discussion of sources)

  • DAY 2: Tuesday 29 May, 2018 (lunch break 12:00-13:30)

10:00 – 12:00: Vinaya and material culture (Ann Heirman)* (lecture with active participation)
12:00 – 13:30: lunch break
13:30 – 15:30: Silk in the Vinaya (disciplinary monastic rules) and Chinese Vinaya Commentaries (1: Dharmaguptaka)

  • DAY 3: Wednesday 30 May, 2018 (lunch break 12:00-13:30)

10:00 – 12:00: Silk in the Vinaya and Chinese Vinaya Commentaries (2: Sarvāstivāda and Mahīśāsaka)
12:00 – 13:30: lunch break
13:30 – 15:30: Discussion with students, Q+A

  • DAY 4: Thursday 31 May, 2018 (lunch break 12:00-13:30)

10:00 – 12:00: Daoxuan’s 道宣 (596-667) Xingshi chao 行事鈔 commentary on the silk bedding precept
12:00 – 13:30: lunch break
13:30 – 15:30: Daoxuan’s commentaries in comparison with Dajue大覺 (fl. 712)

  • DAY 5: Friday 1 June, 2018 (lunch break 12:00-13:30)

10:00 – 12:00: Chinese views of silk in India: travelogues, hagiographies, miracle tales (1)
12:00 – 13:30: lunch break
13:30 – 15:00: Chinese views of silk in India: travelogues, hagiographies, miracle tales (2)
15:00 – 16:00: Final discussions with students (Stuart Young, Ann Heirman, Christoph Anderl)

* Lectures also suitable for a more general audience (including PhD students of (art) history, etc.)

This doctoral school was generously sponsored by the Tianzhu Buddhist Network.

Lecture by Dr Georgios T. Halkias “The Shitro Ceremony and Lay Tantric Buddhism in Amdo, Qinghai Province”, March 8, 2018

Within the framework of his long-term research stay at Ghent Centre for Buddhist Studies, Dr Georgios T. Halkias will give a lecture “The Shitro Ceremony and Lay Tantric Buddhism in Amdo, Qinghai Province”.

Professional practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism belong either to the ‘red sangha’ (dge ‘dun mar po) that includes celibate nuns and monks who wear the maroon robes, or the ‘white sangha’ (dge ‘dun dkar po), a lay community of male and female tantrists or ngakpa (sngags pa / sngags ma; Skt. māntrin). The latter are also known as those who wear the ‘white cloth’ and have uncut ‘braided hair’ (gos dkar lcang lo can), two distinctive markers of lay, and usually non-celibate, tantric practitioners. It would be fair to say, that the ngakpa of Rebkong in the north-eastern part of the Tibetan Plateau in Qinghai province, are well known in the Tibetan cultural world for comprising the largest community of householder tantric practitioners.  In this presentation, I will briefly introduce the history of the Rebkong community of ngakpas that belong to the Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism, known as the Reb kong snangs mang (a group of tantrists from Rebkong), and share some audio-visual material and observations from my fieldwork participation in the ceremony of the ‘100 peaceful and wrathful deities,’ the Shitro (zhi khro), that took place in June 2017 at the village of Shakarlung in the district of Rebkong.

This lecture was made possible due to the generous support of the Tianzhu Foundation .

Short-term visiting scholar (March 2-March 12, 2018): Dr. Georgios T. Halkias (Centre of Buddhist Studies, The University of Hong Kong)

Dr. Georgios T. Halkias is a specialist on Tibetan forms and practices of Buddhism in Tibet, Central Asia and the NW Himalayas. He completed his MA (Comparative Philosophy) at the University of Hawai‘i and his DPhil (Oriental Studies) at the University of Oxford. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Tibetan Buddhism at the Centre of Buddhist Studies, the University of Hong Kong. He has held several research posts at the Warburg Institute, at Ruhr-Universität Bochum, and has been a British Academy Post-doctoral Fellow at SOAS, University of London. Dr. Halkias has authored many publications including a substantial monograph on the history and development of Pure Land Buddhism in Tibet, Luminous Bliss: a Religious History of Pure Land Literature in Tibet. With an Annotated Translation and Critical Analysis of the Orgyen-ling golden Small Sukhāvatīvyūha-sūtra (Hawaii: University of Hawai‘i Press 2012) and various articles and book chapters. Dr. Halkias is currently researching the translation history of Buddhism in Tibet.

Lecture on Thursday March 8:

The Shitro Ceremony and Lay Tantric Buddhism in Amdo, Qinghai Province

Professional practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism belong either to the ‘red sangha’ (dge ‘dun mar po) that includes celibate nuns and monks who wear the maroon robes, or the ‘white sangha’ (dge ‘dun dkar po), a lay community of male and female tantrists or ngakpa (sngags pa / sngags ma; Skt. māntrin). The latter are also known as those who wear the ‘white cloth’ and have uncut ‘braided hair’ (gos dkar lcang lo can), two distinctive markers of lay, and usually non-celibate, tantric practitioners. It would be fair to say, that the ngakpa of Rebkong in the north-eastern part of the Tibetan Plateau in Qinghai province, are well known in the Tibetan cultural world for comprising the largest community of householder tantric practitioners.  In this presentation, I will briefly introduce the history of the Rebkong community of ngakpas that belong to the Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism, known as the Reb kong snangs mang (a group of tantrists from Rebkong), and share some audio-visual material and observations from my fieldwork participation in the ceremony of the ‘100 peaceful and wrathful deities,’ the Shitro (zhi khro), that took place in June 2017 at the village of Shakarlung in the district of Rebkong.

This visit was made possible due to the generous support of the Tianzhu Foundation.

 

Tianzhu Fieldwork Fellowship 2017-2018: Daphne Stremus

Tianzhu Foundation provides funding for one Ghent University graduate student to travel to East Asia to do Buddhism-related fieldwork. We are happy to announce that for the academic year 2017-2018, this award has been given to Ms. Daphne Stremus, who will travel to Sichuan in August.

Daphne Stremus obtained a B.A. in Oriental Languages and Culture at Ghent University in 2017 and is currently pursuing an M.A. in Oriental Languages and Cultures. Daphne has a profound interest in China’s classical religions and philosophy and in 2018 she was awarded the Tianzhu scholarship, which provided her with the opportunity to enroll at Sichuan  University where she conducted fieldwork at Chengdu’s various religious sites. Being especially curious about the issues of women and gender in contemporary Buddhist monastic life, the main focus of Daphne’s research is on the nunnery of Jinsha (Jinsha An 金沙庵), located in Chengdu’s Qingyang 青羊 district, which also hosts the famous Wenshu Monastery (Wenshu yuan 文殊院) and Aidao Nunnery (Aidao An 爱道庵). Jinsha currently houses a small community of about twenty nuns, but having witnessed the succession of thirteen generations, the nunnery is a landmark in the female history of Buddhism.

2017 PTBS Lecture Series

Programme

  • 07.03   Mick Deneckere (Ghent, Belgium): “Japanese True Pure Land Buddhism, the Meiji Restoration (1868) and the First Japanese Buddhist Mission to Europe”
  • 14.03   Tim Kragh (Poznan, Poland): “A Buddhist Theory of Relations”
  • 21.03   Christophe Vielle (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium): “The Pairi Daiza Collection of Sanskrit Steles: Buddhism in the Medieval Kingdom of Dali (Yunnan, China)”
  • 28.03   Philip Garrett (Newcastle, UK): “Kinship, Kami, and Sacred Space at the Shingon Buddhist Monastic Complex Kōyasan in Medieval Japan”
  • 18.04   Ang Zou (Ghent, Belgium): “From Revelation to a Living Tradition: Daoxuan and His Design of the Platform and the Procedure for Higher Ordination”
  • 25.04   Nataša Vampelj Suhadolnik (Ljubljana, Slovenia): “Is Lotus on the Ceiling of the Han and Wei Jin Tombs a Buddhist Motif? A Reinterpretation of the Lotus on the Tomb’s Ceiling”
  • 02.05   Zhe Ji (Paris, France): “The Monastic Economy of Buddhism in Contemporary China”
  • 09.05   Martin Lehnert (Munich, Germany): “Exemplifying Secrecy: Incommunicability and Undecidability in Gong’an Diegesis”

Doctoral School “East Asian Historical Phonology in a Comparative Perspective”, March 13-17, 2017

This Doctoral School is open to a limited number of external PhD students (free of charge)! For more information, please contact christoph.anderl@ugent.be.


Monday, March 13th
9:30: Welcome of the participants by the Doctoral School organizers (Christoph Anderl, Ann Heirman)
10:00 – 12:00: General introduction* (Guillaume Jacques)
12:00 – 13:30: lunch break
13:30 – 15:00: Introduction: Multilingualism along the Silk Road* (Christoph Anderl)

Tuesday, March 14th
10:00 – 12:00: Rhyme Tables (Guillaume Jacques)
12:00 – 13:30: lunch break
13:30 – 15:30: Exercises: Rhyme Tables (Christoph Anderl)

Wednesday, March 15th
10:00 – 13:00: Sanskrit transcriptions into Chinese (Guillaume Jacques)
13:00 – 14:00: lunch break
14:00 – 16:00: Discussion with students, Q+A (Guillaume Jacques, Sven Osterkamp)

Thursday, March 16th
10:00 – 12:00: Large-scale Borrowings and the “Sinoxenic” Reading Traditions of Chinese Characters (Sven Osterkamp)
12:00 – 13:30: lunch break
13:30 – 15:30: Foreign Transcriptions of Chinese and Vice-Versa in a Historical Perspective: Part 1 (Sven Osterkamp)

Friday, March 17th
10:00 – 12:00: General lecture on Historical Phonology in an East Asian perspective* (Sven Osterkamp)
12:00 – 13:00: lunch break
13:00 – 15:00: Foreign Transcriptions of Chinese and Vice-Versa in a Historical Perspective: Part 2
15:15 – 16:00: Final discussions (Sven Osterkamp, Christoph Anderl, Ann Heirman)
*Lectures also suitable for a more general audience

 

2016 PTBS Lecture Series

2016 Programme

  • 01.03.2016: Jonathan Silk (Universiteit Leiden, the Netherlands)
    “Buddhism, Social Justice and the Status of the Caṇḍāla“
  • 08.03.2016: Petra Kieffer-Pülz (University of Mainz, Germany)
    “    Observations on the relation between Sri Lanka and South India during the centuries”
  • 15.03.2016: Pieter Verhagen (Universeit Leiden, the Netherlands)
    “    Indian Traditions in Tibet: a Procrustean Bed?”
  • 22.03.2016: Noor van Brussel (UGent, Belgium)
    “Godinnen en demonen in een wereld van allusie: over het ontstaan en de vermenging van verhaaltradities in Zuid-India”
  • 12.04.2016: Tillo Detige (UGent, Belgium)
    “Fanatics vs. Pacifists? Rethinking the fortunes of Digambara Jainism under Muslim rule”
  • 19.04.2016: Tine Vekemans (UGent, Belgium)
    “Tradition & Technology – Resisting and Embracing Media Innovation in South Asian Religious Contexts”
  • 26.04.2016: Agnieszka Rostalska (UGent, Belgium)
    “    The recognition of Vedic authority in Nyaya tradition”
  • 03.05.2016: Monika Horstmann (University of Heidelberg, Germany)
    “Interior Religion: A Religious Paradigm in Early Modern North India”

 

 

Doctoral School “Chinese Buddhist Apologetic Literature in aDiachronic Perspective”, September 28 – October 2, 2015

Abstract: The course will introduce Chinese Buddhist apologetic texts from two different periods. Dr. Jülch will deal with the Zhenzheng lun 甄正論 written in the Tang dynasty, and Dr. Zhang with the Dayuan zhiyuan bianwei lu 大元至元辨偽録 written in the Yuan dynasty. In the course, selected parts of the texts will be translated, their historical background analyzed, and methodological issues discussed.

“Chinese Buddhist Apologetic Literature in a Diachronic Perspective” – A specialist course for PhD studentsorganized by Prof. Dr. Christoph Anderl and Dr. Thomas Jülch

Ghent University, Department of Languages and Cultures, Section Chinese Language and Culture, Blandijnberg 2, B-9000 Ghent

28th of September to 2nd of October, 2015

The organizers of the course cordially invite PhD students of Ghent University, as well asfrom other universities, to participate in this training course taught by Dr. Thomas Jülch (Ghent University) and Dr. Zhang Dewei (University of Macao). Participation is free of charge.

The course will introduce Chinese Buddhist apologetic texts from two different periods. Dr. Jülch will deal with the Zhenzheng lun 甄正論 written in the Tang dynasty, and Dr. Zhang with the Dayuan zhiyuan bianwei lu 大元至元辨偽録 written in the Yuan dynasty. In the course, selected parts of the texts will be translated, their historical background analyzed, and methodological issues discussed. On Monday, the 28th of September, we will begin with a short welcome at 09:30. The subsequent schedule will remain the same for all course days (Monday to Friday):

10:00 – 12:00: morning session;

12:00 – 13:00: lunch break;

13:00 – 15:00: afternoon session

Proceedings / Locations:

Monday, 28th of Sept.; topic: Zhenzheng lun; room: Plateau-Rozier, D2. 20

Tuesday, 29th of Sept.; topic: Zhenzheng lun; room: Plateau-Rozier, D2.43

Wednesday, 30th of Sept.; topic: morning: Zhenzheng lun, afternoon: Dayuan zhiyuanbianwei lu; room: Plateau-Rozier, D2.20

Thursday, 1st of Oct.; topic: Dayuan zhiyuan bianwei lu; room: Plateau-Rozier, D2.43

Friday, 2nd of Oct.; topic: Dayuan zhiyuan bianwei lu; room: Plateau-Rozier, D2.43

International students are welcome to participate in the course! For more information, questions, and registration, please contact Dr. Thomas Jülch (Email: Thomas.Julch@UGent.be)

2015 PTBS Lecture Series

2015 Programme

  • 10.03.2015: Christoph Anderl (UGent, Centre for Buddhist Studies, Belgium)
    “Aspects of the Maitreya Cult in China: Past and Present“
  • 17.03.2015: Erika Forte (Ruhr Universität Bochum, Germany)
    “Buddhism along the Silk Road and the Oasis of Khotan — An Archaeological Perspective    “
  • 24.03.2015: Petra Maurer (Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany)
    “    Tibetan Medicine for Horses and Humans. Reflections on Fieldwork in Mustang /Nepal” 
  • 31.03.2015: Berthe Jansen (Universiteit Leiden, the Netherlands)
    “Crime and Punishment in Buddhist Monasteries in Pre-modern Tibet”
  • 21.04.2015: Gudrun Pinte (UGent, Centre for Buddhist Studies, Belgium)
    “Rechtsgeldig procederen in de Pali Vinaya”
  • 28.04.2015: Esther-Maria Guggenmos (Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany)
    “Buddhist Mantic Practices in Contemporary China and Taiwan. A Field Report“
  • 05.05.2015: Petra Kieffer-Pülz (Die Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Mainz, Germany)
    “    Monastic Law in Theory and Practice”
  • 12.05.2015: Oliver Freiberger (the University of Texas, Austin, USA)
    “    Boundaries as Moving Targets: On Distinguishing Religions in Ancient India“

 

 

 

2014 PTBS Lecture Series

2014 Programme

  • 11.03.2014: Ann Heirman (UGent, Centre for Buddhist Studies, Belgium)
    “Boeddhistische lichaamsverzorging in een multireligieuze context“
  • 18.03.2014: Thomas Jülch (UGent, Centre for Buddhist Studies, Belgium)
    “Chinese Buddhist Apologetic Thought”
  • 25.03.2014: Stefano Zacchetti (Oxford University, UK)
    “    Dating the Dharma: Some Remarks on Early Chinese Buddhist Historiography” 
  • 01.04.2014: Martin Lehnert (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany)
    “Between Man-Made Order and Non-Human Facticity: Buddhist Accounts of Authority”
  • 22.04.2014: Christoph Anderl (Ruhr Universität Bochum, Germany)
    “Flying Buddha Statues and the Transmission of Buddhism to China: Tang Dynasty Buddhist Historiographical Narratives in Text and Image”
  • 29.04.2014: Jessie Pons (Ruhr Universität Bochum, Germany)
    “Reading Religions outside Texts: Gandharan Buddhism and Buddhist Sculptures from Gandhara“
  • 06.05.2014: Agnes Birtalan (Eötvös Lorand University, Budapest)
    “    Mongolian Buddhist Folk Religion”
  • 13.05.2014: Claire Maes (UGent, Centre for Buddhist Studies, Belgium)
    “    Waarom weten we wat we weten over het Boeddhisme? Een kritische blik op ons erfgoed van de negentiende-eeuwse Europese studie van het Boeddhisme“