Graduate Students Explore the
Future of Buddhist Studies

In early December at Harvard University's Barker Center, the Harvard Buddhist Studies Forum held its third annual conference with sponsorship by the Boston Research Center for the 21st Century. Entitled "Buddhist Studies: Dialogues Between Past and Present, Directions for the Future," this was the first graduate student conference in Buddhist Studies ever held at Harvard. In attendance were some 65 graduate students and faculty from Buddhist Studies Programs at the University of Virginia, University of Pennsylvania, Columbia, Boston University, University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin, and University of Chicago. The conference provided a rich opportunity for collaborative thinking among the next generation of scholars of Buddhism.

The Boston Research Center began its sponsorship of the conference program of Harvard Buddhist Studies Forum in 1996 to honor the achievements of Dr. Masatoshi Nagatomi, a distinguished Buddhist scholar. Professor Nagatomi retired that year after having taught Buddhist Studies, Sanskrit, and Pali at Harvard since 1958. He served as faculty advisor and director of the Buddhist Studies Forum from its founding in 1985 until his retirement. The goal of the Forum is to provide lectures, open to the public, on topics related to Buddhist studies with a primary purpose of providing intellectual stimulation and exchange for students. The Forum succeeded in bringing lectures to the students of Harvard by the world's leading Buddhist scholars.

The first session of December's conference, "Acknowledging Previous Studies in the Future of Buddhist Studies," considered the historical and methodological contexts that have shaped Buddhist Studies in the West. Some of the questions raised for further consideration included:

• Broaden the study of meditation to include comparisons with meditation practices in other religious traditions.

• Create dialogues with other disciplines such as psychology.

• Consider the study of Indian Buddhism as inseparable from its Indian context.

• Challenge the pervasive ahistorical approach to the investigation of Tibetan Buddhism and culture.

The second panel, "What's Real in Buddhist Studies?" examined processes of category formation in Buddhist experience as well as scholarly attempts to define trends in Buddhist thought and history. In addition, participants considered canon formation in Tibetan Buddhism and the political dimensions of scholastic debates between different Buddhist schools in Tibet. A discussion of Buddhist morality included theories of cognitive science to reflect on the ways in which language structures moral development.

Conference organizers Karen Derris (left) and
Natalie Gummer with Harvard Buddhist Studies
Forum Director Professor Charles Hallisey

The third panel took as its theme: "New Perspectives on Buddhist History." Buddhist educational practices in medieval Japan were set forth as a resource for contemporary educational theory; and an examination of a Thai Buddhist chronicle was used to "help us to rethink our own relationship to the historical Buddhist communities that we study."

An account of editorial practices in 14th century Tibet suggested that such neglected areas of study as book production might inform and enrich our understanding of the social history of Buddhism. "These papers," Professor Stephen Teiser (Princeton University) suggested, "represent a promising range of options for the historical study of Buddhism and raise significant questions about how we read and evaluate historical evidence. They also raise the question of the role of the historian and of contemporary concerns in the writing of the history of Buddhism."

The final panel of the conference was called "When Local Genius Crosses Cultural Boundaries." The panel focused on the importance of historical art materials as well as lesser-known contemporary resources in the study of Buddhism. The panel's final presenter discussed the potential benefits of feminist approaches to Buddhist philosophy. She used the multiple scholarly interpretations of the writings of Nagarjuna as a foil for exploring the rich possibilities of feminist methods.

The Graduate Student Conference urged students and faculty not to allow cultural and historical boundaries to restrict their appreciation and understanding of Buddhism. "Consider," it was suggested, "how leaving open multiple interpretive possibilities contributes to a richer understanding of Buddhism."

Professor Charles Hallisey, Harvard Buddhist Studies Forum's Director, closed the formal conference proceedings by expressing the hope that in the future it would be possible to look back and see this conference as the site where the next generation of scholars of Buddhism first began to cultivate a cooperative and mutually-aware self-consciousness. At the BRC-hosted dinner following the conference, Professor Hallisey thanked the Boston Research Center for its support of this first graduate student conference and commented on the appropriateness of the Center's sponsorship, noting that the conference was an excellent, albeit small, realization of the Center's own motto, "be the heart of a network of global citizens."

--Karen Derris and Natalie Gummer