Rainy Season Research Series

Join us during Vassa 2020/2564 for a series of online talks by various researchers. If you have some Pali, you are also welcome to attend a class taught by Aleix Ruiz-Falqués on Kaccāyana’s grammar.

Transnational Network of Theravada Studies | Shan State Buddhist University | King’s College London

TALKS

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PAST TALKS

Friday, 17 July

Friday, 21 August

Justin McDaniel, Professor of Religious Studies, University of Pennsylvania 

The editing process and engagement with Wisdom as a Way of Life: Theravada Buddhism Reimagined, the last book of Steven Collins (1951-2018)

• Collins details the insights of Buddhist texts and practices that promote the ideal of active and engaged learning, offering an expansive and lyrical reflection on Theravāda approaches to meditation, asceticism, and physical training. He explores views of monastic life and contemplative practices as complementing and reinforcing textual learning, and argues that the Buddhist tenet that the study of philosophy and ethics involves both rigorous reading and an ascetic lifestyle has striking resonance with modern and postmodern ideas. Justin McDaniel, the editor of this posthumous book that Collins was unable to finish because of his untimely death, will discuss the editing process and the impact he believes the book will have.
• Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNXXCq60uOE

Friday, 11 September

Steven Kemper, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, Bates College

A Larger Buddhism: Anagarika Dharmapala and the Enfranchising of Laypeople in late 19^th-century Sri Lanka

• In the late nineteenth century and onwards Buddhism became larger in several ways. In Sri Lanka that process included absorbing (or reabsorbing) people who had become converted Christians, revitalizing the religion and making people take it more seriously, and converting Westerners. I am interested in a part of the process that is less straightforward—enfranchising laypeople, especially laymen, and insisting that they had responsibilities as “Buddhists.” It is impossible to approach this process without thinking about the role of Anagarika Dharmapala, but he neither laicized Buddhism nor did he think the religion was one and the same for everyone. In opposing the hegemony of Christian Sri Lankans, he publicized causes—dress reform, temperance, and Sinhala privilege—and established Buddhist lay organizations to pursue them.
• Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QM2Y3t3AkcM

Friday, 18 September

Rebecca Nelson

Thai Buddhism and the Problem of Single-Use Plastic

• This talk will introduce the problem of plastic pollution and its relationship to traditional and modern Buddhist Ethics. We will discuss single-use plastic’s place in the Thai economy and daily life, looking at the consequences of this for the environment, especially wildlife as highlighted last year by the headline news in Thailand of the death of the beloved baby dugong Marium. We will then examine the extent to which Thai Buddhism exacerbates single-use plastic consumption  through the way dāna is performed and recent Buddhist responses to address the problem. The talk finishes with suggestions of how Buddhist Ethics may also offer solutions to this crisis. 
• Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW5RNOufXfQ

Friday, 25 September

Tilman Frasch, Reader in Asian History, Manchester Metropolitan University

Pali at Bagan: The lingua franca of the Theravada Buddhist Ecumene

• For more than 250 years, between c. 1050 and 1300 CE, Bagan was the capital of kingdom by and large and congruent with modern Myanmar. More than 2500 religous monuments – the vast majority of them Buddhist temples, stupas and monasteries – still attest to the former importance and glory of the city and the generosity of its citizens. At the same time, the city was a cosmopolitan centre of Theravada Buddhism – perhaps its single most important centre during the 13th century – where monks and pilgrims from all over Asia met, studied and held religious ceremonies such as recitations (sangiti) and ordinations. As this presentation will show, the Pali language served this transnational community as a lingua franca, facilitating communication and collaboration. In fact, Bagan may have produced the largest number of major (long) Pali inscriptions of any Buddhist site in Asia, including a number of recent finds. A survey of this body of texts will shed fresh light on the formation and composition of the Buddhist community at Bagan, for instance its connections with Angkor and the Malay world. The presentation will introduce these hitherto overlooked works of Pali scholarship and discuss their implications.
• Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlHWmI5IUgQ

2 October

Ven. Dr. Devindabhipala, Lecturer in Buddhist Sociology, Shan State Buddhist University

Individual Enlightenment and Social Responsibility:
Reinterpreting Theravada Holy Monks from a Buddhist Sociological Perspective

• This talk focuses on the relationship between a spiritual leader and his followers within the tradition of Theravāda Buddhism. Much of the older sociological interpretations of Theravāda Buddhism focuses on its individualistic character centred on individual enlightenment. Holy monks or arahants are considered to be detached from their followers. These misunderstandings are the result of various secular sociological interpretations of Buddhism. This research demonstrates that there is a defining bind between individual enlightenment and social responsibility, and that the Buddhist concept of perfections (pāramī) is at the core of any charismatic authority. I draw on the socio-communal relationships that charismatic spiritual masters of the Shan have with the contemporary society, particularly Venerable Khruba Boonchum, to argue against the secular sociological misinterpretations which see the authority of such leaders as having millenarian and utopian characteristics.

• The powerpoint presentation is available here.
• An article by the speaker that is related the subject of this talk is: Dayweinda Yeehsai and John Giordano, “Individual Englightenment and Social Responsibility: On the Sociological Interpretations of the Holy Monk Khruba Boonchum,” Prajñā Vihāra, Vol 19, No 2, July-December 2018, 93-115. It is available for free download on the journal’s website.
• Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3QiOpcUNYw

9 October

Richard Gombrich, Emeritus Boden Professor of Sanskrit, University of Oxford

The importance of the so-called ‘transfer of merit’ for understanding the history of Buddhism

• In studying Buddhist history I have mostly worked on its earliest period — the time of the Buddha himself. Recently, however, I have become interested in Chinese Buddhism, although alas I do not know Chinese. In 2005 I spent a month teaching at the Buddhism Centre of the University of Hong Kong, and there learnt from colleagues about Tai Xu, the Chinese monk who between the two World Wars invented what he called “Humanistic Buddhism” and Thich Nhat Hanh renamed “Engaged Buddhism” — which has since conquered most of the Western world. Tai Xu took off from the fact that the Buddhism around him, Chinese Mahayana, was primarily concerned with rituals for the dead. He deplored this morbid obsession. Then I realised what a vital role rituals for the dead played in the Buddha’s own environment. This short talk will carry the story further. 
• Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bh7urL3ahE&feature=youtu.be

16 October

Chotima Chaturawong, Associate Professor, Faculty of Architecture, Silpakorn University

Wihan at Wat Traphang Thong Lang, Sukhothai: Cultural Linkages with Sri Lanka and Myanmar

• Wat Traphang Thong Lang [Monastery of the Coral-tree Pond] is located outside the historical town of Sukhothai to the east and probably belonged to a forest–dwelling order. Its sacred quadrangle simply contained a wihan referring to an assembly hall where people are gathered to practice ceremonies and listen to dharma preaching. Wihan at Wat Traphang Thong Lang perhaps represented the Sudhammasala in the Tavatimsa Heaven as the term Thong Lang [coral tree] is equivalent to Paricchattaka in Pali. The Paricchattaka is the sacred tree that grew in Nandanavana of the Tavatimsa Heaven and its foot is the Pandukambalasilasana [Pandukambala stone] where the Buddha was seated and taught Abhidhamma [higher doctrine] for three months to his former mother, who was reborn as a deva, and other devas and brahmas. The stucco reliefs of the image chamber and the image throne had inspiration from those in Sri Lanka and Myanmar and reflected cultural linkages among the three countries.
• This talk draws on Dr. Chaturawong’s latest book, วิหารพระพุทธรูป สถาปัตยกรรมเปรียบเทียบของไทย เมียนมา และศรีลังกา [Buddha Shrines: An Architectural Comparison of Thailand, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka].
• Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hap0HwgM9LI&feature=youtu.be

23 October

Mark Allon, Professor of South Asian Buddhist Studies, University of Sydney

Research on the Kuthodaw Pagoda marble-stelae recension of the Pali canon in Mandalay, Myanmar

• Between 1860-1868 King Mindon (1853-1878), the second last king of Burma/Myanmar, had the complete Theravāda Pali Buddhist canon carved onto 729 marble stelae which were then housed at the specially constructed Kuthodaw Pagoda in Mandalay, Myanmar. Although Myanmar kings, like other Theravāda kings, had long fulfilled one of their religious duties by commissioning sets of the canon to be written on palm leaf manuscripts, this was the first time that the entire canon had been carved on stone. To some extent, Mindon’s doing so may have been prompted by the annexation of lower Myanmar by the British in 1852. These inscriptions preserve a complete and unified recension of the Pali canon which is a unique textual witness of the Theravāda manuscript tradition of Myanmar well outside the reach of Western textual methods and practices. This presentation reports on an ongoing project to conserve, photograph and study these previously underutilised inscriptions in an attempt to clarify how the texts as inscribed relate to earlier manuscript traditions and to subsequent printed versions of the canon from Myanmar.
• Video: https://youtu.be/MNqeivcBHhc

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Photo credit: Ven. Kumara, Shan State Buddhist University

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Courtesy of the Transnational Network of Theravada Studies (TNTS)

Hosted by Shan State Buddhist University (SSBU) and King’s College London

Contact: Pyi Phyo Kyaw on ssbu.pyi.p.kyaw@gmail.com

Contact: Kate Crosby on henrietta.crosby@kcl.ac.uk