Buddhist Asia: Traditions, Transmissions, and Transformations

FAIN: EH-50414-14

Center for Cultural and Technical Interchange Between East and West, Inc. (Honolulu, HI 96848-1601)
Peter D. Hershock (Project Director: March 2014 to April 2017)

A five-week summer institute for twenty-five college faculty on Buddhism in Southeast Asian  societies.

"Buddhist Asia: Traditions, Transmissions and Transformations" will introduce undergraduate educators to Buddhism as a religion that has both shaped and been shaped by cultures and societies throughout Asia for more than twenty-five hundred years. The program will explore how Buddhism spread as a "total care system" that addressed both personal and social needs in ways that were inseparable from the dynamics of cultural interaction, artistic production, trade and politics. Through context-rich engagement with key traditions, practices, and primary texts (in translation), the institute will enable participants to appreciate how Buddhism served as a powerful cultural bridge in Asia, comparable to Christianity in the West, and to develop curricular materials applicable in a wide range of humanities courses, including courses in religion, philosophy, history, art history, and literature, but also courses organized around such themes as globalization and cultural pluralism.