Understanding Buddhism Through its Classic Texts

FAIN: FS-50333-12

Mangalam Centers (Berkeley, CA 94704-1418)
Luis Gomez (Project Director: March 2012 to June 2016)

Funding details:
Original grant (2012) $93,409.00
Supplement (2013) $14,046.00

A four-week seminar for sixteen college and university faculty to study classical Buddhist texts in the context of their translation and transmission.

Inspired by the NEH "Bridging Cultures" initiative, the proposed 4-week seminar "Understanding Buddhism Through its Classic Texts" will introduce participants to a variety of texts in order to examine how Buddhist literary traditions were transmitted in the past, how they relate to the interests of the contemporary world, and how issues of translation impact the teaching of traditions that developed in isolation from our own. The seminar has two fundamental goals: (1) to introduce participants to the critical study and use of complex, multivalent texts and terms in the context of the Buddhist tradition, and (2) to increase understanding of the special challenges of speaking, thinking, and teaching cross-culturally, bringing indigenous technical terms and discussions into dialogue with the critical tools of a Western academic approach through a close reading of selected passages or complete texts.