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The Ghent Centre for Buddhist Studies, in association with the Royal Museum of Mariemont, is happy to announce the call for papers for an upcoming conference on Buddha’s life narratives.

Wednesday the 16^th until Friday the 19^th of October 2024.

Royal Museum of Mariemont

The founding figure of Buddhism, Śākyamuni Buddha, has played an enormously important role for South and East Asian – and more recently also Western – cultures and societies. However, there is no authoritative biographic account which would be accepted by the multitude of Buddhist traditions. On the contrary, the stories concerning Śākyamuni’s life are as diverse as the doctrinal and rituals systems found in the various regions and schools of Asian Buddhism. In this context of the lack of cross-regionally and inter-sectarian accepted textual and visual sources, even key events of Buddha’s life have undergone countless interpretations in textual and visual media in the course of Buddhism’s geographical spread and doctrinal diversification.

Some of the influential hagiographical accounts of Buddha’s life, such as the Sanskrit Buddhacarita and the Lalitavistara and their renderings in other languages, have attracted the attention of numerous scholars, whereas many lesser-known narratives have remained understudied. The main goal of this conference is thus to gather scholars and discuss unusual variations and interpretations of Buddha’s life stories found in textual and visual materials. The narratives concerning Buddha’s life will be approached from an interdisciplinary perspective, including religious studies, philological and literary studies, archaeology, and art history, to name a few.

We invite speakers to present studies which for example focus on geographically localized adaptations of Buddha’s life – both based on visual and textual sources; variations we find in the texts and manuscripts composed in the various languages along the Silk Road and beyond; hybrid accounts of Buddha’s life which incorporate elements drawn from other traditions or cultural contexts; the way Buddha’s life is interpreted in contemporary media; as well as Western interpretations of Buddha’s life stories. There are no limitations concerning the temporal or geographical framework.

The international in-person conference is scheduled for 16-19 October 2024 at the Royal Museum of Mariemont, Belgium. This event is organised, in collaboration with the Ghent Centre for Buddhist Studies of Ghent University, at the occasion of the exhibition “Buddha. Experiencing the Sensible” (September 21st, 2024 – April 20th, 2025).

Interested participants should submit a 300-word proposal and a short biography (maximum 200 words) as a single Word document to Buddha2024@musee-mariemont.be by February 29th, 2024. The language of presentation will be English. Selected speakers will be notified by the end of March 2024.

Transport to and from hotels nearby the conference venue will be provided by the organising institutions.

Keynote speaker: Bernard Faure, Director of the Center for Buddhism and East Asian Religions, Columbia University, Kao Professor of Japanese Religion, Columbia University, Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies, Stanford University

Conference organisers:

Ann Heirman, Head of the Department of Languages and Cultures, Professor of Chinese Language and Culture, Director of the Ghent Centre for Buddhist Studies, Ghent University
Christoph Anderl, Professor of Chinese Language and Culture, Department of Languages and Cultures, Ghent University
Lyce Jankowski, Curator of extra-European Art, Domain & Royal Museum of Mariemont
Max Deeg, Professor in Buddhist Studies, Cardiff University
Neil Schmid, Research Professor, Dunhuang Research Academy

GANDHĀRA CORPORA – Charles DiSimone

In the last several years, fantastic manuscript finds have surfaced opening new windows into the scholarly study of the development of Buddhist literature. Gandhāra Corpora represents a multifaceted, holistic approach to the study of an important and voluminous genre of manuscript witnesses from an early era of Buddhist textual transmission composed mainly in Sanskrit in the Gilgit/Bamiyan type scripts from the historic region of Greater Gandhāra covering modern day Afghanistan, Pakistan, and parts of Northern India. This project centers on the study of large, recently discovered caches of highly significant early Buddhist manuscripts and their place in the body of works from Greater Gandhāra. The philological, paleographical, codicological, and critical research conducted in this project will examine textual and material production, transmission, and relationship networks in the Buddhist manuscript cultures of Greater Gandhāra and beyond in the first millennium of the Common Era.

Dr. Lia Wei (Lecturer in Archaeology & Museum Studies, School of History, Renmin University, China) will give a series of lectures and workshops supported by the Tianzhu Foundation and Ghent University. The program includes the following topics: landscape painting, ink art, antiquarianism and seal carving. The program is concluded by a lecture on Song dynasty gardens given by Ms. Salome Foltin (University of Tübingen).  All lectures and workshops will take place at the interfaculty study center VANDENHOVE (Rozier 1, 9000 Ghent). Admission is free but for the workshops registration is required. For further inquiries please contact Mathieu.Torck@UGent.be.

1. Landscape painting lecture: “Reading and writing the landscape: from physical to literary perceptions”

Venue: Auditorium Vandenhove

Tuesday, February 11, 2020: 1–4 pm

• Topics: conceptual, pictorial and written landscapes

• Discussion: Drawing and Writing

2. Ink art workshop: “Find your way between nature and culture” (registration required!)

Venue: Workshop Room Vandenhove

Monday, February 17, 2020: 4–6 pm

• Session 1: Landscape Analysis & Construction

Tuesday, February 18, 2020: 2–4 pm

• Session 2: Beyond Classification

Tuesday, February 18, 2020: 4–6 pm

• Session 3: Texture Lines & Calligraphic Portraits

3. Antiquarianism lecture: “Future in the Past: printing and carving before and after writing”

Venue: Auditorium Vandenhove

Tuesday, February 25, 2020: 5–6 pm

4. Seal carving workshop: “Connect sign and matter in three steps” (registration required!)

Venue: Workshop Room Vandenhove

Monday, March 2, 2020: 3–6 pm

• Session 1: Etymological Research and Calligraphic Models

Tuesday, March 3, 2020: 3–6 pm

• Session 2: Carving and Printing

5. Lecture by Salome Foltin (M.A. Department of Chinese Studies, University of Tübingen): “The Literati’s Pastime: Visual Renderings of Sima Guang’s 司馬光 (1019-1086) Garden in Ming Dynasty”

Venue: Auditorium Vandenhove

Tuesday, March 3, 2020: 6–7 pm

A Hot Topic Lecture part of the Doctoral School “Women and Nuns in Chinese Buddhism”

By Natasha Heller, Associate Professor of Chinese Religions, University of Virginia

June 6, 2019; 19:00-21:00

Ghent university, Auditorium P (Zaal Jozef Plateau), Campus Boekentoren. Map

Abstract

Speaker

Natasha Heller is a scholar of Chinese Religions, currently working on contemporary Buddhist children’s literature. At the University of Virginia, she chaired the Faculty Senate committee on Diversity and Inclusion this year. She is also a founder of the website Women in the Study of Asian Religions (wisar.info), which seeks to address the gender imbalance at conferences and lecture series. But, as she notes, her real qualification is being the only woman in the room on too many occasions.

This lecture was co-sponsored by the Tianzhu Foundation.

Within the framework of his research stay at Ghent Centre for Buddhist Studies, Prof. Dr. Hong Xiuping 洪修平 will deliver a lecture “从‘心’义种种看南宗禅的特色” [A variety of perspectives on the Southern Chan school’s specificity, departing from the meanings of the character “Mind”]

After Buddhism spread from ancient India to China, it underwent an unceasing process of change. From the perspective of ideas and discourse, it is essential to look at the development of how Buddhism mixed with native Confucianist and Daoist ideas to form a Chinese Buddhism with Chinese characteristics. The Southern school of Chan Buddhism, founded by the Sixth Patriarch Huineng, is a representative case of this Chinese Buddhism. The Southern school of Chan took shape in the middle of the sinification of Buddhism and in the middle of the development of Chan. From the Chan doctrines of the “Five Chinese Patriarchs,” the Chan lineage of Bodhidharma to Hongren, the meaning of the character “mind” continuously changed, exhibiting two tendencies. From the poems of Huineng and Shenxiu, we can discover the differences between the Northern and Southern Schools of Chan.

创立于古印度的佛教传入中国以后，经过了一个不断的中国化过程，从思想理论看，主要是与中国原有的儒家思想和道家思想融合发展，形成了具有中国特色的中国佛教。六祖惠能所创的禅宗南宗就是中国佛教的典型代表。

南宗禅形成于佛教中国化的过程之中和中国禅的演化之中。从达摩到弘忍的禅宗“东土五祖”的禅法，“心”义不断变化，表现出两种倾向。从惠能与神秀的偈颂可以看出南北禅宗的差别。

传统佛教的“心”有多重涵义。惠能禅对传统佛教有许多革新，其核心是对“心”做了新的理解和发挥。从现存《坛经》的有关记载来看，惠能所言之心的涵义也是十分复杂的。南宗禅把人心和佛性统一于人们的当下之心。从惠能禅由“心”而展开的“无相、无念、无住”，可以看到惠能禅的当下之心是般若实相论与涅槃佛性论相结合的产物。

惠能的全部禅学理论都是围绕着人的解脱问题而展开的。从“心”的解脱到“人”的解脱，体现了南宗禅的发展。马祖的“平常心”突出了当下人的解脱。南宗禅的解脱强调的是自然解脱，从中体现出道家精神和中国特色。表现在禅修实践上，就是农禅并重，将禅修与运水搬柴、穿衣吃饭等日常生产和生活打成一片。

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

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 .