Table of Contents
LECTURE> 2018 Jordan Lectures in Comparative Religion at SOAS University of London, 15–18 May, Robert H. Sharf (Berkeley)
by Yael Shiri
Dear
Colleagues,
On
behalf of the School of History, Religions and Philosophies and the Centre of
Buddhist Studies, I am delighted to announce the 2018 Jordan Lectures in Comparative Religion at SOAS University
of London.
The
lectures will be delivered by Robert H. Sharf, D. H. Chen Distinguished
Professor of Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and
will explore Buddhist ideas drawing from Western philosophy.
The
lectures will take place over four days, with a public lecture on May 15th and
three follow-on seminars on May 16th-18th. All lectures are open to the public
and we look forward to seeing many of you there.
Best
wishes,
Lucia
Dolce
2018 JORDAN LECTURES IN COMPARATIVE RELIGION
SOAS UNIVERSITY OF
LONDON
May 15 – 18, 2018, 5-7pm
Professor Robert H. Sharf, University
of California, Berkeley
DO BUDDHISTS BELIEVE THE MOON IS STILL
THERE WHEN NOBODY IS LOOKING?
Reflections on Realism, Anti-realism,
and the Looping Structure of Buddhist Thought
Inaugural Lecture, May 15, 2018,
5-7pm, SWLT (Senate House)
Early
Buddhist teachings maintain that the “material” world in which we live emerges
in tandem with, and is dependent upon, mind and discriminative consciousness.
In short, there is no world outside of mind—a position that is sometimes
associated with anti-realism or idealism. Yet early Buddhist attempts to unpack
this insight often rely on entities or principles whose existence is, in some
sense, independent of mind, such as dharmas and karma; scholiasts
seem to feel that some such “real” or mind-invariant elements are necessary to
account for our experience of intersubjective coherence and stability. The
resulting tension between anti-realist and realist perspectives does not go
unnoticed by Buddhist scholiasts; the complex history of Buddhist thought might
be seen as an ongoing attempt to grapple with this metaphysical riddle. This
lecture will look at competing Vaibhāṣika, Sautrāntika, Madhyamika, and
Yogācāra responses to this problem. Our focus is not so much on the scholastic
details, but rather on teasing out the underlying paradoxical or
"looping" structure with which the Buddhist exegetes are struggling.
The following three seminars will explore this looping structure in more
detail, drawing from Western philosophy, quantum theory, and Chan/Zen Buddhism.
Mind in World, World in Mind: On the
Existential Nature of the Loop
May 16, 5-7pm, SALT (Senate House)
The first seminar will argue that the
loop is indeed unavoidable, and that it is not merely analytic but existential.
That is to say, the paradox is not merely the result of pushing up against the
limits of language and thought, but, more fundamentally, it emerges from the
fact that we are, inescapably, both subjects and objects to ourselves. In
exploring the nature and significance of this conundrum, we will draw upon
various Western philosophers, including Schopenhauer, Wittgenstein,
Merleau-Ponty, and Nagel, each of whom finds himself entangled in the loop.
Buddhist Views of Conceptuality (vikalpa)
and the Quantum Measurement Problem
May 17, 5-7pm, SWLT (Senate House)
This seminar will begin with the
"conceptuality problem" in Buddhism, and then turn to contemporary
debates over the "measurement problem" in quantum mechanics, both to
triangulate in on the loop's structure, and to argue for its existential
import. Quantum theorists have put forth various competing theories—Copenhagen
interpretation, hidden variables, many worlds, quantum information theories,
quantum Bayesianism (QBism), decoherence, and so on—that replicate, in many
respects, the realist and anti-realist positions taken by competing Buddhist
traditions.
Making Philosophical Sense of Chan
(Zen) Cases
May 18, 5-7pm, SWLT (Senate House)
The final seminar in this series will
focus on how medieval Chinese Chan exegetes grappled with the paradoxical
structure of Buddhist thought. We will find that Chan "public cases"
(gong'an; Japanese: kōan) probe the nature and import of the loop
with philosophical rigor and subtlety. Hence rather than viewing Chan cases as
literary ephemera, or as anti-philosophy, or as incoherent mystical utterances,
we will see that they are critical and cogent treatments of issues at the very
heart of both Mahāyāna thought and contemporary Western philosophy.
Robert Sharf is D. H. Chen Distinguished Professor
of Buddhist Studies in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the
University of California, Berkeley, as well as Chair of Berkeley's Center for
Buddhist Studies. He works primarily on medieval Chinese Buddhism (especially
Chan), but has also published in the areas of Japanese Buddhism (Shingon and
Zen), Buddhist art and archaeology, Buddhist modernism, Buddhist philosophy,
and methodological issues in the study of religion. He is author of Coming
to Terms with Chinese Buddhism: A Reading of the Treasure Store Treatise
(2002), and co-editor (with his wife Elizabeth) of Living Images: Japanese
Buddhist Icons in Context (2001).
CELEBRATE H-NET'S 25 YEARS OF SERVICE: DONATE TODAY!
