“Asian Buddhism and Western Converts: Conflicts, Assimilations, and Beyond”
Presented by Dr. Reginald Ray, Professor, Naropa University, Boulder.
Date: Wednesday January 24, 2006
Time: 2:00 – 4:00 PM
Place: Institute of Asian Research, C.K. Choi Building Room 120, 1855 West Mall
One of the most interesting developments in recent times is the meeting of Asian Buddhism and Western culture. This lecture explores one dimension of this encounter, the coming together of Westerners interested in practicing Buddhism and Asian teachers seeking to transmit their tradition to the West. What does each bring to the table? How well has each group understood the other? How faithful to Asian tradition are the adaptations that are occurring in the West? In other words, to what extent has Buddhism in the West assimilated to the prevailing culture and to what extent does it represent a genuinely new form of spirituality in Western culture? Through exploring these and other questions, we will seek some perspective on some of the most important outcomes of this meeting of Asian Buddhism and the West.
Dr. Reginald “Reggie” Ray studied the History of Religions under Mircea Eliade, one of the great religious scholars of the twentieth century. He received his PhD from the Divinity School of the University of Chicago in 1973. After spending a year in India on a Fulbright-Hays fellowship, studying Tibetan and completing his dissertation, he took up a tenure track position at Indiana University. Reggie has written extensively on the history and practice of Indian and Tibetan Buddhism, including three books and some seventy articles. His nationally recognized scholarly work Buddhist Saints in India: A Study in Buddhist Values and Orientations (1999) examines the history of the practice lineage in India. His other works include: Indestructible Truth: The Living Spirituality of Tibetan Buddhism (2000), Secret of the Vajra World: The Tantric Buddhism of Tibet (2002), In the Presence of Masters (2004) and The Pocket Tibetan Buddhist Reader (2004). His latest book, Meditating With the Body, will be published by Dharma Ocean Press in the fall of 2007.
This lecture is made possible by the generous support from The Tung Lin Kok Yuen Canada Foundation.
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