• 
• 
• 
• 

Home > Activities > Numata Program in Buddhist Studies

Numata Program in Buddhist Studies

Throughout history, Buddhism has spread and gained believers through cultural exchanges and interaction. Assisting in Buddhism’s popularization and development since ancient times in Japan were venerated institutions and centers of higher learning which are comparable to today’s universities, for example, Tendai Buddhism had Mt. Hiei and Shingon Buddhism had Mt. Koya.

In continuing with this historical process, Bukkyō Dendō Kyōkai has established the Numata Program in Buddhist Studies program at leading universities in North America and Europe as one of its main projects to promote and introduce Buddhism to the world. The first “Numata Chair in Buddhist Studies” was established at the University of California, Berkeley in January, 1985, and since that time, the program has grown to include 15 major universities in North America and Europe.

As time progresses, the Numata Program in Buddhist Studies will continue to grow and hopefully encourage more young people to study Buddhism in a university setting as people have done for hundreds of years. Accordingly, it is our wish and aim to contribute to the creation of a peaceful world society based on Buddhism.

Introduction of Chair Holder Universities

[America]

University of California, Berkeley,Harvard University,University of Chicago,University of Hawaii,
Smith College,Institute of Buddhist Studies,University of California, Los Angeles

[Canada]

University of Calgary,University of Toronto,McGill University

[United Kingdom]

University of Oxford※,University of London
※From September 2005 to March 2008, BDK received the heartfelt support of many people to whom we are most grateful and who share a common commitment to Buddhism in helping to establish the Numata Chair at Oxford University.

[Europe]

Leiden University,University of Vienna,University of Hamburg

Numata Program in Buddhist Studies 2008

United States of America

University	Visiting Professor (University) / Contents
University of California, Berkeley	Professor James Robson (Harvard University) “Chiese Buddhist Text in the Context of Chinese Religion” Public Lecture: "Searching for a Better Return: Preparatory Cultivating and the Economy of Salvation in East Asian Buddhism"
Harvard University	Professor Funayama Toru (Kyoto University, Institute for Reserch in Humanities) "Saintliness in Chinese and Indian Buddhism" "Public lecture in Buddhist Studies Forun on March 31, 2009"
University of Chicago	Professor Matthew Kapstein (University of Chicago) "The Buddha in Barcelona" "Reading in Buddhist Philosophical texts" "Contemporary Theory of the Study of Religion"
Smith College	Professor Jamie Hubbard (Smith College) "Happiness 501: Well Being from Buddhist & Western Psychological Viewpoints" "Japanese Buddhism in the Contemporary World"
University of Hawaii	No program in 2008-2009 year.
Institute of Buddhist Studies	Professor Richard K. Payne (Insitute of Buddhist Studies) “Issues in the Study of Religion” Published book honoring Professor Roger Corless with Numata Center
University of California, Los Angeles	Co-ssponsored with Terusaki Center for Japanese Studies and UCLA Center for Buddhist Studies “Recent Dvelopment in Buddhist Art”
	Professor James Robson (Harvard University) “Asian Images Inside-Out: What Can We Learn from the Context of East Asian Statues?”
	Professor Imre Hamar (Eotvos Lorand University) "Interpretation of Yogacara philosophy in Huayun Buddhism"
	Professor Kate Crosby (London University SOAS) "Theravada, But Not As We Know It: Forgotten Tantric in Theravada Buddhism"
	Professor Donald Lopez (University of Michigan) "Buddism & Science: A Guide for the Perplexed"

Canada

University	Visiting Professor (University) / Contents
University of Toronto	Professor Dina Bangdel (Virginia Commonwealth University) Reading Group: "Art in the Ritual Context: The Chakrasamvara Tradition in Newar Buddhism" Lecture: "The Iconology of Newar Buddhism: Manifestations of a Buddhist Cosmology"
	Professor Johan Elverskog (Southern Methodist University) Lecture: "Buddhism and Islam on the Silk Road" Reading Group: "Buddhist-Muslim Interaction in the 9th-12 Centuries"
	Professor Nicolas Sihle (University of Virginia) Lecture: "The Lingering Question of the Structure of the Religious Field: Comments on the Project of a Comparative Anthropology of Buddhism" Reading Group: "Written Texts at the Juncture of the Local and the Global: Some Anthropological Considerations on a Local Corpus of Tantric Ritual Manuals"
	Professor Antonio Terrone (Leiden University) Professor Sarah Jacoby (Columbia University) Reading Group: "To be or Not to be Celibate: Morality and Consort Practices According to the Treasure Revealer Se ra mkha' gro's (1892-1940)"
	Professor Sarah Jacoby (Columbia University) Lecture : "Love Revelations and the Life of an Early Twenieth-Century Tibetan Female Visionary"
	Professor Antonio Terrone (Leiden University) Lecture: "All You Need is a Laptop: the Tibetan Resource Center and its Digital Technology in the Field of Tibetan Studies"
	Professor Ronald M. Davidson (Fairfield University) Lecture: "The Transition from Mahayana Ritual to the Beginnings of Buddhist Tantrism" Reading Group: "Studies in Dharani Literature"
McGill University	Professor Miriam Levering (University of Tennessee) "Development of Linji Chan from the Tang to the Present" Lecture: "Why Does Avalokitesvara Need A Thousand Arms and Eyes? Making a Place for Guanyin in Chan and Zen Buddhism"
University of Calgary	No program in 2008-09 year (Dr. Leslie Kawamura appointed full time Numata Chair professor in July 2008)

United Kigdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

University	Visiting Professor (University) / Contents
University of Oxford ・Hilary Term	Professor Samten Karmay (University of Paris) "A new discovery of ancient Bon manuscripts from a Buddhist stupa in Southern Tibet"
	Professor Tsuguhito Takeuchi (Kobe University) "Problems and Progress in Old Tibetan Studies" "Post-imperial Old Tibetan Texts in the 10th century and Thereafter"
	Professor Leonard van der Kuijp (Harvard University) "Historical Notes on the Jnana Tradition of the Secret Union Tantra: Buddhajnana and Sman zhabs"
	Professor Matthew Kapstein (University of Chicago) "On the 'logic According to the Genuine Disciurses' attributed to the Tibetan monarch Khri Srong-lde-btsan"
	Professor Henk Blezer (Leiden University) "Narrating the Center of Bon: Narrating Bon out of the Center"
University of Oxford ・Trinity Term	Professor Harunaga Isaacson (University of Hamburg) "Words of the Yoginis: Reflections on the textual History of the Buddhist Yoginitantras"
	Professor Deborah Klimburg-Salter (Vienna University) "Imaging the world of Yeshes'od: Buddhist art of the 10th century"
	Professor Jonathan Silk (Leiden University) "What Can Students of Indian Buddhist Literature learn from Biblical text Critism?"
	Professor Peter Verhagen (Leiden University) "Some Observation on the Early History of Translating in Tibet"
	Professor Christopher Beckwith (Indiana University) "The Central Eurasian Culture Complex and the Tibetan Empire" "The Introduction of Sarvastivadin Buddhist Scholasticism into Tibet"
University of London	Professor Johannes Bronkhorst (Lausanne University) "Buddhism in Its Indian Context"

Europe

University	Visiting Professor (University) / Contents
Leiden University	Professor Andrew Glass (University of Washington) Lecture: "The Buddhism of Gandhara and the Northwest of India" Seminar: "The Recently discovered documents and inscriptions of Gandhara and the Northwest of India" Public Lecture: "Early adopters: Buddhist Attitudes to Technology"
Unversity of Hamburg	Professor Jacob Dalton (Yele University) Lecture: "Developments in Early Tantric Ritual" Seminar: "Tibetan Sadhanas from Dunhuang"
	Professor Helwing Schmidt-Glintzer (The director of the Herzog August Bibliothek) Reading: "Texts on Chinese Buddhism"
	Professor Louis Gabaude (Ecole Francaise d'Extreme Orient in Chiang Mai) Lecture: "Evolution of Contemporary Buddhist Imagery in Thailand" Seminar: "Contemporary Thai Buddhist texts on Buddhism and Modernity"
Vienna University	Professor Vincent Eltschinger (Austrian Academy of Sciences) Lecture: "Religionsphilosophische Themen bei den buddhistischen Erkenntnistheoretikenm" Reading: "Sansknit Texts accompanying the lecture" Reading: "Ausgewatte Abschnitte aus dem Mahakarmavibhanga"

Numata Program in Buddhist Studies 2007

United States of America

University	Visiting Professor (University) / Contents
University of California, Berkeley	Professor Rupert Gethin (University of Bristol) “The Word of the Buddha or Disputations of his Disciples?”
University of Chicago	Professor Matthew Kapstein (University of Chicago & Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris, France) The 2007-08 year course will be taught from April-June 2008 and will be reported next year.
Smith College	Professor Jamie Hubbard (Smith College) Japanese Buddhism: Pre－modern through 19th Century Politics of Enlightenment?
Institute of Buddhist Studies	Professor Will Tuladhar－Douglas (University of Aberdeen, Scotland) “Avalokitesvara Is Everybody. Disguise As Skillful Means in Sanskrit Mahayana”
	Professor Charles D. Otzech (University of North Carolina, Greensboro) “Esoteric Buddhism during the Song Dynasty (960-1279)”
	Professor Leslie Kawamura (University of Calgary) “The Importance of Self in Buddhism”
	Professor David Gardiner (Colorado College) “Transcendence of the Body in Kukai’s Shingon Buddhism”
	Professor Taigen Dan Leighton (Graduate Theological Union) “Dogen & the Lotus Sutra: the Mahayana Worldview of Zen”
	Professor Takanori Sugioka (Ryukoku University) “Metaphors in Shinran”
	Professor David Gray (Santa Clara University) “Sex and the Construction of Social Identity in Tantric Buddhist Ritual”
	Professor Hideki Matsuoka (Shukutoku University) “A Japanese Religion in Brazilian Religious Milieu: How Brazilians Have Accepted the Church of World Messianity”
	Professor Caroline Hirasawa (University of British Columbia) “Forbidden Landscapes: Negotiating Sacred Space at Tateyama”
	Professor Carl Bielefeldt (Stanford University) “The Mountains & Water Sutra”
	Professor Jason Carbine (Whittiet College) “The Shwegyin Religious World: Continuity, Rupture and Political Change in Myanmar”
	Professor Rupert Gethin (University of Bristol) “The word of the Buddha or the Disputations of his Disciples? The Buddhist Path as Presented in the Pali Nikayas”

Canada

University	Visiting Professor (University) / Contents
University of Toronto	Professor Jose Cabezon (University of California, Santa Barbara) “The Transformation of Buddhist Studies: Consequences for Graduate Education” “Whither Buddhist Studies? A Workshop on Buddhist Studies Doctoral Education in North America”
	Professor Max Deeg (Cardiff University) “The Places Where Siddhartha Trod: Lumbini & Kapilavastu” “The Buddha and the Nagas”
	Professor Kurtis Schaeffer (University of Virginia) “The Biographer's Art in Tibet” “Mapping the Life of the Fifth Dalai Lama”
	Professor Juliane Schober (Arizona State University) “Myanmar Today: Understanding Contemporary Burumese Buddhism & Politics”
	Professor Jerg Schendel (University of Heidelberg) “Sluggish Motion, Erratic Surges: The Actors and Forces Behind Burma's Political Process”
	Professor David Drewes (University of Manitoba) “Preaching in Early Indian Mahayana Buddhism”
	Professor Vesna Wallace (University of California, Santa Barbara) “Why is the Absolute Gnostic Body still Called the Body?” “Text as Deities: Mongols' Rituals of Worshipping Sutras and Rituals of Accomplishing various Goals by Means of Sutras”
	Professor Andy Quintman (Princeton University) “Toward a Biographical Culture in Tibet”
	Professor Richard Salomon (University of Washington) “An Unwieldy Canon: Observations on Some Distinctive Features of Canon Formation in Buddhism” “Gandharan Buddhist Manuscripts and the Dead Sea Scrolls”
McGill University	Professor Joel Tatelman (Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada) “Theravada Buddhist Literature”

United Kigdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

University	Visiting Professor (University) / Contents
University of Oxford	Prof. Ulrike Roesler (University of Oxford) Lecture: “Introduction to Buddhism Ⅰ and Ⅱ” Conference: “Biographies in the Buddhist traditions” and “Lives Lived-Lives Imagined. Biography in the Buddhist Traditions.” Reading: “Buddhist literlature in the original language”
University of London	Prof. Nobumi Iyanaga Under the Shadow of the Great Shiva: Tantric Buddhism and its Influence on Japanese Medieval Culture

Europe

University	Visiting Professor (University) / Contents
Unversity of Hamburg	Professor Francesco Sferra (Univerity of Naples) Lecture: “Buddhist Theories on Language and Verbal Knowledge: Examine the Study of the Doctrine of 'exclusion'” Seminar: “The First Bhavanakrama by Kamalasila: Critical reading of the original Sanskrit of the First Bhavanakrama by Kamalasila and establishing a new edition of the text”
	Professor Helwig Schmidt-Glintzer (The director of the Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel) Reading: “Texts on Chinese Buddhism: Interpretation and Translation of 'Linji lu'”
Vienna University	Professor Ngawang Jorden (Chicago University) Lecture: “Tibetan Buddhism Monasticism: A survey of monastic tradtions in Tibets, their organazations and educatinal stuctures and Functions” Seminar: “Elucidation of the Sage's Intention: Hermeneutical tradtion Tibetan interpretations of the Indian Buddhist heritage” Reading: “Eloquently Explained Tenets of Schools”