Speaker

Prof Chris Jones, University of Vienna

 

Bio: Christopher Jones is Assistant Professor in Buddhist Studies at the University of Vienna. He trained in Sanskrit and other Asian languages at the University of Oxford, and has previously taught for faculties of Religious Studies and of Oriental Studies there and at the University of Cambridge. His work focuses on especially Mahāyāna Buddhist literature of the early Common Era, as well as the interactions between Buddhism and other religious traditions of that time. He is author of the Buddhist Self: On Tathāgatagarbha and Ātman (2021, University of Hawai‘i Press), editor of Buddhism and its Religious Others: Historical Encounters and Representations (2021, OUP), and assistant editor of the journal Buddhist Studies Review.

Abstract: Buddhism emerged in India during the middle of the first millennium BCE, into a diverse and competitive religio-philosophical environment. Over the next two millennia, Buddhism in India developed in tension with and opposition to rival religious institutions and ideas: the ritualism of Brahmanical tradition, the cults of various deities, and competing systems of renunciation that were alternatives to the Buddhist monastic order. This paper will follow some trends in how Buddhist literature represented and confronted the existence and status of rival religious traditions in its Indian homeland, which also provided inspiration and templates for how Buddhists of other cultures – of East and Central Asia, and today in the West – could respond to different challengers in new religious climates. Our primary focus will be literature from the first thousand years of Buddhist history in India, and the means by which Buddhist authors confronted what may be called their ‘proximate other’: rival traditions of renunciation, concerned with how to find liberation from the painful cycle of transmigration, and in the meantime vying for protection, patronage and new initiates from the same potential supporters.

The talk will be followed by a Q&A and a small reception of drinks and nibbles. 

All are welcome!