Beneath the dominant conversations about funding and institutional strategies there was a largely unacknowledged sub-topic namely, that our professional activities are dependent on political, economic, and environmental issues that some of us might feel moved to try to address in our work.Īfter this promising start, workshop conversations turned to the nitty-gritty of fundraising and establishing institutional support for Buddhist studies.
For me this brief exchange represented a polarity that persisted throughout the conference. The first speaker retorted that, on the contrary, it was hubristic to assume that we could separate ourselves from such issues, that it behooved us to consider who and what funds the universities that pay our salaries. The opening discussion also featured an exchange between a speaker who stressed the importance of awareness and possible engagement in political and social issues, and a speaker who claimed that it was hubristic to think that this was part of our role as scholars. The workshop opened with a rousing presentation by José Cabezón, who celebrated the expansion of the scope of the field from a traditional focus on canonical texts, eminent monks, and elite concerns to include practices, social contexts, women, Buddhism in the contemporary world, and increasingly sophisticated uses of information technology. Entitled ‘ Whither Buddhist Studies,’ the workshop was designed to give representatives from various programs a chance to get together and talk about such perennial concerns as graduate student funding, program planning, and getting the attention of Deans. It seemed somehow appropriate that I had spent the previous day at a workshop at the University of Toronto pondering the future of the field of Buddhist studies. This year Easter fell on the same day as the traditional date for the Buddha’s birthday - the eighth day of the fourth month. We must not forget the primacy of observation itself and from what glass our lens is cut.īy Wendi Adamek (Green Tara reporter-at-large) As he rightly points out, there is no direct transmission of law from data. Looking toward a new paradigm of thought, Wallace proposes that we bend the totem pole in a circle centered around contemplation (14)-reflecting the fact that all knowledge begins with the observer. He reminds us that, in the middle ages, the Western totem pole of disciplines was a reversal of its current configuration theology came first, to which philosophy was subservient, followed by science in turn. Wallace begins his project by attempting to divest the Western reader of biased constructions of knowledge. Alan Wallace gives an incisive portrayal of this merging of minds and argues that these two paths are not just complementary-they are intimately related. In Hidden Dimensions: The Unification of Physics and Consciousness (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. The last century has witnessed Buddhists and quantum physicists quietly moving into perigee, however unwittingly until the last twenty years. Hidden Dimensions: The Unification of Physics and Consciousness
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