College of Humanities Launches

Center for Buddhist Studies

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2017
The University of Arizona's new Center for Buddhist Studies will create a
research hub to explore the religious, intellectual, social, cultural and textual
traditions of the world’s fourth-largest faith.

With Buddhist traditions becoming more familiar and practitioners growing

more common in the U.S., the UA will draw on existing faculty expertise in
East Asian studies and religious studies to promote academic research on the
Buddhist tradition.

Residing in the College of Humanities, the Center for Buddhist Studies will be
a home for faculty research, sponsor a lecture series, support student
scholarships, host academic conferences and visiting scholars, and continue to
preserve Buddhist heritage in its textual and artistic forms. The center
formalizes the curriculum, research and outreach activities already underway at
the UA, while recognizing opportunities created by the rise of global Asian
cultures and markets as well as the rise of Buddhism-inspired social
movements in the West, said director Jiang Wu.

"All this put together, inside the University, outside the University, globally,
Buddhism is on the rise. It's a living tradition in Asia and also in the United
States," said Wu, a professor of East Asian studies who came to the UA in 2002
after earning his doctorate from Harvard. "We've been doing these wonderful
things, but we need to raise the flag."

Wu, who teaches Chinese thought, religion and classical Chinese, is an expert
on Chinese Zen Buddhism of the 17thcentury and the Chinese Buddhist
canon. Albert Welter, the East Asian studies department head who arrived at
the UA in 2013, is an expert in Chinese Zen Buddhism as well, although his
research focuses on earlier traditions, from the ninth to 13 th centuries.
"With two specialists in this field, we are very, very strong," Wu said. "In
North America, there is nowhere else with two specialists in Chinese Zen
Buddhism."

Also at the UA are professors studying religious traditions in Japan, India and
Tibet, as well as experts in mindfulness and contemplative studies. Their
research excels in areas such as archaeology of Indian Buddhism, South Asian
religions, Chan/Zen Buddhism in East Asia, early modern and modern East
Asian religions, Buddhist canon studies, Buddhist cultural and sacred
geography, Tibetan Buddhism, medical humanities and contemplative
pedagogy. In addition to the existing B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. programs in East
Asian studies, the UA began offering a minor in Buddhist studies in 2015 and
has two summer study-abroad programs with a focus on Buddhism, in Kyoto
and Bhutan.

Opportunities for Students

"Regionally, we cover almost all of the Buddhist world," Wu said. "I see the
undergraduate curriculum and graduate curriculum as our greatest asset. On top
of that, we have a very robust research plan and we can create more
opportunities for involving undergraduate and graduate students into our
research."  

Buddhist studies as an academic discipline derives from almost 200 years ago
in Europe, where Christian missionaries and scholars studied the Asian texts to
learn about those parts of the world. Buddhist studies has retained its
predominantly textual approach, becoming very centered on traditional
expressions of Buddhism.

Wu's goal for the UA center is a more expansive approach, calling on advanced
digital tools to explore not only the sacred texts but also the geographic spread
of Buddhism and its sacred sites.

"The kind of Center for Buddhist Studies we want to create is to make our
voice heard in the field, to transform the field with a multidisciplinary
approach, a more open-ended and open-minded approach," Wu said. "The kind
of Buddhist studies we envision will be an interdisciplinary bridge with all the
different programs and experiments."

In order to create a new model of humanities studies, the center also will
promote the ideal of service learning to encourage students to enrich their
experience through community service and social engagement. The center also
will expand student opportunities to gain experience in field research.

The Hangzhou Project, initiated by Welter, represents the initial stage of a

long-term program to collaborate with students to research East Asian
Buddhism and develop a multimedia "Virtual Hangzhou."

"This is an opportune time for such a center, as China and Asia rediscover the
value of past traditions," Welter said. "While the Himalayan and Southeast
Asian regions continue to have vibrant Buddhist traditions, and Japan and
Korea continue to preserve significant Buddhist heritages, China is poised to
become the most significant Buddhist country in the world, a prospect
unimaginable until recently."

The launch of the Center for Buddhist Studies occurs in tandem with the launch
of the UA's Center for Digital Humanities and Department of Public and
Applied Humanities. Wu already has plans for collaborative, cross-disciplinary
research that will make the most of both areas.

One research project calls for the digital mapping of Buddhist sites, including
monasteries, across the world, showing not only the spread of Buddhism but
the development of distinct regional traditions and variations tied to geography
and existing traditions. Another project will develop software and algorithms
with the artificial intelligence and deep learning utilities to study digitized
Buddhist texts. Rare texts that Wu has collected over the years will be
cataloged, digitized and publicized in a specialized archive.

National Leader in the Making?

With its expansive and multidisciplinary research in the humanities — as well

as the landscape of Tucson and the Sonoran Desert — the UA College of
Humanities has the potential to become a national leader in Buddhist studies,
Wu said. 

"Why here? Regionally speaking, there is no center for Buddhist studies in the
Southwest," Wu said. "Tucson is a very special place for religions. We have
this vast landscape and the immediate feel here is very relaxed. I see here as a
very promising place. It's very wise for our leadership to approve this center
because it's a future-looking approach."

Retreat and meditation centers are common in the desert, and the rich Native
traditions of the region have interesting connections and similarities with
Buddhism that Wu is interested in exploring further.

The Tucson Buddhist community supports the founding of the center. The idea
of establishing the center was conceived during the meetings of the
Contemplative Traditions Working Group organized by the UA Confluencenter
for Creative Inquiry. For now, the Center for Buddhist Studies will focus on
planning to host a two-day international conference on Chan/Zen Buddhism in
East Asia in late March of 2018, revealing its activities and ambition to other
prominent scholars in the field.

"Participants will be invited on a global scale," Wu said. "We want to use the
conference as our inaugural event, to announce ourselves."