EVENTS

Abstract

Tibetan Buddhism is one of the fastest growing religions among Chinese in the twenty-first century. The transnational teaching activities of numerous Tibetan lamas attest to this religious trend in the popular realm of contemporary China. Unlike on their native soil, Tibetan lamas immersed in urban China encounter converts whose acceptance of Buddhism often rests upon a “scientific” assessment of Buddhism. Thus, Buddhism-science dialogue stands out as a central theme in contemporary Sino-Tibetan Buddhist encounter. This presentation wishes to illustrate that science signifies not merely the conventionally accepted system of knowledge based on the modern, empirically driven search for the understanding of the material world. Instead, it connotes a web of inter-connected social meanings pertaining to Buddhist understanding, critique, and appropriation of it. In this regard, the authors argue that science is simultaneously utilized as a Tibetan Buddhist teachers’ soft power to critique/criticize the iconoclastic secularism in modern China; science is utilized as an instrument of Buddhist conversion; and science is reconceived as a neutral, open social space for knowledge making, in which an increasing number of Buddhist teachers is persistently claiming Buddhism as a science of its own.

About the Speaker

Dan Smyer Yu is Distinguished Professor and Founding Director of Center for Trans-Himalayan Studies at Yunnan Minzu University. Prior to this appointment he was a core member of the Transregional Research Network (CETREN) at University of Göttingen, and a Research Group Leader at Max Planck Institute for Religious and Ethnic Diversity. He received his doctoral degree in anthropology from the University of California at Davis in 2006, specializing in trans-regional studies of ethnic relations, religious revitalizations, Sino-Tibetan Buddhist interactions, and globalization. He is a prolific scholar. His recent publications include The Spread of Tibetan Buddhism in China: Charisma, Money, Enlightenment (monograph, Routledge 2011) and Mindscaping the Landscape of Tibet: Place, Memorability, Eco-aesthetics (monograph, De Gruyter 2015). His current research directions are transboundary governance of natural and human heritages, water and religious diversity, religion and peacebuilding, comparative studies of secularisms in the greater Himalayan region. He is also a documentary filmmaker. His widely screened films include Embrace (50 min. Tibetan mountain culture and ecology 2011) and Rainbow Rider (55 min. Tibetan Buddhism in China 2013).