 Welcome everyone, welcome to Virtual Soez. My name is Lucia Dolce, I'm a reader in Japanese Buddhism here at Soez and I'm speaking to you today as the convener of the MA program in Buddhist Studies. So what I would like to do today is to, to speak, well, to do a bit of what you have told that will happen here, a very short mini lecture on one theme that pertains to Buddhist Studies that you see the title of just on the screen. We're talking a bit about Buddhist bodies and then I'd like to take questions but also make a bit of space to speak about the program in Buddhist Studies. I still may have more questions about that and I'll be helped here by my colleague Stefania Taranino. The two of us will be responding to your questions hopefully. So without further ado, I'll start speaking and I would like to start my topic with a premise on what is Buddhist Studies and how we look at Buddhist Studies as a field of inquiry. I'd like to make just some general points about methods and content. First of all, I think we should look at this field in a disciplinary way as it is an area of inquiry that can be approached from a philosophical, historical, textual, ritual or material cultural perspective. And each of these perspectives would be bringing a specific methodological tool, specific methodological tools with it. But what joins all of them is a critical approach that means also attention to the development of scholarship, both in the west where we are located and in the east. And I think here at SOAS especially we are very keen in highlighting the importance of the input of Asian scholarship in shaping the field. This is very important really for Buddhist Studies. So within this general approach, general perspective, what I think is important to remember about how we deal with Buddhism at SOAS is a contextual approach that is a non-confessional approach, but appreciates Buddhism as a leading religion. And the contextual approach is favored, facilitated by the fact that we teach based on our own research, both research on primary sources and firsthand knowledge of the field. So what does this mean in terms of what actually happens when we study Buddhism? This means, among many things, attention to the diversity of Buddhism in its historical and geographical developments. And I think it's important to take into account both local expressions of Buddhism and what we can call the transnational dimension of it. If you were already coming in when I was talking with Stefania, we're talking about different classes we were teaching that seem to resonate in the topics that we were dealing with. To pay attention to the diversity and to both transnational and local aspects means also to deal with apparent ambiguities and contradictions in speaking about Buddhism. We speak about Buddhism very often in the singular but is there a single Buddhist or are there many Buddhists? This is a point that we will find we have to face whatever topic we deal with. And I hope to show one example in a minute. What also this means is to pay attention to not only the philosophical dimension of Buddhism that is often understood to be the core of this tradition but also to all sorts of other issues that we may generally call political issues. So to speak about the theories of liberation within Buddhist scriptural and physical expressions of Buddhism, but also the extent to which Buddhism in different ways engaged and engages with the political world, the construction of gender, the understanding of environment. So this is my premise and having placed the topic I want to speak about within this field of inquiry, I would like you to consider the problem of Buddhist bodies and to see the body in Buddhism as an object of practice and of inquiry that is synonym with both transience and liberation to terms that we can perhaps think are the opposite of the spectrum of experiences. I think the body in Buddhism occupies a very ambiguous position at the crossroads of apparently contrasting conceptual stances. But this thing that we call the body cannot be considered outside of what I think is a fundamental goal of Buddhism that is transformation, spiritual practical improvement that we call transformation. So I think we find to these two, this ambiguity that I'm speaking about is played between two different interpretations of the body that we may want to associate to two different areas of Buddhism. I don't know, Asian Indian Buddhism, manifestation Buddhism or early Buddhism and development of Buddhist, but that maybe we can find, we can think of more as positions about the body. On the one hand, we have a rejection of the body. The body as much as it is born, it's a symbol of suffering, a suffering that encounters different types of pains that are described in early texts. The physical constituents of the body seem to indicate its finitude and its limitations. In the same way, because the body is born, because the body is the vehicle of someone who is born in this world, is born and is conditioned by what we call karmic causes. This means that the body is limited in its actions and it is subjected to the chain of life and death. This chain of life and death that continues being born and dying and being reborn is what makes the body suffering. We have extraordinary expressions in some Buddhist texts and some Buddhist scriptures that speak of the moment of birth as a terrible moment, but also that speak of the embryo, the fetus growing in the womb as something that is subjected to physical violence, to a place that is dirty, that is considered to be a symbol of suffering, of delusion. In all this, what comes up more explicitly is the duality to which the body is subjected, the duality between being and dying, the duality between the subject and what we can call an object, the naming of a body and so on. Having said that, we also find, perhaps in other traditions of Buddhist, an almost completely opposite understanding of the body. The body is a site of salvation. In these traditions, we would find this thing that we call the body represented as the preeminent vehicle for overcoming finitude and the expression itself of Buddhist attainment. When I speak about Buddhist attainment, I speak about this big word that we often find indicated as enlightenment or we can say more broadly liberation. In other words, it is through the body that the same chain of multiple reverts I was talking about that causes suffering is through the body that this chain can be eliminated. We get to the extreme opposite in some Buddhist traditions, for instance in tantric Buddhism, but also in many East Asian traditions where the body becomes the physical body, not an ideal body, not a transformed body, but the physical body, the body that our scriptures say, the body that one receives from mother and father becomes the vehicle for the attainment of Buddhahood, which is the ideal status of Buddha. What can we say? How can we subsume these two different opinions about the body? We can perhaps oppose it to the body as a liminal space. I would say that the body is a liminal space that exists between time and eternity, and I think that the very liminality of the body establishes it as a site of transformation. Let's look a bit at how this transformation takes place. I think we need to take into account that besides the general ideas that I've given you, there are a number of factors that become much more, let's say, technical to understand what's the positioning of the body. First of all, what is in general the conception of reality in each of the traditions of the lineage forms of Buddhism that we are talking about. Second, the understanding of the Buddha's bodies, which are always seen in interaction with the body of the practitioners of Buddhist, and this leads also to a number of formulations that see sentient and non-sentient beings in some cultures as the Buddhas. It's a complex of factors that allow us to say, to think of the body in these terms. What is interesting and important to highlight is that duality that I was talking about is very often resolved ritually. It is through ritual that it is possible to transform the ordinary being into the Buddha, into the Tathagata. In order to do this kind of ritual transformation, what is needed is the body. So what kind of examples can we give of this transformation? I thought I would take two examples, actually, from research that I've done recently on manuscripts, on 13th century manuscripts that have been unveiled from Buddhist temples. And one example consists in practices of visualization. We speak often of meditation in Buddhism, but another term that indicates a slightly different dynamic is that of visualization. So these practices of imagining, of recollecting, imagining something. And what we see here in this little strange image that I've put on the screen, this little human figure, a saturated human figure, is a kind of diagram that indicates to the practitioner what to visualize. And instead of visualizing these, these are deities, these are all deities from the Pampi, if I can call that, the Pampi of Tantric Buddhists, there are 15 of them. And they are visualized at different, all different parts of the practitioner's body. And so that is, again, the diagram you could say is the diagram of the practitioner who had to learn how, what to visualize them. And through this visualization, through different steps of this, this practice of visualization, what happens is that the the practitioner reproduces the Buddha body. And this is what the scriptures tell us that it happens. And there are different, there are different things that happen that are indicated in this little image that is all inscribed with Chinese characters that say, for instance, that the body of the practitioner is divided in three, reflecting the three aspects of the Buddha's bodies that are known in the Mahayana tradition, which is one of the traditions of Buddhists. And it is also this, this meditation, this visualization is also used in a ritual of consecration. So the ritual in which a practitioner is consecrated, is initiated, and consecrated initiation and consecutions are two segments of practice in Buddhism that have in a specific tradition of Buddhism that are very much related. What happens here is that through this ritual intervention, the body is marked and modified by inscribing it with letters that are understood to be the essence of deities and the deities, the many accessories of the deities. And it is in this operation that the body is transformed into a body that is described as being the original body. What does it mean in the original body? It means the body that was before the discriminatory moment of birth. A body that is before that coming into a world that is made of distinctions, that means duality, distinctions are duality, to call someone, that means to place a subject in an object that this is what we understand as a duality. But this body that is recreated of ritual through visualization becomes the body of origins that is the same as the Buddha body. And very much linked to these ideas. I'd like to share with you another little strange diagram that sees this process of embodying Buddha into one's own body as a process of gestation of ascension to be. These little figures that you see there, these five different forms are a sort of summary of different steps of the fetus inside the womb and finally the coming out of a body in this of a body that is that of a Buddha and looks a bit like a Buddha, looks a bit like a statue of a Buddha like this one thing. So what does this tell us is that that move that I described at the beginning of my talk as something dirty, as something that makes the fetus suffer and that and that final moment of birth that is a moment of coming into this world and then sharing the karmic suffering of rebirth becomes in this other tradition a moment of enlightenment, a moment of transformation that produces the perfect body, the Buddha, the body, the Buddha body being a symbol of perfection. Now what is very much interested with these ideas is that in order to develop them our Buddhist, I'd say our Buddhist this again is another something that comes out to from another 13th century set of documents but what what happens there is that they open up their knowledge or that I should say they draw up their knowledge from fields that we are not used to to consider Buddhist in this case medical knowledge. When we read these images we see that a lot of Indian medical knowledge that was transmitted outside of the monastic context is taken on and is used to understand what kind of development can take place within a within the life of a practitioner. So we see in this very very summarized way that there is there are a lot of a lot of types of knowledge that come into being in trying to and trying to understand what a Buddhist texts tell us. There is an intersection of systems of knowledge but there is also an intersection between the doctrinal context and the ritual context as after all knowledge in Buddhism has to be embodied in order to be enacted in order to be fruitful to be efficacious and with this I'd like to conclude my little talk and again apologies if we had this big break. So I'd like to ask now do you have any question about the talk itself and if so please do tell us I don't see any in the Q&A I think you said that they have to go. Yeah so if you can write in the Q&A we have one question that maybe Fahima could speak to and it's on what is student life like in at SOAS? The student life right now is a bit weird because of the pandemic but there's a lot of societies that you can be a part of. I personally am part of the regal society and volunteering with the refugee crisis society and there's a lot of like as Lucia said there's a lot of different people and you meet a lot of different people and there are a lot of new things that's one of my favorite things about SOAS all the people I've met it's really broadened my horizons because there's things that I didn't know and people I didn't think I would be able to meet so that's why I like SOAS. Where SOAS is situated there's a lot of like social spots and you can go out with your friends and stuff like that so that's another good thing about SOAS and if wherever you're passionate about there's always something there for you to be a part of you can make your own society. I've volunteered with the fire brigade and SOAS has been really supportive of that and all the teachers all the lecturers the professors are really understanding you meet people with like-minded views and a lot of opinions and you learn like a lot of new things so that's another great thing about SOAS and if there is anything else but I think I've covered it all. That was great thank you. Any other questions anyone? So the first one that says I was wondering if you could briefly talk about my own background and why I decided to take up with the studies oh that's a that was a long ago so long ago. I was interested in philosophy originally and I grew up in a country where you study philosophy in high school I am originally Italian and I thought I knew everything about western philosophy and I wanted to know how other people think that was my very original moment and I was very fortunate to that I was also interested in languages and I was very fortunate to that I decided to do to study estatian languages Japanese in particular and and within that I majored in Buddhist studies while in basically religions what used to be called something like religions and philosophy of estatia so that was my first impact so my very first interest in buddhism was well as I said I work on Japanese buddhism with a lot of connection well yes a lot of stuff on estatian buddhism on the type of station buddhism so Chinese buddhism basically with a little bit of Korean really a little bit that is of interest to to topics I do and so my first interest there was more more philosophical or the triangle but I moved to pretty quickly in well a related field let's say I'm very much interested in both sort of ritual context of buddhism and the visual dimension of buddhism so I'm bringing both concerns to my study of buddhism thank you I wonder so is there any other question it's not I wonder whether you want to hear a bit more about the program because I had prepared us a bit about that thinking that there would be an interest we don't have to do that but let's see what the audience thinks I mean I would say go for it just because the space that communicates the Q&A so okay I think I'll do that then so the MA buddhist studies at SOAS it's it's the most comprehensive program we have in the UK it is a pretty unique study path because it is both coherent internally coherent but also flexible and it is set in a vibrant research culture I think I was talking about the general culture so what I want to stress here is the provision beyond the curriculum provision that we offer in terms of a seminar workshop international conferences in details the context is the context of the MA is the school of history, religion, and philosophy within which it is post-housed and this means that together with buddhism there is a pretty large range of regional and disparate expertise on religions at the same time the MA is supported by extensive language teaching that includes most of the languages of buddhist both classical languages and some of the spoken languages and it's supported by an active research center that offers many opportunities to engage further with the study of buddhism especially when we are going to be on campus I must say so the core teaching team and with the studies is made by myself and Dr. Travanyana that you see here with us who works on China and Professor Urishpaga at the moment as the head of department who works on India and Tibet but we also have two specialists in buddhism at the Artistry Department one working on Tibetan Himalaya and one working on Southeast Asia and you have the names there the structure of the MA and I'm talking first of all about the MA that you do in one year or which you can do in as a part timer in two or three years you need to take the equivalent of under 20 credits plus at the citation what does this mean you will be choosing one you will have to do a one course that is called the core course and that is a sort of introduction to a concept in buddhist studies it's called critical concept in buddhist studies and it's co-taught by a number of us myself I convene the course with Stefania we'll be also teaching in it and also Dr. Lucentes who is the art historian working on Himalaya and then the rest of the courses are chosen from a list of 15 and 30 credit courses now what you have at the moment if you have already looked at the website the website has not been updated unfortunately so I would invite everyone interested here to look at it in a couple of weeks time apparently that's what I hear from the offices when it will be updated but what we have what I have here are the courses that we will look for certain teaching so I said already the critical concept in buddhist studies such as the core course and then you have a range of modules on buddhist that reflect a regional varieties let's say but also are different in terms of the approach we have with the buddhist meditation in india and Tibet a station buddhist thought Chinese buddhism and religious practice in japan so these are the modules that are specifically on buddhists then there are a number of modules on related traditions or competitive perspectives and we will I put here because they are the most commonly used or interest of used to students the great tradition of Taoist religions of ancient india and the origins of yoga there are modules in art history for the coming years there will be a module on the maritime silk route interpretations of mandalas and Saudi station are history that are relevant to buddhist so and and the languages I mentioned earlier on we offer languages at different levels basic intermediate advanced depending on your abilities and depending on the language as well the languages are not taught within hrp within within our department but today are in the language there are two languages departments that saw us I think I think I have them all there we will have for next year Sanskrit Chinese Japanese Korean Burmese Vietnamese and Thai I also have to say that from next year maybe from from now but again the web page has not been updated we have a an option a two-year MA buddhist studies and intensive language where there would be a much more intensive exposure to language including a summer school in the country where you learn the language the language you currently offered for this program are only Japanese Korean in Saudi station languages but hopefully in the future there will be others this the the structure of the MA is more or less the same except that since there are more language courses a ledger language credits included the the learning is spaced over two years in which the first year you would learn a an equal number of credit bearing courses in the language and the discipline then you have the summer in which you add language instructions and then the second year less language and more credits in the discipline plus the dissertation so how do you how do you build let's say a an individual curriculum and I wanted to give you an example and I took the example of buddhism in Japan because it's my my field and it's not easier for me to do that so you would take on top of the core course that is the course that everyone has to take you will take a main unit that in this case is religious practice in Japan that is a an overview course that brings together both historical and contemporary analysis then you do a kind of monographic course that there's East Asian buddhism that are both very much related to Japan then you can choose from a pool of optional courses either in buddhism or on Japanese culture so for instance you can take up specific religious themes such as the visual expression of mandalas or specific religious traditions that are connected in Chinese buddhism or Taoist the primary languages of Japanese buddhism in this case classical Chinese classical Japanese or modern Japanese at all levels or any course that is related to history anthropology or arts of Japan so you see what I mean here when I said that you have at the same time some coherence but also a lot of flexibility to what to provide for the very diverse cohort of students that we have we will have students who are very that already know very well parts of buddhism and others who are who have been much less exposed to the tradition some that have an interest in the regional expression of buddhism and some that want to do a much more broad overview of the entirety of buddhism um I uh Fahima was mentioning the resources around us I think that it would be really important to make the most of us we have one of the most incredible libraries for the study of buddhism well for the study of Asia Africa and Middle East the the source website would say but especially for buddhism and we also have great resources in the Bloomsbury area that's the area where SOS is located in terms of library both libraries and museums both the British library and the British Museum have extensive collections of buddhism and we very often organize things together and then last but not least all the extracurricular events that we organized that I was mentioning earlier on and I want to flag out at least the two activities we have a very active center of buddhism studies that I'm also directing for all my sins and within this center we have a range of activities two lecture series that I say in a minute or maybe I didn't put yes open public events that are not meant for academics only but also for the for the wider public a yearly postgraduate workshop to which MA students are organized and in fact just for MA students we also have a prize for outstanding MA dissertations a small prize that you may certainly be interested in and the two lecture series just to give you an example are of two types one is called the buddhist forum which is one of the most the oldest series of lectures on buddhism in the UK and it's normally what happens is that we will have a venue for international scholars you know all those authors that you will be reading in your in your courses and or but also a lot more local academics to present their latest research and the second series is specific to Chinese buddhism it's called the robber hoe family foundation lecture series in Chinese buddhism that has three events a per year and consists of a public lecture plus a training workshop a kind of seminar for postgraduate students and researchers and in fact the next one is this weekend so if you are interested you can zoom in the notice will be on the website of the center it will be on a contemporary Chinese practice a lay practice it will be a lecture on Friday at 5 30 or something like that or six o'clock and the seminar in the on Saturday midday is a lunchtime seminar so this will give you a bit of an idea you can also check the center's website for videos and other information on what has been happening so far there are other relevant centers so as there's a center for the study of Japanese religion there's a very important Saudi station institute and the center for yoga studies so these are all connected somehow with buddhism I think I'll stop here and see if there are other questions I see that there is something on the q&a so this will just to warn you earlier we need to kind of wrap up in the next two three minutes but this will have to be the final question okay and it says I'm interested in religious studies as well as gender studies particularly in the Indian religious and religious texts and finding it hard to choose an MA course can you offer any advice is there any flexibility in terms of choosing modules from different departments yes there is just as I was explaining there is pretty much flexibility so yes if you would do the MA with the studies you would be looking at choosing the courses on India there is a religion of India of ancient India course and yeah you can do buddhist meditation in India and you can build that the course and if you are interested in the language there's plenty of learning Sanskrit or yeah again it depends on what specifically you want to do what kind of abilities you have what is your background so you can certainly build up what I call your portfolio your your course of study amazing we're going to have to wrap it up there guys just because we've kind of come to the end of our lots of time in the zoom call I'd like to say thank you very much to all the panelists for speaking contributors again today and to the attendees for attending it's been really insightful to learn this this evening so thank you very much everyone if you do have any further questions please do go to the website please do kind of seek us out you can find all our contact details for the academics and ourselves if you'd like to raise any further questions like I said our recording will be made available hopefully towards the end of this week if not the beginning of next week but we will make the recordings available to yourselves as well so you'll be able to make your informed decisions thank you very much and have a lovely evening everyone thank you very much thank you for coming and thank you Hamish and Pahima for being so helpful