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December 18, 2019

Engaging Education in Buddhist Studies

In the initiative “Engaging Education in Buddhist Studies” (EEBS), established in 2019 with support from Khyentse Foundation and the Ho Centre, our instructors are creating modules for Buddhist studies courses that combine creative and/or contemplative practices that are grounded in research on the benefits of experiential education, including increased engagement, self-confidence, and compassion among student-participants. The goals of this initiative are to make student participation in classroom work more accessible, to amplify diverse voices in the classroom, and to support overall wellness and mental health among students. This project is part of our growing priority on programming that supports experiential learning, equity, and student well-being, following principles of place-responsive and trauma-informed pedagogy.

This initiative aims to bring the teaching of Buddhist Studies into the company of newly developing, dynamic educational movements that are student-centered, place-responsive, contemplative, trauma-informed, and attentive to student well-being. Well-tested approaches to embodied or engaged pedagogy emphasize the value of engaging students’ senses and their bodies in the process of studying religion, and much of our work is inspired by these approaches. This project also strives to help students feel connected to the lives of real Buddhists, historically or today, by interacting with stories, religious and aesthetic objects, movement, food, and ritual, and by taking interest in the concerns of householder Buddhists as well as monastics.

In 2019-20, EEBS work was incorporated into five U of T courses:

RLG370 Interdependence
RLG 201 Introduction to Religion in the Visual, Literary and Performing Arts
RLG 373 Buddhist Institutions and Practices: Visuality and Materiality in Buddhism
FAH 394 Sand, Stone, Gold and Crystal: Materials and Materiality in Asian Art
RLG 370 Topics in Buddhism: Meditation and Mindfulness: From Buddhist Traditions to the Global Present

Experiential modules developed for those courses included activities where:

Students maintained regular contemplative and wellness practices in class and at home, and class time was devoted to learning movement and breathing practices with local meditation practitioners.
Students worked with traditional metal funnel tools (chakpur) to create sand mandalas in class and discussed how mandalas make meaning (impermanence and purposeful transience, difficulty of process and production).
Students worked with a local Tibetan artist to sculpt torma (offering cakes) out of clay and coloured clay. They learned about the form, why they are made, and how they create substitutes for other kinds of imagined offerings
Students worked with a local Tibetan artist to learn how to paint the Buddha’s head, studying the iconometric method used to measure a traditional Buddha head with its correct relative proportions according to the Tibetan art tradition

December 21, 2018

Welcoming New Tibetan Books from Kathog Trungpa Rinpoche

On Tuesday, December 18, 2018, a reception to celebrate the new donation of rare and previously unpublished Tibetan books by Kathog Trungpa Rinpoche was held at the Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation Centre for Buddhist Studies.

Our centre director (on leave 2018-19) Frances Garrett, Kathog Trungpa Rinpoche, and our interim centre director Sarah Richardson hold the newly donated books, surrounded by some of our Ho Centre community members.

Kathog Trungpa Rinpoche visited the University on a book donation trip from Nepal and India to grant Toronto a generous donation of newly published books. Kathog Trungpa Rinpoche, a high emanated reincarnate lama (or tulku) from the Tibetan Buddhist Kathog lineage has been working tirelessly for the past two decades to collect and publish rare and old texts from the Kathog lineage.

Kathog Trungpa Rinpoche hands newly published books to our centre director, Sarah Richardson. — Kathog Trungpa Rinpoche hands newly published books to the Ho Centre interim director, Sarah Richardson.

This difficult work began with travel to temple collections across the Tibetan cultural world, where he and his team gathered important books, many of which were only previously available in old manuscript or woodblock print format. He has collected these materials and made modern edited and digitally printed versions, and is now providing these books free of charge to Universities in North America where significant Tibetan studies research is taking place. Just the week before the gift was received in Toronto, another set of these books was welcomed to Columbia University in New York City.

The donation of nine multi-volume collections that contain the important texts and biographies of lineage masters of the Kathog tradition.

This generous donation to the University library includes nine multi-volume collections that contain the important texts and biographies of lineage masters of the Kathog tradition, an important Nyingmapa group whose main temple is based in the eastern Tibetan region of Kham. These texts were welcomed at the Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation Centre for Buddhist Studies by University faculty, students and staff, and will eventually be accessioned into the main collections of the University of Toronto’s central (Robarts) library system, where they will be housed in the Tibetan reading room of the East Asian library.

Kathog Trungpa Rinpoche talking with Ho Centre director, Sarah Richardson, and Tibetan teacher and PhD student, Kunga Sherab. — Kathog Trungpa Rinpoche talking with Ho Centre interim director, Sarah Richardson, and Tibetan teacher and PhD student, Kunga Sherab.

The U of T Libraries have the largest Tibetan language collection in Canada. The Library began purchasing subscriptions to the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center’s electronic text collections in 2008. In 2013, a collaboration between the University of Toronto and Columbia University’s research libraries was established to harness expertise in Tibetan collection services at both universities and increase the availability of Tibetan resources to a wider community of scholars in both Canada and the United States. The partnership provides for jointly sponsored acquisitions trips to enhance the Tibetan collections at both universities, and a shared point of service for research consultations. Since this collaboration began, the U of T’s Tibetan Collection has more than doubled in size.

For more on Tibetan Studies at U of T please visit https://buddhiststudies.utoronto.ca/programs/tibetan-studies/

November 30, 2018

Congratulations to our Fellow! Tony Scott awarded Dissertation Fellowship

University of Toronto PhD Candidate Tony Scott has been awarded a 2018-19 Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation Dissertation Fellowship in Buddhist Studies for research supporting his doctoral project.

Tony’s research looks at the Milindapañha-aṭṭhakathā, a modern Pali commentary on the Questions of King Milinda written by a Burmese pioneer of insight (vipassanā) meditation, the Mūla Mingun Jetavan Sayadaw (1868-1954). This commentary, which has a unique and possibly spoken Pali idiom, discusses the higher knowledges (abhiññā) vis-à-vis vipassanā meditation, and was controversial for its promotion of vinaya reforms.

This year Tony is in Myanmar working with scholar monks and searching in archives, and will also visit the University of Tokyo and the University of Hong Kong to work with leading philologists, historians and anthropologists at these institutions.

Tony has noted, “I appreciate the support, and really hope that my colleagues have success with this award as well, it is an exciting time at the U of T for Buddhist Studies!”

November 19, 2018

Remembering Professor Vincent Shen

Professor Vincent Shen, a globally respected philosopher and popular teacher, died peacefully on November 14, 2018, surrounded by his family. In his honour, flags few at half-mast at Simcoe Hall, U of T Mississauga and U of T Scarborough. We remember him for his collaboration with several doctoral students in Religion and was a major authority in Chinese philosophy.

Professor Shen joined the East Asian Studies Department in 2000, as the Lee Chair in Chinese Thought and Culture and served as Department Chair from 2007 to 2010. He held a joint appointment in the Department of Philosophy. A specialist in Chinese philosophy, specifically Daoism and Confucianism, Professor Shen was a prolific and widely admired scholar, the author of 29 books (with another forthcoming) and 150 articles and book chapters. He was greatly respected in his field. Professor Shen was the Executive Director and past president of the Chinese Philosophical Association, the Executive Director of the International Society for Chinese Philosophy and a Vice President of the Council for Research in Values and Philosophy.

The funeral service for Professor Shen was held on Monday, November 19, at 10am at St. Basil’s Church. Further tributes and information on ways to remember Prof. Shen will be posted on an online memorial page for people to share memories. Faculty of Arts & Science In Memoriam: Vincent Shen (1949-2018)

July 18, 2017

Ho Centre Sponsors Leading Buddhist Studies Conference

On August 20-25, 2017, the University of Toronto will host the XVIIIth Congress of the International Association of Buddhist Studies (IABS), the largest and foremost academic gathering of Buddhist Studies scholars in the world, convened by Ho Centre Executive Committee Member Prof. Christoph Emmrich. The Ho Centre for Buddhist Studies, The Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation, and the Fo Guang Shan Temple of Toronto are the leading sponsors of the Toronto IABS Congress.

What makes this year’s Toronto conference extraordinary is that, for the first time in its 30-year history, the IABS Congress is held in Canada, – auspiciously coinciding with the sesquicentennial we have been celebrating in our country. This is an acknowledgment of the excellent international reputation of Canadian Buddhist Studies and of Buddhist Studies at UofT in particular. The Ho Centre will also host its launch event at the conference.

Convening every three years since 1978, either in Asia, Europe or the Americas and celebrating the growth of Buddhist Studies as one of the most vibrant fields of research and teaching in the Humanities and the Social Sciences worldwide, this year the IABS Congress brings together about 500 delegates and roughly 400 papers.

For further information, please visit the conference website at http://www.iabs2017-uoft.ca. Online registration at http://www.iabs2017-uoft.ca/registration/ is open till August 19, on-site registration till August 20.