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April 30, 2020

Connecting in Uncertain Times

John Vervaeke teaches wildly popular courses in Buddhism, Psychology & Mental Health undergraduate program and in the Cognitive Science program. He also teaches courses in the Psychology department on thinking and reasoning, with an emphasis on higher cognitive processes that promote intelligence, rationality, mindfulness, and wisdom. He is also founder of the Consciousness & Wisdom Studies Lab, and he has a popular YouTube channel.

Nowadays, he is also leading a daily meditation session, in an effort to help us all stay connected in these days of distraction. You can join these sessions each morning in his series of videos in response to the pandemic.

Arts & Science spoke to Vervaeke recently about his work on mindfulness and meditation in times of stress and anxiety – read the full article here.

April 8, 2020

The Circled Square podcast

The Circled Square: Buddhist Studies in Higher Education is a new podcast series produced and released from the University of Toronto’s team at the Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation Centre for Buddhist Studies. This academic podcast explores practices of effective teaching and learning about Buddhism.

In this podcast we interview professors from various disciplines creating a platform to discuss the professional work and creativity of teaching. We are interested in cultivating deep conversations about teaching and Buddhist Studies, as well as discussing and learning about how topics related to Buddhism are taught in various fields.

You can listen here now: http://teachingbuddhism.net/circled-square-podcast/. It is also available for free download on Apple podcasts, Google play, Stitcher and Spotify.

This first season has six episodes:

Episode 1: Inhabiting the Stories: Buddhism from the Inside, with Vanessa Sasson
Episode 2: Engaging Students in the Big Picture, with Matt King
Episode 3: Anti-colonial Teaching and Buddhism, with Natalie Avalos
Episode 4: Negotiating the Layers: Material History in our Teaching, with Abhishek Amar
Episode 5: Teaching Buddhist Art Using Museum and Gallery Collections, with Wen-shing Chou
Episode 6: Buddhism and Contemplative Science, with Norman Farb

January 30, 2020

Encyclopedia Donation

We are pleased to announce this important book donation to the University of Toronto Mississauga Libraries. Below, Shelley Hawrychuk, Chief Librarian of UTM Libraries, receives a donation of the Encyclopedia of Buddhist Art, a publication from Buddha’s Light Publications USA, from Venerable Chueh Fan, Abbess of Fo Guang Shan Temple, at the Dharma Day celebrations at Fo Guang Shan temple Mississauga, on December 8th 2019. This illustrated 20 volume set of books was donated by the temple and will now be housed for use by students and researchers at the UTM libraries.

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!”