Date and time：April 11, 2023, 2pm UK (9pm Taiwan)
Organizer：Cambridge University

During the late-imperial period, the beef taboo was widely propagated in China. Many people (especially in South China) refrained from consuming the meat of buffaloes and oxen (both species being referred to by same term: niu). The dietary prohibition was related to the divinity of the animal. Legend had it that that the ox (and/or buffalo) was a Buddhist deity who descended from Heaven for the express purpose of pulling the plow. The animal was a god who sacrificed itself for its owner’s sake. Eating if flesh was not only thankless, it was blasphemous. In this paper, I trace the origins of the late-imperial Chinese beef taboo to ancient India. I argue that Buddhism served as a vehicle introducing the Indian inviolability of the cattle to China. The sanctity of the Chinese ox/buffalo derived from the divinity of the Indian cow.

The paper highlights the role of Buddhism in bringing Indian civilization to bear upon Chinese culture and religion. It also reveals a neglected aspect of Buddhist dietary practice. At least in certain times and places, Buddhist clerics advocated the inviolability of the cattle as distinct from other animal species. They refrained from consuming beef as distinct from other meats.

Date and time：May 9, 2023, 11am Paris (5pm Taiwan)
Organizer： INALCO

The number of mainland Chinese of traditional college age that are studying overseas in undergraduate programs has increased significantly over the last decade. Moreover, in spite of new restrictions from Trump administration policies and the COVID pandemic, the United States remains the favored destination for many of these students. Existing scholarship has explored how American-based Chinese Christian groups often attempt to convert these overseas students. However, my research suggests that they are also recruited by transnational Buddhist groups, mostly coming from Taiwan.

While Buddhists suffer less stigma in China than Christians, Buddhist teachings and practices are still largely invisible to many urban Chinese, who live in a highly secularized environment. As a result, overseas Chinese students may experience Chinese forms of Buddhism for the very first time in the United States. Buddhism becomes attractive to these students by offering culture-specific psychological support, a fellowship of Mandarin-speaking people their own age, and an opportunity to explore aspects of their own culture to which they were ignorant.

This paper explores these phenomena by focusing on three Chinese youth who joined meditation centers in Atlanta and Houston operated by the Taiwanese Buddhist organization Chung Tai Shan during their undergraduate years. It will examine how the organization transformed the students’ lives in the United States and influenced them to spread Chung Tai teachings back to mainland China following their graduation. The paper will conclude by exploring the potential for returning overseas students to diversify the Buddhist landscape in mainland China.

Date and time：April 3, 2023, 7pm EST (2023-04-04 7 am Taiwan)
Organizer：Princeton University

The warfare, disease and disruption to the status quo that came with European colonialism to the countries of Theravada Buddhism seemed to fulfill ancient predictions of the calamities that would attend the decline of the Buddhist religion. In their responses to the practical and conceptual challenges of colonialism, Buddhists took inspiration from the canonical and commentarial texts that contained both such predictions and potential counter measures.

These texts thus inspired both adaptive and conservative responses aimed at preserving the Buddha’s teaching and maintaining the availability of spiritual progress. Despite finding inspiration in the same texts, the resulting forms of Buddhism have often taken markedly opposite directions, ranging from secularised and modernist approaches on the one hand, to the reactionary and fundamentalist approaches on the other. Examples of adaptive responses include modern Mindfulness, the dismissal or reinterpretation of traditional cosmology and rebirth from Theosophy onwards, and ‘common-sense’ interpretations of Buddhist ritual or monastic rules.

In contrast, all of these types of response have been the subject of non-Dharma/non-Vinaya, or ‘heresy and malpractice’, trials in modern Myanmar, with defendants being found guilty for straying from the detailed teachings on these subjects found in the Pali canon, commentaries and Abhidhamma. This talk will illustrate the different directions taken to protect Buddhism from colonialism in different Theravada countries and the ramifications for both Theravada and global Buddhism today.

Date and time：2023-03-23 17:30 EDT / 2023-03-23 21:30 UTC / 2023-03-24 05:30 Taiwan
Organizer：Harvard University

Over the past three decades, since the creation of the Mind and Life Institute in the 80s, a series of conferences have introduced the idea of a convergence between Buddhism and neuroscience. Neuroscientists have been particularly interested in the possible neural correlates of Buddhist meditation, and their experiments have contributed to the current popularity of Mindfulness and derived techniques, such as “Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction.”

Apart from meditation, a number of important issues, such as notions of self and non-self, or Buddhist ethics and neuroethics, have been discussed. Yet, because of the media attention and a desire to reach consensus, problems and disagreements between the two fields have sometimes been ignored or downplayed, and the conversation has been limited to certain forms of Buddhist thought and practice. The time has come to move “beyond the hype” and to engage in a broader and more critical discussion.

Date and time：2023／02／18  14:00 Peking/Taipei (06:00 UTC)
Organizer：Peking University

Although increasing lay involvement is considered a common feature of Buddhist modernism, a revolution was also taking place in twentieth-century Chinese monastic education. Reforms to tradition proposed by the likes of Taixu were touted as being a future standard requirement for Saṅghins. While developments in mainland China were disrupted for a generation, in Taiwan continued uninterrupted growth in fertile soil.

Several educational models were established by monastic orders in the latter half of the twentieth century, both during and after the period of BAROC leadership. These typically operated with two levels, in conformity with modern undergrad and graduate studies, yet remained unaccredited by secular authorities, despite most such institutions being open to both ordained Saṅghins and lay students. In the early twenty-first century, changes to secular tertiary educational law allowed accreditation for tertiary Buddhist studies departments.

Several larger Buddhist organizations seized open this opportunity, but also retained their unaccredited institutions, leading to a duplication of monastic education systems. Throughout all these developments, the far older system of ‘triple platform ordination’ continued, relatively unchanged. While Vinaya reformers refined elements of the ordination system, it still serves as a deeper layer of renunciant monastic education distinct from modern educational institutions and lay participation.

Between the multiple layers of ordination, unaccredited and accredited institutions, Taiwanese monastic traditions formulated multiple responses and continue to negotiate the relationship between traditional and modern educational systems. These negotiations should give pause to our theorizing of Buddhist modernity.