- UCLA Center for Buddhist Studies

Woman praying in front of the Jhokang (Photo: Lyle Vincent, cropped) CC BY-ND 2.0

Welcome

The UCLA Center for Buddhist Studies trains scholars and educates members of the broader community about Buddhist religion and culture in all of their diversity. Among U.S. universities, only UCLA aspires to cover all of the major traditions in this world religion.

Upcoming Events

5/15/2025
9am-4:15pm

Rare Resources: Buddhist Materials at UCLA Library

Los Angeles is home to the most diverse Buddhist communities and traditions in the world, UCLA is home to one of the largest Buddhist studies programs in the country, and UCLA Library is home to the significant collection on Buddhism studies outside of Asia. This symposium seeks to provide a venue for scholars, practitioners, librarians, archivists, students, and community patrons to gather and celebrate the close collaboration between UCLA and the community. We hope to use this event to share research outcomes, information, and resources related to research and teaching on Buddhism across these communities. During the program we will introduce and highlight major archival collections held at UCLA Libraries that have resulted from these successful collaborations. These collections, which have recently been processed and made available for research, document the Buddhist communities in the greater Los Angeles area.

Recent Events

3/6/2025
3-4:30pm

The Space of Religion: Temple, State, and Buddhist Communities in Modern China

Book Talk

11/20/2024
4-5:30pm

How Japanese Buddhists Tried to Make Bad Kids Good

Prof. Jolyon Thomas (University of Pennsylvania) will speak about Japanese anxieties about youths in the 1950s and 1960s and the attempt to use Buddhist teachings in public schools to help develop a morally upright citizenry. These creative Buddhist attempts to make "bad" kids "good" utterly failed, but they spurred some of the most doctrinally innovative Buddhist thinking of the twentieth century.

News

In Memoriam: Diego Loukota, ‘Once-in-a-Generation' Intellect

Diego Loukota, a UCLA specialist in Indian and Central Asian Buddhism and assistant professor of Asian languages and cultures, died on March 17, 2024. He was 38 years old.
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Family love leads donor to create two endowed scholarships at UCLA Center for Buddhist Studies

Kyung Ki (Cindy) Min has created two endowed scholarships at the UCLA Center for Buddhist Studies that provide valuable support to students of Buddhism.
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