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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

2/25/2019
4-5:30pm

Vegetarianism and Animal Ethics in Tibetan Buddhism

Tibetan Studies Lecture by Geoffrey Barstow, Oregon State University

2/27/2019
4-5:30pm

Atheism in Buddhism and Nietzsche as Challenges to the Philosophy of Religion

This lecture seeks to clarify the status of Buddhism as a non-atheistic religion, that is, a set of religious concerns that aren't supported by the various structures of theism: the creator God, divine beings, and corresponding practices such as worship, obedience, and supplication. Comparing Buddhist non-theism to atheism in the West we summarize Friedrich Nietzsche's “death of God” proclamation, his critique of both Christianity and Buddhism, and the patterns of cultural nihilism associated with them. These reflections are directed toward a challenge to the contemporary philosophy of religion in its incapacity to understand religion on broader, more historical grounds than theism can provide.

4/26/2019
3:30-5pm

Special Talk by Prof. Robert Thurman (Columbia University)

Title TBA

Recent Events

5/11/2017 - 5/12/2017
10am-5pm

2017 Graduate Conference on Religion

Panels: Physical Artifacts of Religious Performance Crossroads of Ancient and Modern--Adaptation and Subversion Body and Speech in Ritual Performance Keynote Lecture: "Paradisiacal Realms in Ancient Egypt and Early China" by Anthony Barbieri-Low, Professor of Chinese History at UC Santa Barbara

4/29/2017
10am-5pm

The Indian Roots of Global Buddhism

A one-day conference on the Indian origins of Buddhism.

News

Robert Buswell elected to U.S. Academy of Arts & Sciences

The distinguished professor of Buddhist Studies is the founding director of the Center for Korean Studies and the Center for Buddhist Studies (which he currently directs).
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Medical tradition in Tibet not necessarily Buddhist

Tibetan Buddhist scholar Janet Gyatso argued that the 79-panel illustration of the Tibetan medical classic, The Four Treatises, provides ample evidence that an important sphere of Tibetan life was not primarily Buddhist.
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