Graduate student symposium on mass meditation

From Scott Mitchell:

Friends and colleagues,

I would like to cordially invite you to the following symposium at the Institute of Buddhist Studies, Berkeley, Friday October 6, 1:00-5:00.

Mass Meditation: Practices and Discourses in Contemporary Global Buddhisms

The fourth annual graduate student symposium at the Institute of Buddhists Studies examines the popularity of meditation practices in contemporary global Buddhisms. Papers will present a range of scholarship from historical perspectives on the modern origins of a diversity of mindfulness practices; scientific studies of Buddhist practice and globalized Buddhist feedback loops; and comparative studies across traditions, between the secular and the sectarian, and the modern and the traditional.

Keynote Address:
Dr. Erik Braun, University of Virginia
“The Morals of Mindfulness”

Erik Braun is an Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. He is the author of The Birth of Insight: Meditation, Modern Buddhism, and the Burmese Monk Ledi Sayadaw (University of Chicago Press, 2013), co-winner of the 2014 Toshihide Numata Book Prize in Buddhism. He focuses on Burmese Buddhism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Pāli literature, and globalizing forms of meditative practice that stem from Burma.

Graduate Speakers:
David Pating, Institute of Buddhist Studies
Beyond Mindfulness: Other Neurosciences and Other Buddhisms

Sung Ha Yun, University of California, Los Angeles
Sot’aesan’s Mindfulness Practice in the Context of Modern Korean Buddhist Reformation

Julia Stenzel, McGill University
The Phenomenon of Secular Compassion Training and its Loop Back Effect on Traditional Buddhist Discourses

Solomon P. Botwick-Ries, Marlboro College
From “Mindful Eating” to Eating Mindfully: a Critical-Constructive Theology

Schedule:
1:00 p.m. Welcome remarks
1:15 – 3:30 p.m. Graduate Speakers
4:00 – 5:00 p.m. Keynote Adress

For more information on this event, to RSVP, and to receive updates, please visit our Facebook page.

This event is supported in part by BDK America and the Asia Project at the Graduate Theological Union.

Scott Mitchell