Buswell, R.

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Robert E. Buswell Jr.

Robert E. Buswell Jr., Distinguished Professor of Buddhist Studies in the UCLA Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, is the Irving and Jean Stone Chair in Humanities at UCLA, and the founding director of the university’s Center for Buddhist Studies and Center for Korean Studies. From 2009-2011, he served concurrently as founding director of the Dongguk Institute for Buddhist Studies Research (Pulgyo Haksurwon) at Dongguk University in Seoul, Korea.
      He is widely considered to be the premier Western scholar on Korean Buddhism and one of the top specialists on the East Asian Zen tradition. Buswell also served as editor-in-chief of the two-volume Encyclopedia of Buddhism (Macmillan Reference, 2004), and coeditor (with Donald S. Lopez, Jr.) of the [now published] one-million word [Princeton] Dictionary of Buddhism. In 2009, Buswell was awarded the Manhae Prize from the Chogye Order in recognition of his pioneering contributions to Korean Buddhist Studies in the West. Buswell was elected president of the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) for 2008-2009, the first time a Koreanist or Buddhologist has ever held the position, and served as past-president and past-past-president in subsequent years. (Source Accessed Nov 25 2019)

Library Items

Book
Buddhist Philosophy and Meditation Practice
This publication presents the academic papers presented at the 2nd International Association of Buddhist Universities Conference which took place at Mahachulalongkornrajavidyalaya University in Wang Noi, Ayutthaya, Thailand, in 2012. The theme of this large conference was "Buddhist Philosophy and Meditation Practice" and it brought together over 33 Buddhist studies scholars. Of particular relevance to the topic of buddha-nature is Tadeuz Skorupki's paper, "Consciousness and Luminosity in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism" (43–64).
Dhammasami, Khammai, Padmasiri de Silva, Sarah Shaw, Dion Peoples, Jamie Cresswell, and Toshiichi Endo, eds. Buddhist Philosophy and Meditation Practice: Academic Papers Presented at the 2nd IABU Conference, Mahachulalongkornrajavidyalaya University, Main Campus, Wang Noi, Ayutthaya, Thailand. Ayutthaya, Thailand: Mahachulalongkornrajavidyalaya University, 2012. http://btmar.org/files/pdf/buddhist_philosophy_and_meditation_practice.pdf.
Book
Cultivating Original Enlightenment
Wŏnhyo (617–686) is the dominant figure in the history of Korean Buddhism and one of the most influential thinkers in the Korean philosophical tradition. Koreans know Wŏnhyo in his various roles as Buddhist mystic, miracle worker, social iconoclast, religious proselytist, and cultural hero. Above all else, Wŏnhyo was an innovative thinker and prolific writer, whose works cover the gamut of Indian and Sinitic Buddhist materials: Some one hundred treatises and commentaries are attributed to him, twenty-three of which are extant today. Wŏnhyo’s importance is not limited to the peninsula, however. His writings were widely read in China and Japan, and his influence on the overall development of East Asian Mahāyāna thought is significant, particularly in relation to the Huayan, Chan, and Pure Land schools. In Cultivating Original Enlightenment, the first volume in The International Association of Wŏnhyo Studies’ Collected Works of Wŏnhyo series, Robert E. Buswell Jr. translates Wŏnhyo’s longest and culminating work, the Exposition of the Vajrasamâdhi-Sûtra (Kŭmgang Sammaegyŏng Non). Wŏnhyo here brings to bear all the tools acquired throughout a lifetime of scholarship and meditation to the explication of a scripture that has a startling connection to the Korean Buddhist tradition. In his treatise, Wŏnhyo examines the crucial question of how enlightenment can be turned from a tantalizing prospect into a palpable reality that manifests itself in all activities. (Source: University of Hawai'i Press)
Buswell, Robert E., Jr. Cultivating Original Enlightenment: Wǒnhyo's Exposition of the Vajrasamādhi-Sūtra (Kǔmgang Sammaegyǒng Non). International Association of Wŏnhyo Studies' Collected Works of Wŏnhyo 1. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2007.
Book
Currents and Countercurrents
Soon after the inception of Buddhism in the sixth or fifth century B.C.E., the Buddha ordered his small band of monks to wander forth for the welfare and weal of the many, a command that initiated one of the greatest missionary movements in world religious history. But this account of a monolithic missionary movement spreading outward from the Buddhist homeland of India across the Asian continent is just one part of the story. The case of East Asian Buddhism suggests another tale, one in which the dominant eastward current of diffusion creates important eddies, or countercurrents, of influence that redound back toward the center. These countercurrents have had significant, even profound, impact on neighboring traditions.
In East Asia perhaps the most important countercurrent of influence came from Korea, the focus of this volume. Chapters examine the role played by the Paekche kingdom in introducing Buddhist material culture (especially monastic architecture) to Japan and the impact of Korean scholiasts on the creation of several distinctive features that eventually came to characterize Japanese Pure Land Buddhism. The lives and intellectual importance of the monks Sungnang (fl. ca. 490) and Wonch’uk (613–696) are reassessed, bringing to light their role in the development of early intellectual schools within Chinese Buddhism. Later chapters discuss the influential teachings of the semi-legendary master Musang (684–762), the patriarch of two of the earliest schools of Ch’an; the work of a dozen or so Korean monks active in the Chinese T’ient’ai tradition; and the Huiyin monastery. Source: University of Hawai'i Press
Buswell, Robert E., ed. Currents and Countercurrents: Korean Influences on the East Asian Buddhist Traditions. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2005.
Book
No River to Cross
It is often said that enlightenment means “crossing over to the other shore,” that far-off place where we can at last be free from suffering. Likewise, it is said that Buddhist teachings are the raft that takes us there.

In this sparkling collection from one of the most vital teachers of modern Korean Buddhism, Zen Master Daehaeng shows us that there is no raft to find and, truly, no river to cross. She extends her hand to the Western reader, beckoning each of us into the unfailing wisdom accessible right now, the enlightenment that is always, already, right here.

A Zen (or seon, as Korean Zen is called) master with impeccable credentials, Daehaeng has developed a refreshing approach; No River to Cross is surprisingly personal. It’s disarmingly simple, yet remarkably profound, pointing us again and again to our foundation, our “True Nature”—the perfection of things just as they are. (Source: Wisdom Publications)
Daehaeng Sunim. No River to Cross: Trusting the Enlightenment That's Always Right Here. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2007.
Book
Religions of Korea in Practice
Korea has one of the most diverse religious cultures in the world today, with a range and breadth of religious practice virtually unrivaled by any other country. This volume in the Princeton Readings in Religions series is the first anthology in any language, including Korean, to bring together a comprehensive set of original sources covering the whole gamut of religious practice in both premodern and contemporary Korea.
      The book’s thirty-two chapters help redress the dearth of source materials on Korean religions in Western languages. Coverage includes shamanic rituals for the dead and songs to quiet fussy newborns; Buddhist meditative practices and exorcisms; Confucian geomancy and ancestor rites; contemporary Catholic liturgy; Protestant devotional practices; internal alchemy training in new Korean religions; and North Korean Juche (“self-reliance”) ideology, an amalgam of Marxism and Neo-Confucian filial piety focused on worship of the “father,” Kim Il Sung.
      Religions of Korea in Practice provides substantial coverage of contemporary Korean religious practice, especially the various Christian denominations and new indigenous religions. Each chapter includes an extensive translation of original sources on Korean religious practice, accompanied by an introduction that frames the significance of the selections and offers suggestions for further reading. This book will help any reader gain a better appreciation of the rich complexity of Korea’s religious culture. (Source: Princeton University Press)
Buswell, Robert E., ed. Religions of Korea in Practice. Princeton Readings in Religions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007.
Book
Sudden and Gradual
This volume examines the historical basis of the debate over sudden versus gradual approaches to enlightenment in Chinese Buddhism, seeing it as part of a recurrent polarity in Chinese history and thought. Sudden and Gradual includes essays by Luis O. Gómez on the philosophical implications of the debate in China and Tibet, Whalen Lai on Taodheng's theory of sudden enlightenment, Neal Donner on Chih-i's system of T'ien-t'ai, John R. McRae on Shen-Hui's sudden enlightenment and its precedents in Northern Ch'an, and Peter N. Gregory on Tsung-mi's theory of sudden enlightenment. (Source: Motilal Banarsidass)
Gregory, Peter N., ed. Sudden and Gradual: Approaches to Enlightenment in Chinese Thought. Buddhist Tradition Series 16. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1991. First published 1987 by University of Hawai'i Press. https://terebess.hu/zen/Sudden-and-Gradual-Enlightenment.pdf.
Book
The Formation of Ch'an Ideology in China and Korea
This book contains an extensive study and a translation of the Vajrasamādhi Sūtra and makes a convincing argument to rethink the "national lines of argument" that had previously dominated discussions of East Asian Buddhist traditions. Buswell shows how Chan developed in multiple communities; it was not a Chinese phenomenon that was then exported to Korea and Japan. He also shows how the scripture is firmly in the Chinese Yogācāra tradition of Paramārtha, containing an extensive discussion of "immaculate consciousness" (amalavijñāna), the ninth consciousness which unites saṃsāra and nirvāṇa in a "single taste." Buswell draws on Japanese scholarship, such as that by Mozuno Kōgen, who first concluded that the sūtra was an apocryphon.
Buswell, Robert E., Jr. The Formation of Ch'an Ideology in China and Korea: The Vajrasamādhi-Sūtra, A Buddhist Apocryphon. Princeton Library of Asian Translations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989.

Affiliations & relations

  • University of California, Los Angeles · workplace affiliation
  • Department of Asian Languages and Cultures · workplace affiliation
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