Buddhist Studies Events in Michaelmas Term 2026

Basement Teaching Room 1 at 5:00pm 

Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies 

Pusey Lane, Oxford, OX1 2LE 

All Welcome 

Tea and snacks at 4:30–4:50pm (Common Room in the basement) 

All enquiries: [email protected]  

Monday 12 October 2026 (Week 1)

The Theory and Practice of Applied Buddhism

Rey-Sheng Her (Tzu Chi Foundation)

To maintain institutional endurance, religious traditions must adapt to contemporary societal needs. Drawing on analyses by Max Weber and Venerable Yinshun alongside historical developments in India, Sri Lanka, Joseon Korea, and post-Tang China, this paper argues that the long-term vitality of Buddhism depends on "applied Buddhism"—the systematic integration of Buddhist wisdom across all worldly domains. This paper presupposes that, historically, Buddhism declined whenever restricted to monastic enclaves, relinquishing governance, epistemology, and daily ethics to Brahmanism or Confucianism; conversely, Abrahamic traditions sustained social prominence by forging comprehensive normative frameworks for civic life.

The paper traces modern Chinese Buddhism’s trajectory to correct this imbalance, following Master Taixu’s "Buddhism for Human Life," Venerable Yinshun’s "Humanistic Buddhism," and Dharma Master Cheng Yen’s Tzu Chi movement. It locates the term "applied Buddhism" at the turn of the twentieth century in Liang Qichao’s commentary on Tan Sitong’s Renxue (仁學). Tan synthesized Yogācāra, Huayan, and Prajñā thought to dismantle hierarchical dualities and promote egalitarian reform, culminating in his 1898 martyrdom.

Positioning Tzu Chi as a paradigm of applied Buddhism rooted in the Sūtra of Infinite Meanings, the paper examines how its core principles—"emptiness and quiescence of nature and form" and "liberating sentient beings"—inform its missions in charity, medicine, education, and humanistic culture. Tzu Chi operationalizes practice through three tenets: engaging in worldly labour with a mind of renunciation, giving unconditionally, and entering nirvana without severing afflictions, thereby framing altruism as the path to enlightenment.

Dr. Rey-Sheng Her is Deputy CEO at the Tzu Chi Foundation, Senior Fellow at Harvard University, and former visiting scholar at Oxford University. He holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Peking University. A leading authority on contemporary humanistic Buddhism and altruistic governance, Dr. Her bridges theoretical Buddhist philosophy with decades of real-world practice. He has spearheaded major international disaster relief operations and faith-based NGO initiatives across the globe. Dr. Her is also the initiator of the Yin-Cheng Network for Buddhist Studies and an advocate for the Economy of Goodness. His publications include The Economy of Goodness and The Essential Studies of Tzu Chi Buddhism. Combining academic rigour with practical humanitarian experience, Dr. Her’s work offers profound insights into applying Buddhist principles to modern societal and economic challenges.

Reading Buddhist Art in Dunhuang

Irene Lok (University of Oxford)

In Weeks 2, 4, 6, and 8, Irene Lok will deliver a series of lectures investigating Dunhuang manuscripts, cave murals, Buddha iconography, and symbolic forms. 

Monday 19 October 2026 (Week 2)

Can the Buddha Be Seen? The Making and Meaning of the Buddha Image

How did the Buddha, who had entered parinirvāṇa, become visible in human form? The lecture begins with the representation—and apparent non-representation—of the Buddha, introducing the so-called “aniconic” phase before tracing the emergence of anthropomorphic Buddha images in India, especially Gandhāra and Mathurā, and their development through Central Asia and China. Taking the iconic Buddha sculptural group ⼀鋪佛像 in Mogao Cave 45 as a case study, the lecture examines a sculptural ensemble that represents the highest level of High Tang art. The Buddha, disciples, bodhisattvas, and heavenly kings allow close examination of bodily form, gesture, posture, clothing, expression, hierarchy, and spatial arrangement. The lecture asks how visual form made Buddhahood recognisable and religiously present. 

Monday 2 November 2026 (Week 4)

The Library Cave: Lost Scriptures and the Rediscovery of Buddhist Worlds

The discovery of the sealed Library Cave (Cave 17) in 1900 transformed the study of Buddhism and Dunhuang along the Silk Roads. Tens of thousands of manuscripts and documents, produced between the late fourth and early eleventh centuries, were preserved in the cave. They allow Buddhist texts to be studied not only as canonical works but as physical objects that were copied, circulated, read, used, preserved, and sometimes forgotten. A newly discovered manuscript of the Sūtra of Brahmā’s Questions 思益梵天所問經 provides the focused case study. This long-lost and recently rediscovered manuscript opens questions of textual history, provenance, transmission, material form, and the value of manuscript evidence for reconstructing Buddhist intellectual and devotional worlds.

Monday 16 November 2026 (Week 6)

Dunhuang Murals: Gems of Buddhist Art

The murals of the Mogao and Yulin caves provide an extraordinary record of Buddhist visual culture spanning a millennium, from the fourth to the fourteenth centuries. Their subjects and techniques reveal connections with India and Central Asia while also showing the emergence of distinctive local and Chinese forms. Selected examples—including the Nine-Coloured Deer 九⾊⿅ and High Tang music and dance imagery—introduce Buddhist narrative, moral teaching, and the cultural world represented at Dunhuang. The principal case study is Yulin Cave 25 and its Pure Land imagery. Read alongside the Maitreya scriptures, the cave allows students to consider how textual descriptions of a sacred world could be selected, reorganised, expanded, and made visually and spatially present.

Monday 30 November 2026 (Week 8)

The Lion’s Roar: The Lasting Voice of the Dharma

This lecture follows the Buddhist lion as image, symbol, and travelling form. Beginning with the lion in Indian Buddhist culture—as a sign of sovereignty and power, the Buddha as Śākyasiṃha, the “Lion of the Śākyas,” and the teaching of the Dharma as the lion’s roar—it considers how lion imagery moved across cultures and acquired new visual forms and functions. A lion-statue case study will anchor the lecture in material evidence while opening onto larger questions of transmission, transformation, loss, memory, and survival. The disappearance or absence of an object in cave temples need not end its history: its meanings, images, textual traces, and cultural descendants may continue. The lecture deliberately leaves a final space for imagination: if the lion is no longer there, can its roar still be heard?

Dr Irene Lok 駱慧瑛 is a Glorisun Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Dunhuang Academy. She received her PhD from the University of Hong Kong, where she serves as Honorary Research Fellow and Art Advisor at the Jao Tsung-I Petite École. She is also a Visiting Scholar at the University of Cambridge and was previously a Bye-Fellow of Robinson College, Cambridge. Her research focuses on Buddhist art in Dunhuang and Turfan, particularly the relationship between Buddhist texts and images. She is the author of the Chinese-language books Contemplating the Mind at Ease: The Guanyin Festival and the Origins of Guanyin Belief in Hong Kong 《觀⼼⾃在：⾹港觀⾳誕與觀⾳信仰探源》 (2020), which received the Hong Kong Publishing Biennial Award, and Serendipity at Dunhuang 《緣繫敦煌》 (2025). Her current research explores the visual transformation of Buddhist scriptures, with particular attention to the Guanyin Sūtra, manuscripts, murals, and devotional practice along the Silk Roads.

Monday 26 October 2026 (Week 3)

A Changing Sangha and an Ageing Monastic Body: 

Two Challenges Facing Contemporary Korean Buddhism

This lecture features two presentations by scholars from Dongguk University examining the profound demographic transformation facing contemporary Korean Buddhism. Together, the talks address the dual structural challenges shaping the future of the Sangha: (1) the sharp decline in new monastic recruitment amid secularization and low birth rates, and (2) the growing institutional demands of providing eldercare and retirement support for an ageing monastic population.

Fewer Becoming: Secularization, Low Birth Rates, and the Changing Sangha in Korea

Soonil Hwang (Dongguk University)

The decline of Buddhist monastic recruitment in contemporary South Korea reflects a broader transformation in the social conditions through which the Buddhist Sangha reproduces itself across generations. This presentation examines the sharp decline in recruitment within the Jogye Order since the late 1990s and relates it to demographic contraction, declining fertility, smaller families, generational religious disaffiliation, geographical redistribution, and the weakening of traditional religious networks. Particular attention is given to the growing mismatch between the geographical and generational distribution of the Buddhist population and that of younger Koreans from whom future monastics must be recruited. The presentation argues that the Korean problem is not simply a reduction in the number of potential recruits, but a transformation of the social pathways through which Buddhism is transmitted. A brief comparison with Taiwan and Japan highlights alternative forms of institutional adaptation to demographic and generational change. The presentation concludes by considering how Korean Buddhism might develop new forms of engagement that move from inherited religious identity toward voluntary experience, practice, and community, and how such changes may reshape the future reproduction of the Sangha.

Old Age, Sickness & Death: Buddhist Monastic Retirement & Eldercare Within South Korea’s Super-Aged Society

Ven. Chongdok (Dongguk University)

As the Buddhist monastic community in Korea has entered an era marked by ageing demographics, the issues surrounding the welfare of the order’s monastics in their retirement years have become increasingly pressing. In response, in 2011, the Jogye Order enacted the Monastic Welfare Act and established the Monastic Welfare Society with the aim of enabling monks to fully devote themselves to their religious duties by assuming institutional responsibility for their healthcare, pension, residential welfare, and end-of-life needs. Over a decade since the system’s implementation, the Jogye Order has made notable progress towards achieving the Monastic Welfare Act’s aims. However, while the order has stabilized medical coverage for its clergy, there remain considerable gaps in its provisions for income and housing for elderly monastics. This presentation surveys the Jogye Order’s efforts to establish systemic care for its elderly monastics, with a particular focus on the Jogye Order’s 2011 Monastic Welfare Act and subsequent activities of the Monastic Welfare Society. It then critically examines the current state of eldercare within the order, along with its strengths and weaknesses, before engaging in a comparative discussion regarding the clerical eldercare and welfare systems provided by both the Korean Catholic Church and the Thai Buddhist community.

Dr. Soonil Hwang is a Professor in the College of Buddhist Studies at Dongguk University, Seoul, South Korea. His primary research interests include the doctrinal history of Early Buddhism and the study of Buddhist culture in South and Southeast Asia. He earned his DPhil from the University of Oxford, specialising in the doctrinal history of nirvāṇa in Indian Buddhism. Dr. Hwang has held visiting professorships at Al-Farabi Kazakh National University (2011), Chulalongkorn University (2012), and Saitama University (2013). His notable publications include Metaphor and Literalism in Buddhism (Routledge, 2006), Sermon of the One Hundred Days (Equinox, 2010), and Advent of Theravāda Buddhism into Southeast Asia (Gasan Institute, 2018). He is a recipient of the Bulyi Academic Award (2008) and the SBS Seoam Fellowship (2011). An experienced administrator, Dr. Hwang has served as the Dean of Academic Affairs and as Director of EBTI and Cultural Content at Dongguk University. Following a five-year term as Dean of the College of Buddhist Studies (2020–2024), he completed a sabbatical as an external lecturer at the University of Salzburg, Austria, in 2025, before returning to his professorship at Dongguk University.

Ven. Prof. Chongdok (Cheonghwan Park) is a Professor in the College of Buddhist Studies and Director of the Buddhist Culture Research Institute at Dongguk University in Seoul, South Korea. He received his DPhil degree in Buddhist Studies from the University of Oxford in 2005 based on his dissertation entitled "A Translation and Study of Selected Avadānas of the Mūlasarvāstivādin Vinaya (MSV)." His main research interest is Buddhist narrative. Recently, his research has also focused on contemporary Korean Buddhism. His publications include "An Analysis of the Image of Women in the Mallikāvadāna of the Mūlasarvāstivādavinaya Kṣudrakavastu (MSVKv)" (2006), A Study on the Avadāna(2006), "A Study of the Concept of the Buddha through the Idea of the Pubbakammapiloti in Theravāda Buddhism (I)" (2006), "A Study on the Buddhist Folktale: Two Nāgas and King Bimbisāra" (2008), "A Study on the Narrative of the Śākyas’ Massacre by Virūḍhaka in the Mūlasarvāstivādavinaya Kṣudrakavastu" (2012), "The Buddha’s Eating of Horse-Fodder Barley in the Mūlasarvāstivādavinaya" (2012), and "A Study on the Narrative of Apalāla in the Mūlasarvāstivādavinaya Bhaiṣajyavastu" (2014). His recent articles on contemporary Korean Buddhism, published in the A&HCI-indexed journal Religions, include "Some Contemporary Dilemmas of Korean Buddhism: A Critical Review of the Jogye Order’s 2018 Periodic Report" (2019), "A Survey of the Attitudes Concerning the Role of the Laity in Korea’s Jogye Order" (2019), and "Glorifying the Order and Creating Great Monks: A Critical Survey of Oral History within the Field of Modern Korean Buddhist Historical Studies" (2026).

Kindly supported by the Glorisun Global Network for Buddhist Studies.