Buddhist Studies Footnotes – Details, episodes & analysis

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Buddhist Studies Footnotes

Frances Garrett

Religion & Spirituality

Health & Fitness

Society & Culture

Frequency: 1 episode/22d. Total Eps: 50

Footnotes is a series of short lectures or conversations on research in the field of Buddhist Studies. Created by Frances Garrett, a professor of Buddhist Studies at the University of Toronto, with co-host Tony Scott, most episodes are summaries or discussions of articles or book chapters from academic work in the field, with some episodes featuring guest lectures or guest hosts from events and courses at the University of Toronto. We aim to make Buddhist Studies research freely accessible to students and the public. Footnotes was made possible by a grant from eCampusOntario and also receives support from the Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation Centre for Buddhist Studies at the University of Toronto. Audio editing has been done by Jesse Whitty and Frances Garrett.

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https://doi.org/10.1163/18765610-02004001
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https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.421
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https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-50612-3
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Buddhist environmental ethics for a more-than-human world

Tuesday, August 13, 2024 • Duration 48:33

A conversation with Colin Simonds, Lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of Alberta. His research focuses on how Tibetan Buddhist philosophy and contemplative practice are relevant to contemporary issues facing the more-than-human world. His doctoral thesis, titled "Moral Phenomenology in a More-Than-Human World: A New Approach to Buddhist Environmental Ethics," offers an interpretation of Buddhist ethics as a moral phenomenology and proposes a phenomenological approach to animal and environmental ethics from a Tibetan Buddhist perspective. Dr. Simonds is also interested in broader questions of animal ethics, environmental ethics, contemplative studies, yoga studies, and Buddhist studies.

In this conversation with Frances Garrett, part of a Footnotes series on posthumanist approaches to the study of Buddhism, Dr. Simonds explores intersections of Buddhism, environmental ethics, and animal ethics. He talks about his work on deep ecology and on the feminist care ethics tradition, emphasizing the importance of relationship, community, and feeling. He also considers expanding traditional Buddhist understandings of sentience to include non-human animals, plants, and even maybe AI.

This episode of Buddhist Studies Footnotes was created, produced and edited by Frances Garrett, with support from the Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation Centre for Buddhist Studies at the University of Toronto. This project aims to make Buddhist Studies research freely accessible to students and the public.

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Buddhist environmentalism through philosophy of language

Monday, April 29, 2024 • Duration 27:48

A conversation with Nan Kathy Lin, visiting assistant professor at Oberlin College in religious ethics and critical thought. Her work focuses on East Asian Buddhism, environmentalism, and moral philosophy as informed by ordinary language philosophy.

In this conversation with Frances Garrett, part of a Footnotes series on posthumanist approaches to the study of Buddhism, Nan Kathy Lin talks about her work on developing a theory of religious change as seen through Buddhist environmentalism, drawing on philosophy of language and theoretical biology. She discusses the use of the concept of "interdependence" by 20th-century environmentalists, and she traces how the word interdependence as a translation of the Buddhist term paticca-samuppada should be seen as a response to moral concepts, such as growth or progress, embedded in 20th-century industrial political economy.

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Rescaling the human: Nature, culture, and science in the Gobi Desert

Wednesday, April 24, 2024 • Duration 49:34

A conversation with Matt King, professor of Buddhist studies at the University of California, Riverside. King is also the director of Asian studies and co-director of the medical humanities program at UCR. His research traces encounters between Buddhist scholasticism, science, humanism and state socialism in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

In this conversation with Frances Garrett, part of a Footnotes series on posthumanist approaches to the study of Buddhism, Matt King talks about his new research on the Gobi desert in the long 19th century. He discusses frontiers and zones of exchange between Tibetan and Mongolian communities in early 20th century China and Buddhist perspectives on nature, culture, and science. He talks about how nature/culture binaries may be understood newly through the lens of Buddhism, Indigenous studies, Black feminist studies, and models of planetary thinking, and about how the concept of nature is used to justify power structures, including colonialism and imperialism. He describes how his research with Mongolian and Tibetan sources suggests that knowledge and environments are co-produced and fundamentally perspectival.

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Earth, water, fire, wind, space: Contemplative ecology in Buddhism

Monday, April 22, 2024 • Duration 31:23

A conversation with Devin Zuckerman, a Buddhist studies scholar from the University of Virginia whose research looks at Buddhist theories and practices involving the elements of earth, water, fire, wind, and space.

In this conversation with Frances Garrett, part of a Footnotes series on posthumanist approaches to the study of Buddhism, Devin Zuckerman talks about how the elements are used to map human difference, and how they function as an “information technology” that connects human bodies and non-human environments. She describes sensory practices such as listening to the sounds of water as a way of making intelligible a more-than-human world. Drawing inspiration from eco-feminism, she explores how embodied contemplative practices in Buddhism may subvert a nature/culture binary, and how these practices may allow climate change to manifest in a practitioner's body.

Listeners may learn more about Devin Zuckerman’s work at https://vcsr.virginia.edu/devin-zuckerman.

Works discussed in this conversation include Astrida Neimanis and Rachel Loewen Walker’s article “’Weathering’: Climate Change and the ‘Thick Time’ of Transcorporeality” , published in Hypatia, Vol. 29, No. 3 (2014), pp.558-575.

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Living mountains and mineral intimacies in Mongolia

Wednesday, April 17, 2024 • Duration 37:31

A conversation with Jessica Madison Pískatá, a cultural anthropologist who studies relationships between humans and geological landscapes on the peripheries of Cold War empires. Pískatá is now Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Environmental Studies at Oberlin College.

In this conversation with Frances Garrett, part of a Footnotes series on posthumanist approaches to the study of Buddhism, Pískatá talks about how her interest in anthropology was sparked by the experience of translating poetry in Mongolia, and how working with Mongolian poets led to insights into the relationship between people and the mineral landscape. She describes how geosocial relationships with mountains and mines can challenge binaries of living and nonliving, or nature and social life. Pískatá also discusses Mongolian understandings of the concept of energy, in the context of the field of energy humanities, and her new work on uranium mining in the Czech Republic.

Listeners may read and listen to three poems celebrating life on Earth called “Grass Trilogy” by Mongolian author Ochirbatyn Dashbalbar, translated by Jessica Madison Pískatá, at https://www.sapiens.org/culture/grass-trilogy/.

Works discussed include:

Elizabeth Povinelli’s Geontologies: A Requiem to Late Liberalism (Duke University Press, 2016)
Philippe Descola’s Beyond Nature and Culture (trans. J. Lloyd) (Chicago University Press, 2013)
Cara New Daggett’s The Birth of Energy: Fossil Fuels, Thermodynamics, and the Politics of Work (Duke University Press, 2019)
Breanna Wilson's article in Forbes magazine, Feb 25, 2024, "How To Visit Shambala, Mongolia’s Most Sacred And Spiritual Place"

A Clinical Bioethicist on End-of-Life Decision-Making

Thursday, June 23, 2022 • Duration 51:55

Dr. Sean Hillman discusses caregiving work and his research on end-of-life care in India through the lenses of religious studies, bioethics and the law. He talks about how religious views affect end-of-life decision-making of patients, families and health care professionals; issues around blocking disclosure of bad news in sharing of sensitive medical information; ritual fasting and immobilization at the end of life; and attitudes towards end-of-life care, including pain management, hospice palliative care and assistance in dying.

Dr. Hillman is a clinical bioethicist with the Centre for Clinical Ethics (CCE), a consultant organization based at Unity Health Toronto and contracted to seven institutions in Ontario. He also is a Buddhist Corrections Chaplain for two facilities in the Kingston region. Dr. Hillman was a bedside caregiver in hospital for almost two decades and did a year-long fellowship in Clinical and Organizational Bioethics also at the CCE. A medical anthropologist and textualist, he has a doctorate in religion, bioethics, and south Asian studies from the University of Toronto.

A scholar of Asian philosophies and languages for almost thirty years, Dr. Hillman has spent five years living, studying and researching in India. His current research projects are on maximizing decisional participation by those who might have mental capacity interferences, and on how to better understand why families may request aggressive medical management for their loved-ones despite a poor prognosis (including religious logic such as vitalism, non-harm and filial piety). Dr. Hillman is a member of Durham Family Resources community advisory committee for their “recognizing capacity” pilot project which advocates for increased inclusion of those with intellectual, cognitive or communication challenges and for including supported decision making in Ontario healthcare law.

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The Paisley Gate: Intersections of Buddhism & Psychedelics

Tuesday, June 14, 2022 • Duration 35:04

As psychedelic-assisted psychotherapies march towards likely legality for therapeutic purposes, we may ask how Buddhism and psychedelics intersect. In this episode, Kerry Helston explores some challenges and opportunities as well as the existing legacy of Buddhism and psychedelics in the West, with reference to current science and academic literature as well as personal experiences.

Resources mentioned:

Altered States: Buddhism and Psychedelic Spirituality in America by Douglas Osto

LSD and the Mind of the Universe by Christopher M. Bache

Secret Drugs of Buddhism: Psychedelic Sacraments and the Origins of the Vajrayana by Mike Crowley

“Characterization and prediction of acute and sustained response to psychedelic psilocybin in a mindfulness group retreat”

“Psychedelics, Meditation, and Self-Consciousness”

Chacruna Religion & Psychedelics Forum

Kerry Helston is a University of Toronto graduate student in psychotherapy and spiritual care. The Footnotes series is produced at the University of Toronto, in Canada. See more at https://buddhist-studies-footnotes.castos.com/.

ReOrienting Medicine on the Silk Roads

Thursday, June 2, 2022 • Duration 38:28

A conversation with Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim on her ground-breaking 2021 book, ReOrienting Histories of Medicine: Encounters along the Silk Roads. Ronit's research on Eurasian medical history illuminates cross-cultural interactions and transmissions of knowledge, drawing on medieval manuscripts from Dunhuang, Kucha, the Cairo Genizah and Tabriz.

See more about this book at https://www.bloomsbury.com/ca/reorienting-histories-of-medicine-9781472512574/ .

The Footnotes series is produced at the University of Toronto, in Canada. See more at https://buddhist-studies-footnotes.castos.com/ .

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How Buddhism Shapes Medical Care

Monday, May 23, 2022 • Duration 41:03

A conversation with Pierce Salguero on his 2022 book, A Global History of Buddhism and Medicine. Pierce explains what it means to talk about "Buddhist medicine", how medical texts and healing practices interact, and how Buddhism and its healing practices change over time and across geographic regions. He emphasizes how the deep importance of Buddhism has been neglected in our understanding of medical practices globally, and stresses the value of transdisciplinary collaboration and conversation.

See more about this book at http://cup.columbia.edu/book/a-global-history-of-buddhism-and-medicine/9780231185271.

The Footnotes series is produced at the University of Toronto, in Canada. See more at https://buddhist-studies-footnotes.castos.com/ .

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Becoming a Buddhist Spiritual Care Provider

Friday, May 20, 2022 • Duration 34:56

A conversation about Buddhist spiritual care work with Joanne Yuasa, a Jodo Shinshu Buddhist minister who is also in training to be a military chaplain. Joanne talks about how she came to Buddhism as an adult, and about her experiences with social anxiety disorder. Karl, Wini, and Joanne share their experiences of engaging with Buddhist practice in moments of suffering and distress. They also talk about working in hospital clinics as Buddhist care providers, and about the role of practices like deep listening and chanting mantras.

All three speakers have gone through Emmanual College’s Buddhist chaplaincy program – Emmanual College is located in Toronto. Karl and Wini are just completing their Master of Pastoral Studies, focusing on Buddhist spiritual care, and Joanne Yuasa completed that program recently. The Footnotes series is produced at the University of Toronto, in Canada. See more at https://buddhist-studies-footnotes.castos.com/.

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Buddhist Studies Footnotes – Details, episodes & analysis

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Buddhist Studies Footnotes – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

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DOI Foundation2

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Other13

DOI Foundation2

Nature1

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