Expanding understanding of Buddhist philosophy in the west

In 2008, the Foundation provided an endowment to establish The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Center for Buddhist Studies at Stanford University, followed in 2011 by a further grant to endow a Chair in Buddhist Studies. The chair marked the first permanent faculty post dedicated to Buddhism at the University, with Professor John Kieschnick becoming the Founding Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Professor of Buddhist Studies.

While there is a long tradition of Buddhist studies at Stanford, Professor Kieschnick noted an important difference that such a post makes: “It means perpetuity. There will always be Buddhist studies at Stanford at this level of seniority as the chair is earmarked.” This is unusual, he said. In other institutions, there is no guarantee that a person teaching Buddhist studies will be replaced with someone with a similar specialty. “There are just a handful of chairs like this around the world. Nothing is permanent, according to Buddhist principles, but this is about as close as it gets in academia.”

Being located at Stanford, the position has given Professor Kieschnick access to excellent graduate students. In addition, it provides the funding support necessary to offer studentships and the time to train them fully. “It is often challenging to take up Buddhist studies,” he said. “Funding is a struggle and competition intense for a very small number of government grants. Students are under intense pressure to complete their degrees quickly. Yet they usually need to study very difficult languages, such as Pali and Sanskrit, modern and classical Chinese or Japanese, and it is impossible to do this well in a short period of time.”

The Center teaches graduate students with the goal of expanding the number of Buddhist studies specialists who will go on to teach all over the world in a variety of institutions. It also encourages undergraduates to gain basic understanding of Buddhism. Such students are often outside the humanities area, given Stanford students’ current concentration on engineering, creating greater awareness of Buddhism among young people heading into different fields.

Buddhism’s tolerance and the mindfulness movement are two key areas that keep the subject popular among undergraduates even when other humanities disciplines are struggling to recruit classes, according to Professor Kieschnick. In addition, the increasingly high global profile of China, India, and countries in Southeast Asia - places that are primarily Buddhist or have strong Buddhist elements in their history - are making it unignorable. “More and more students have this sense that if you want to be an informed citizen of the world, you need to have at least some knowledge of Buddhism.”

Events organised by the Center and open to the public create a wider forum for discussion of Buddhism and its principles. “Part of our mission is to make Buddhism less exotic and more immediate, and to promote general understanding of Buddhism, not just in the university but in society at large,” Professor Kieschnick said.

Interestingly, he feels the path that Buddhism may take in the west could be different from the role it has played anywhere else in Buddhist history, being less based on monastic communities and Buddhism of the past. Exactly what that role may be is not yet clear. “In my own field of Chinese Buddhism, it was very difficult to say much of anything for the first 300 years. It was only after that length of time that Buddhism had a foundation and became a central part of Chinese civilisation,” Professor Kieschnick pointed out. “Since Buddhism has only been in the west for 100 years, it may be too early to say what direction it is going to take here.”

Links with other aspects of the Ho philanthropy have seen Professor Kieschnick give a popular lecture as part of the public events connected with the Vancouver Art Gallery exhibition of The Forbidden City: Inside the Court of China’s Emperors. The touring exhibition, held for nearly three months in 2014-15, featured scores of precious items from the Beijing Palace Museum and was co-sponsored by the Foundation. He gave another talk at the Cave Temples of Dunhuang: Buddhist Art on China’s Silk Road exhibition held at The Getty Center in Los Angeles from May to September 2016. The Foundation was the presenting sponsor. Meanwhile, Stanford was the venue for the Foundation’s annual symposium for its dissertation fellows in 2016. “The Foundation is doing something very special in its support of Buddhism,” Professor Kieschnick said. “It has been very visible and had a major impact in a relatively short time.”

Looking ahead, Professor Kieschnick would like to see academia as a whole provide further support for Buddhism scholars, the incorporation of Buddhism into the undergraduate curriculum and, ideally, into the school curriculum as well. “In general (in North America) in my experience, students come to university knowing very little about religion and almost nothing about Buddhism.” He hopes in the future that Stanford could lead the way, with other departments hiring professors in Buddhist studies to enhance knowledge in fields such as anthropology and art and the Center serving as an overall coordinator.

While research is important, both his own and students, for the Center overall, he sees its greatest achievement will be the training of more teachers to teach Buddhist studies to more students elsewhere. “It may be long term and gradual, but in this way we can help to drive the incorporation of Buddhist studies in university and college curricula across the world.”