Robert Gimello (Notre Dame) - ALC Grad Colloquium - Literati and the Occult in Late Traditional Chinese Buddhism

Date: 3/14/2008; 4:00 PM to 5:00 PM
Location: room 2022, 202 S. Thayer Street
Host Department: Asian Studies

The avid interest of the educated elite of late Ming and early Qing China in the occult beliefs and practices that comprised the Cundi cult may be reason to revise conventional assumptions about the character of literati Buddhism and our standard estimation of the presence of Buddhist hermeticism at all levels of Chinese Buddhist culture.

Detailed Information
Professor Robert Gimello is a specialist in the history of Buddhism focusing particularly on medieval and early modern Buddhist thought — primarily in China but also in India, Japan, and Korea. He also pursues long-standing interests in comparative theology, the theology and the philosophy of mysticism, and the relationship between religion and visual culture. Coming to Notre Dame after nine years at Harvard, and having taught previously at the University of Arizona, UC Santa Barbara, Dartmouth, and several Buddhist and secular universities abroad, he is now especially concerned, as a member of a Catholic university, to contribute to the formulation of robustly Catholic theological perspectives on Buddhism. Professor Gimello looks forward also to assisting in the expansion of the presence of Asia and Asian religions in the increasingly global scope of Notre Dame's general undergraduate and graduate curricula. Chief among his current projects is the completion of a book on esoteric ("Tantric") Buddhism in China.

Contact Information
kjmunson@umich.edu