[INDOLOGY] Gandhāra Corpora Lecture Series: Keiki Nakayama, Nov 13 @17.00 in-person and online

[Charles DiSimone]

Dear Friends,

I am pleased to announce the next talk in the Gandhāra Corpora Lecture
Series:

*Resituating the Yogācārabhūmi Corpus: Potential Gandhāran Links and
Sūtra-Grounded Practice*

Keiki Nakayama, University of Leipzig

Nov 13, 2025 @17.00 CET in-person and online

Location: Faculteitszaal, Blandijn
faculteit Letteren en Wijsbegeerte
Blandijnberg 2
9000 Gent

Abstract:
The Yogācāra school, together with the Madhyamaka, is well known as one of
the two major streams of Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism. Yet its foundational
text, the Yogācārabhūmi, contains numerous passages that follow the modes
of description characteristic of the Śrāvakayāna tradition. The author(s)
of this work are thought to have belonged to a lineage that transmitted the
Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya. Thus, while the Yogācārins were moving away from
the Sarvāstivāda mainstream, they also inherited many of its scholastic and
disciplinary elements.
The first part of this presentation reconsiders the position of the
Yogācārabhūmi—and hence early Yogācāra—in relation to the Sarvāstivāda
tradition. The Yogācāra school appears to have shared doctrinal affinities
with internal Sarvāstivādin groups such as the Dārṣṭāntikas and
Vibhajyavādins mentioned in the Mahāvibhāṣā. Focusing on the Gandhāra
region, I examine evidence suggesting that the “Western Masters”
(Pāścāttyas), associated with Gandhāra, held positions that coincide with
those of the Yogācārabhūmi, thereby indicating possible intersections
between Yogācāra and Gandhāran Buddhism.
Later but related materials include numerous Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya
manuscripts discovered in Gilgit, part of Greater Gandhāra. These texts
notably embed a variety of sūtras. If the sūtras employed in the
Yogācārabhūmi correspond to those appeared in the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya,
this strengthens the view that the Yogācārabhūmi originated from a
tradition closely linked to the transmitters of the Mūlasarvāstivāda
Vinaya. The recently studied Dīrghāgama (Long Discourses) manuscripts from
Gilgit also deserve attention.
The latter half of the talk examines how the Yogācārabhūmi actively
incorporates and reinterprets sūtras within its structure of practice.
Focusing on the Śrāvakabhūmi, the earliest stratum of the text, I argue
that the Yogācāra school, though renowned as meditative practitioners,
grounded their practice in close engagement with the words of the Buddha.

Bio:
Keiki Nakayama is a guest researcher and lecturer at the Institute for
South and Central Asian Studies, Leipzig University. Having recently
fulfilled the requirements for a PhD at Kyoto University, he is currently
conducting research on the interpretation of canonical scriptures within
the Yogācāra school, supported since 2023 by the Bukkyō Dendō Kyōkai (BDK).
His publications include a co-authored article with Jens-Uwe Hartmann, “One
Hundred and Eight Distinctions of Craving: The Tṛṣṇā-sūtra of the
Saṃyuktāgama,” in Mind, Text, and Reality in Buddhist Studies: Engaging the
Scholarship of Rupert Gethin (Bloomsbury, 2025), and a co-authored
monograph with Izumi Miyazaki et al., The Seventy-five Elements (Dharma) in
the Madhyamakapañca-skandhaka, in Bauddhakośa: A Treasury of Buddhist Terms
and Illustrative Sentences, Volume VIII (The International Institute for
Buddhist Studies, 2022).

All are welcome. The Gandhāra Corpora Lecture Series is in-person and
hybrid online. Please register for the series through this Google Form:
https://forms.gle/TwffQCPuVipUpMvk6

Friendly Greetings,
Charles DiSimone

Prof. Dr. Charles DiSimone
Associate Professor of Buddhist Studies & Indology
Department of Languages and Cultures
Ghent University
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