Dear Friends,

I am pleased to announce the next talk in the Gandhāra Corpora Lecture Series, which will also be a talk in the Spring 2026 Permanent Training in Buddhist Studies of the Ghent Centre for Buddhist Studies.

Title:

Speaker:

Prof. Daniel Stuart, University of South Carolina/ Uni Hamburg

 

Timing:

Wednesday, April 22 @ 17.00 CET (please note this talk exceptionally occurs on a Wednesday!)

 

Location: 

Locaal 1.13  (1st Floor Classroom) 

Blandijn, Campus Boekentoren

9000 Gent, Belgium

(also online)

Abstract:

This presentation introduces newly edited Sanskrit material from a manuscript of the Saddharmasmṛtyupasthāna. This text contains the most extensive surviving Sanskrit account of Buddhist cosmology. Likely composed in Greater Gandhāra in the fourth century CE, it presents a visionary narrative in which a Buddhist yogic practitioner experiences the five realms of the cosmos: the human realm, hell beings, hungry ghosts, animals, and deities. Focusing on descriptions of the heavenly realms within the sphere of sensual desire, this talk explores how these depictions relate to broader developments in Buddhist thought. In particular, it examines the relationship between traditional cosmological models, emerging scholastic taxonomies, visionary yogic practice, and conceptions of the interpenetration of phenomena that became central to major strands of Mahāyāna philosophy.

Bio:

Daniel M. Stuart is Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of South Carolina and is currently a Visiting Professor at the University of Hamburg under the auspices of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. He holds an MA in Sanskrit Literature and a PhD in Buddhist Studies from the University of California at Berkeley. He has worked extensively on sūtra and narrative literature, śāstric texts, and Buddhist manuscripts in various Asian languages and scripts. He works with textual materials in Sanskrit, Pāli, Hindi, Gāndhārī, Buddhist Chinese and literary Tibetan. His research focuses on the history of traditional Buddhist contemplative practices from their origins in premodern South Asia into the global present. He is the author of five books: Thinking about Cessation (2013), A Less Traveled Path (2015), The Stream of Deathless Nectar (2017), S. N. Goenka: Emissary of Insight (2020), and Insight in Perspective (2024).

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 

(registering once will ensure you will receive links to all future talks in the series)

Please note some additional talks in the series scheduled in the next weeks 

April 30 @17.00 CET

Samara Broglia de Moura: “New archaeological data on the extension of the Kushan empire and post-Kushan groups in the Himalayan range”

May 7 @17.00 CET

Alex Meng: "Poet’s Myths: Asuras in Aśvaghoṣa’s Epics"

and more to come!

Friendly Greetings,

Charles DiSimone