Event — Buddhist Studies Lectures

Does meditation produce knowledge?

During this lunch lecture, Professor Birgit Kellner explores this question by tracing how one historically significant scholar-philosopher, the eighth-century Indian monk Kamalaśīla (c. 740-795), conceives of the nature and function of reflective meditation on the path to liberation, and especially of its relationship to philosophical analysis with the help of reasoning.

Lunch will be provided. Registration is required.

Organisation: the Buddhist Studies Lectures are organised by IIAS and Prof. Jonathan Silk, Professor of Buddhist Studies at the Leiden University Institute for Area Studies (LIAS).


Buddhist traditions have developed and also incorporated a great number and variety of practices that merit the designation 'meditation'. An important subclass of such practices consists of sustained reflection on the nature of reality, which is thought to be indispensable for the attainment of liberation. But does this kind of reflective meditation actually produce knowledge? This talk explores this question by tracing how one historically significant scholar-philosopher, the eighth-century Indian monk Kamalaśīla (c. 740-795), conceives of the nature and function of reflective meditation on the path to liberation, and especially of its relationship to philosophical analysis with the help of reasoning.

Birgit Kellner studied Tibetan and Buddhist studies in Vienna and Hiroshima. In 2010 she was appointed Professor for Buddhist Studies at the University of Heidelberg, and in 2015 Director of the Institute for the Cultural and Intellectual History of Asia at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna. Her research focuses on the history of Buddhist philosophical traditions in South Asia and Tibet, especially on the Dharmakīrtian school of logic and epistemology, and on the recovery of Indian Buddhist literature from newly accessible manuscript materials.

Registration (required)

Please use the web-form on the right-hand side of this page to register (if you would like us to cater for your lunch, by Friday 11 October, 12:00 hrs.).

 

Related
Another lecture in this series will take place today, October 14, at 14:30 hrs, titled, Donors’ motivations and the assignment of merit in Āndhradeśa.