[Blog] Reconstructing Ānanda’s Grief in the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra: A Lecture by Dr. Charles Li at UBC, March 14, 2018

By Maggie Mitchell On March 14th, the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia hosted Dr. Charles Li to present his research on translations of the Mahāparinirvāṇa sutra. Dr. Li recently received his doctorate from Cambridge University and is now a postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia, with an expertise in …

[Blog] “Buddhism and Orality”, A Talk by Dr. Caley Smith at McGill University

By Jingjing Li. On February 22th, 2018, Dr. Caley Smith from McGill’s School of Religious Studies (SRS) delivered a talk on ‘Buddhism and Orality’. Currently working on the Vedic tradition, Dr. Smith investigated the role of orality in various religious traditions, especially Buddhism, in his talk. He explored how the oral tradition is not the …

[Guest Lecture] UBC: Reconstructing Ānanda’s Grief in the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra (March 14, 2018)

The Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra, which tells the story of the Buddha’s death, is attested in at least four languages: Pali, Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese. Although all four versions agree on the general features of the story, there are a number of details in which they differ, most notably with respect to the Buddha’s closest disciple, Ānanda. In one particularly moving scene, when the Buddha announces …