"Love and Lust in Classic South Asian Buddhism" with José Cabezón on Sept 10th
We are delighted to welcome José Cabezón, the Dalai Lama Chair in Buddhist Studies at UC Santa Barbara for a public lecture on "Love and Lust in Classic South Asian Buddhism." The lecture will take place on Thursday, September 10th at 6pm in British Studies Room on the 5th Floor of Norlin Library. This will be the third annual Trungpa Lecture, a collaboration between the Department of Religious Studies at CU Boulder and Naropa University.
This lecture explores the ambivalent attitudes to romantic love and erotic desire in a variety of Buddhist texts preserved in Pali, Sanskrit, and Tibetan. Being a celibate ascetic tradition, classical exoteric Buddhism is skeptical about anything having to do with sexuality. On the one hand, this literature acknowledges the existence and power of romantic love. On the other, it uses a variety of rhetorical strategies to denigrate it. This lecture explores this ambivalence and briefly considers whether the antinomian Mahayana tradition (including Tantra) represents a safe haven for love.
José Cabezón holds the Dalai Lama Chair in Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. With longstanding interests in gender and sexuality, he has completed a lengthy study on the topic, Sexuality in Classical South Asian Buddhism, currently in press.
Sponsored by the Department of Religious Studies in conjunction with Naropa University and with special thanks to the Uberoi Foundation. Free and open to the public.