What's On

Our next meeting will be on:

Thursday July 15th – 6pm – Baitong Restaurant

(7 st 360, near Beung Keng Kang market)

Contact:

Emiko Stock  012 521 093

hshhpp@gmail.com

Eisel Mazard

 will talk about:

The Opposite of Buddhism:

European Colonialism and Interpretation

The legacy of European scholarship is burdened with distorting biases; conversely, the "canon" of this scholarship is increasingly available in digital formats, instantly accessible, and used throughout Asia (even within Buddhist monasteries) and incorporated into (seemingly) indigenous versions of Buddhist texts. The formative influence of Imperialism, Christianity, Theosophy and Aryan race theory in early European (mis-)interpretations of Theravada Buddhism continues to have implications for the current generation of scholars --both in Asia and in Europe.  This lecture broaches some of the outstanding problems of interpretation in the European tradition, tracing out a few patterns over a period of centuries, with some distortions originating in European colonialism but continuing to have salience to debates about the content of Buddhist philosophy that are ongoing (in Asia and Europe) today.

Eisel Mazard is a scholar of Pali, the most ancient language and literature of Theravada Buddhism, and of the history, languages and politics of Theravada Asia. His research has primarily concerned mainland Southeast Asia: Cambodia, Laos, Yunnan and Thailand.