The two-day annual conference of the United Kingdom Association of Buddhist Studies was hosted by the University of Edinburgh on Zoom and Gather and drew into attendance over 100 European and American scholars of Buddhist Studies, Art History, and other cognate fields.
Professor of Buddhist Studies Pamela Winfield delivered a keynote address for the 25th annual conference of the United Kingdom Association of Buddhist Studies (UKABS) on Friday, July 2, 2021.
The two-day virtual event was hosted by the University of Edinburgh on Zoom and Gather and drew into attendance over 100 European and American scholars of Buddhist Studies, Art History, and other cognate fields. The theme of this year鈥檚 conference was “Word, Image, Object, Performance.”
Winfield鈥檚 keynote speech focused on the role of language as it relates to real-world forms in Buddhism. It was entitled 鈥淲hat鈥檚 In A N膩ma? A R奴pa Would Smell As Sweet: Reflections on Sensational Buddhism.鈥 Her title alluded to the classical Sanskrit terms for 鈥渘ame and form鈥 (n膩ma r奴pa) and put a Buddhist spin on Shakespeare’s famous line about the arbitrariness of language and the primacy of the visual/material/physical object itself that can be grasped by sensory perception. Her phrase, 鈥漇ensational Buddhism,鈥 alluded to Sally Promey鈥檚 important edited volume on Sensational Religion: Sensory Cultures and Material Practice (Yale University Press, 2014).
The first section of Winfield鈥檚 talk reviewed Buddhist theories of sensory perception. It acknowledged that early classical Indian Buddhism and 鈥淢ind Only鈥 Buddhism privileged the realms of formless meditation, but then argued that the very metaphors used to envision such states (e.g. atop mountaintops, or below the flowering mind) were themselves in-formed by forms.
The second section of her talk focused on later Mah膩y膩na Buddhist theories of the imagination and representation that located enlightenment squarely in the material realm. This section concluded that the feedback loop of religion is a process of 鈥渕aking it up鈥 and 鈥渕aking it real,鈥 as forms continually create and reinforce abstract notions and texts about ultimate reality.
The third section of Winfield鈥檚 talk took up the abstract concept of emptiness, the definition of enlightenment itself. In Sanskrit, the term 艣unya-t膩 (lit. 鈥渮ero鈥-ness) drew upon the image of a newly engineered number line, and in Chinese and Japanese, the character k奴 (lit. open, sky) included ideographic elements for both 鈥渉ole鈥 as well as 鈥渃onstruction.鈥 聽As a result, even the most abstract and enigmatic ideas about awakening are rooted in the forms of the real world, for as the Heart S奴tra says 鈥渇orm is emptiness, emptiness is form.鈥
Winfield鈥檚 closing remarks encouraged her fellow conference participants to therefore 鈥渢each sensationally,鈥 that is, to engage all the senses of the students when teaching even highly abstract ideas about invisible religious ideals. Sensory stimulation draws in and demands an emotional response, from curiosity or even bewilderment before the unfamiliar, to the excitement and eagerness to study further. Sparking this powerful affective dimension is the hallmark of the sensational professor.