Published: Oct. 17, 2013

Janet Gyatso inaugurated a Buddhist Studies Lecture Series, a collaboration between the University of Colorado and Naropa University. The lecture, "Ways of Knowing the Body in Buddhist Tantra and Tibetan Medicine," took place at 6 p.m. on Thursday, October 17 in Hale 270.

Ways of Knowing the Body in Buddhist Tantra and Tibetan Medicine Janet Gyatso, Harvard University.

Thursday, October 17 at 6 p.m. | Hale 270, CU Boulder campus.

Traditional Tibetan medicine sometimes found its Buddhist heritage and its urge for empirical knowledge of the body to be at odds, and made unusual efforts to separate itself from religious ways of knowing. At the same time, the line between yogic and sensory observation was not easy to draw. This lecture will explore how the body became the focus of some of the most interesting theoretical reflection, from the dawn of Tibetan Buddhism into the time of the height of the central Tibetan government's powers in the 17th century.

Janet Gyatso is the Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies at Harvard University. She is a leading voice in the field of Buddhist Studies as the author of a pioneering work on Tibetan autobiography, Apparitions of the Self: The Secret Autobiographies of a Tibetan Visionary (1998), and editor of several important anthologies, Women of Tibet, co-edited with Hanna Havnevik (2005) and In the Mirror of Memory: Reflections on Mindfulness and Remembrance in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism (1992). Over her long and distinguished careers, Janet Gyatso has been a pioneering voice in several areas in the study of Tibetan Buddhism: revelation, gender, tantra, monasticism, medical conceptions of the body, and questions of modernity. Her lecture addresses themes of her forthcoming book, titled: The Way of Humans in a Buddhist World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet.

There will be a light reception starting at 5:30pm. The reception and lecture are free and open to the public.  View the poster announcement

This event is sponsored by the Center for Asian Studies in conjunction with Naropa University.