Virtual Open House for prospective students. More info TBD.

Date: August 20, 2020
Time: 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM

More info TBA

Date: September 10, 2020
Time: 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM

more info TBA

Date: October 15, 2020
Time: 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM

Today's lecture by Pyi Phyo Kyaw of King's College is part of our Jun Zhou Lectures in Theravada Buddhism Series. Her lecture is entitled "The Infinite Method: Mathematics of the Paṭṭhāna." It will be held in Swift Hall Common Room (1st floor) at 4:30pm

The Paṭṭhāna, the seventh text of the Abhidhamma Piṭaka, deals with the functioning of causality and interdependence in Theravāda thought. It uses the mathematics of enumeration and combinatorics to plumb the depths of causality. The emphasis on the Paṭṭhāna in Burmese Buddhism has been influenced by sociopolitical conceptions, developments and institutions. This paper focuses on a more technical aspect of the Paṭṭhāna – the Saṅkhyā-vāra, ‘Enumeration sections’. I examine the Paṭṭhāna through analysis of its mathematics, demonstrating not only the types of mathematics being used to further understand the nature and depths of causality, but also close parallels between the mathematics of the Paṭṭhāna and the mathematics of ‘combinatorics’.

Dr Pyi Phyo Kyaw is Dean of Graduate Studies and Lecturer in Theravada Studies at Shan State Buddhist University, Taunggyi, Myanmar. She is also a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at King’s College, London, United Kingdom. She studied BA in Economics and Management at Oxford University, before completing MA in Buddhist Studies at SOAS in 2010, and PhD in Buddhist Philosophy at King’s College, London in 2014. She has undertaken meditation practice within different meditation traditions in Myanmar for the past 14 years. She has also undertaken monastic training in Myanmar as a precept-nun in a meditation centre based at Pyay (formerly Prome) in 2007 and 2015.

She specialises in Burmese Buddhism, Abhidhamma (Theravada analytical philosophy), Theravada meditation, Buddhist business practices, and Buddhist ethics. She also teaches Vipassana meditation in Budapest, Hungary.

This series of six lectures on Theravada Buddhism is supported through a generous gift by Mr. Jun Zhou.

Need an accommodation to attend a Divinity School event? Please contact Suzanne Riggle in advance at 773-702-8219.

Date: October 15, 2020
Time: 4:30 PM - 6:00 PM

See: https://voices.uchicago.edu/buddhiststudies/2019/07/08/the-jun-zhou-lectures-in-theravada-buddhism/

The Divinity School is pleased to offer a series of six lectures on various topics in Theravada Buddhism during the 2019-2020 academic year. Kate Crosby, Professor of Buddhist Studies in the department of Theology and Religious Studies at King’s College, London, will deliver today's Jun Zhou Lecture in Theravada Buddhism: "Esoteric Theravada Meditation: Corruption or Abhidhamma?"

Monday, November 9, 2020 at 4:30pm, Swift Common Room.

This talk will examine the esoteric meditation that dominated much of the Theravada world before the modern period. It will examine features that have seemed heterodox, and gained it a reputation as a corrupt form of Theravada and then counter this by considering how it enacts the path of transformation expounded in commentarial Abhidhamma.

Kate Crosby works on Sanskrit, Pali and Pali-vernacular literature, and on Theravada practice in the pre-modern and modern periods. She is interested in meditation, the history of the relationship between Buddhism and other technologies, and how varying responses to modernity influenced the shape, rhetoric and practice of Theravada Buddhism in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. Her publications include The Bodhicaryavatara; The Dead of Night & the Women; Theravada Buddhism: Continuity, Diversity, Identity and Traditional Theravada Meditation and its Modern Era Suppression.

This series of six lectures on Theravada Buddhism is supported through a generous gift by Mr. Jun Zhou.

Need an accommodation to attend a Divinity School event? Please contact Suzanne Riggle in advance at 773-702-8219.

Date: November 9, 2020
Time: 4:30 PM - 6:00 PM

The Divinity School is pleased to offer a series of six lectures on various topics in Theravada Buddhism during the 2019-2020 academic year. Kate Crosby, Professor of Buddhist Studies in the department of Theology and Religious Studies at King’s College, London, will deliver today's Jun Zhou Lecture in Theravada Buddhism: "Esoteric Theravada Meditation: Corruption or Abhidhamma?"

4:30pm, Swift Common Room.

This talk will examine the esoteric meditation that dominated much of the Theravada world before the modern period. It will examine features that have seemed heterodox, and gained it a reputation as a corrupt form of Theravada and then counter this by considering how it enacts the path of transformation expounded in commentarial Abhidhamma.

Kate Crosby works on Sanskrit, Pali and Pali-vernacular literature, and on Theravada practice in the pre-modern and modern periods. She is interested in meditation, the history of the relationship between Buddhism and other technologies, and how varying responses to modernity influenced the shape, rhetoric and practice of Theravada Buddhism in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. Her publications include The Bodhicaryavatara; The Dead of Night & the Women; Theravada Buddhism: Continuity, Diversity, Identity and Traditional Theravada Meditation and its Modern Era Suppression.

This series of six lectures on Theravada Buddhism is supported through a generous gift by Mr. Jun Zhou.

Need an accommodation to attend a Divinity School event? Please contact Suzanne Riggle in advance at 773-702-8219.

Date: November 10, 2020
Time: 4:30 PM - 6:00 PM

A two-day symposium on Portraiture in Visual and Literary Culture (Ancient to Medieval).

Please see website for details and locations.

Organizers: Karin Krause, Marion Meyer, Claudia Rapp, and Lioba Thesis

This event is support by the Chicago - Vienna Faculty Grant Program, the Department of Art History and Department of Classics

Starts: November 12, 2020
Ends: November 15, 2020
Time: 10:00 AM

See: https://arthistory.uchicago.edu/happenings/events/portraiture-visual-and-literary-culture-ancient-medieval

more info TBA

Date: November 13, 2020
Time: 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM

More info TBA

Date: December 15, 2020
Time: 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM