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Photo by Todd Cheney UCLA PHOTO
Robert Buswell has brought national prominence to UCLA
in the study of Asian languages and cultures.
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Ex-monk leads Asian studies
BY MEG SULLIVAN
UCLA Today
Much to the bewilderment of his Methodist parents, Robert Buswell
dropped out of college in 1974 and announced plans to set out for
a Buddhist monastery in Thailand.
“My mother’s reaction was: ‘What about my grandchildren?’
” recalled the chair of the Department of East Asian Languages
and Cultures with a chuckle.
She needn’t have worried about her son’s ability to
bring good things to life.
One of only two scholars currently active in academe to have been
fully ordained Buddhist monks, the Berkeley Ph.D. and 17-year UCLA
College veteran has brought one distinction after another to UCLA.
Both of the centers he has established now rank as the largest
of their kind in the country: the Center for Korean Studies, founded
in 1993, and the Center for Buddhist Studies, founded in 2000.
“UCLA is seen as the most exciting place for studying Buddhism
today,” said art historian Robert Brown, an affiliated scholar
with the center. “It’s the happening place, which is
amazing because the program is so new.”
Meanwhile, a program in Korean Christianity, also founded in 2000
by Buswell, is the first — and only — academic program
to look at the cultural impact of Christianity in contemporary Korea.
So vast, in fact, has been Buswell’s impact that his department
will be renamed this spring to reflect the strength he helped add
in South and Southeast Asian studies. While maintaining its traditional
strengths in Korean, Japanese and Chinese studies, UCLA’s
newly christened Department of Asian Languages and Cultures will
boast one of the nation’s largest faculties in Southeast Asian
and Indic studies and will be the nation’s leader in Indian
religion.
“Robert is capable of pulling rabbits out of the most unlikely
hats,” marveled Gregory Schopen, a professor of Indian Buddhism.
Another recent feat is the creation of the 1,000-page Encyclopedia
of Buddhism (Macmillan), the first truly comprehensive resource
of its kind to be published in a Western language. As editor-in-chief,
Buswell spent three years mobilizing a team of 250 contributors,
including UCLA Buddhist scholars William M. Bodiford, Schopen, Jonathan
A. Silk and Brown.
Although an ex-monk, Buswell still clings to the habits of the
monastery. At the Topanga Canyon home he shares with wife Christina,
a translator of Korean Buddhist texts, he tends a Zen garden. Most
afternoons he closes his office door for 10 to 15 minutes of meditation.
At conferences, he folds himself into a cross-legged position.
“He is the only person I know over the age of 4 who can
easily and quite comfortably assume the lotus while perched on an
office chair,” noted Tim Tangherlini, an associate professor
of Asian languages and cultures, and vice chair of the College’s
Scandinavian Section.
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