Decoding the Yantra Yoga

Title of the talk: Decoding the Yantra Yoga within the Chinese and Tibetan Texts and Contexts of the Mongol-Yuan Period: A Multi-Dimensional Philological Attempt

Time: 7th June 2024, 4 pm
Venue: ELTE Faculty of Humanities, Building F, ground floor Kerényi Lecture Hall

To reveal the true face of the history of Tibetan Tantric Buddhism in Yuan China is a task of multi-dimensional philology. Firstly, we must decode these obscure terms of foreign origin in Chinese texts through skillful application of historical linguistics in multilingual contexts. Next, we must put these terms in the historical context of Tibetan Buddhism in order to discern their religious meanings in various dimensions. Buddhist philology is not only of methodological and instrumental significance, by reviewing the works of prior scholars in regards to interpreting the "Yantra Yoga," this lecture endeavors to illustrate the similarities and differences between textual studies and philology, analyze the respective multiple layers and dimensions of each field, and show that philological research is not merely the ‘sorting of documents,’ but in fact represents the basic methodology utilized across all fields of the humanities.

Philology is the key to effective historical and theoretical research. Modern humanities must be the discipline of historical and philological studies. It is via the restoration of these levels of detail that the original face of knowledge can be revealed: from the historical studies, to the linguistic, to the Tibetan and Buddhist studies, the emergence of new materials are the key factors behind our changing knowledge of the “Yantra Yoga.” Philology has to be always there no matter we are doing textual, linguistic, historical and religious (doctrinal) studies.

Weirong Shen received his Ph.D for Central Asian Philology at Bonn University, Germany. He is currently a professor at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences at Tsinghua University, and a professor at the Department of Chinese at Tsinghua University. He specializes in studies in languages and history of China’s Western Regions, the Tibetan history of Buddhism, and Sino-Tibetan Buddhism. His major publications are Philological Studies in the History of Tibetan Buddhism (Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House, 2010), Searching for Shangri-La (China Renmin University Press, 2010), Imagining Tibet: Monks, Living Buddhas, Lamas and Esoteric Buddhism from a Cross-Cultural Perspective (Beijing Normal University Press, 2015), Text and History: The Formation of Tibetan Buddhist Historical Narratives and the Construction of Sino-Tibetan Buddhist Studies (Peking University Press, China Tibetology Press, 2016), and Return to Philology (Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House, 2019).