Prof. Paul Harrison, Keynote: ‘Mahāyāna Sūtras: Reading As, Reading For, Reading Into’

Prof. Paul Harrison
George Edwin Burnell Professor of Religious Studies, Stanford University

‘Mahāyāna Sūtras: Reading As, Reading For, Reading Into’

Paul Harrison is the George Edwin Burnell Professor of Religious Studies at Stanford University. Educated in his native New Zealand and in Australia, he specializes in Buddhist literature and history, especially that of the Mahāyāna, and in the study of Buddhist manuscripts in Sanskrit, Chinese and Tibetan. He is the author of The Samādhi of Direct Encounter with the Buddhas of the Present, and of numerous journal articles on Buddhist sacred texts and their interpretation. He is also one of the editors of the series ‘Buddhist Manuscripts in the Schøyen Collection’.
Paul’s current projects include editions and translations of a number of Mahāyāna and Mainstream Buddhist sūtras and śāstras, including the Vajracchedikā (Diamond Sūtra), the Vimalakīrtinirdeśa, and an early Chinese Saṃyuktāgama anthology.

Paul serves as Co-Director of the Ho Center for Buddhist Studies at Stanford and is currently the Chair of the Department of Religious Studies.