The Space That Is More than Space:

New Perspectives on Buddhist Sacred Sites in East Asia

Auguest 2, 2013

Auditorium, Asian Centre (1871 West Mall, UBC, Vancouver)

Sponsored by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [SSHRC]

Conference Program

8:30AM-8: 50AM: Registration
8: 50AM-9: 00AM: Welcome Remarks

Keynote Speech

9:00 AM-10: 00 AM
Ven. Shengkai 釋聖凱 (Associate Professor, Tsinghua University), “Zhongguo fojiao ‘Sida
mingshan’ xinyang de xingcheng” 中國佛教”四大名山”信仰傳統的形成 (The formation of the tradition of belief in the “Four Famous Mountains” in Chinese Buddhism)

Panel One: Sacred Sites, Politics, and Society

10: 00 AM-12: 00 PM: Chair: Robban Toleno (UBC); Discussant: Brenton Sullivan (UBC)

Rosanna Sze (Ph.D., independent scholar), “Creating Sacred Space for Political Propaganda: Xian Yan’s Deification
of Aśokan Stūpa”

Van Phan (Ph.D. Candidate, UBC), “A Cursory Survey of Mount Jilong: the Centre of Power and Ideas of the Yongming
Era (483-493)”

Dewei Zhang (Postdoctoral Fellow, UBC), “Transforming Mount Huangshan into a Sacred Buddhist Site: A Failed Attempt
in Seventeenth-Century China”

Lunch Break: 12:00PM-2:30PM

Panel Two: Sacred Space, Lore, and Buddhism

2:30 PM-4:00 PM: Chair: Prof. Bruce Rusk (UBC); Discussant: Prof. Carla Nappi (UBC)

Brenton Sullivan (Postdoctoral Fellow, UBC), “Chan Buddhism, Apparitions of Mañjuśrī,
and the Sacred Mount Wutai”

Robban Toleno (Ph.D. Candidate, UBC), “Sacred or Profane? Spacial Frames in Yichu’s
Shishi liutie, a Buddhist Encyclopedia from Tenth-Century China”

4:00PM-4:10PM: Concluding Remarks