Buddhist Tradition, Community and Forms of Life
FBK Aula Piccola
Fondazione Bruno Kessler - Polo delle Scienze Umane e sociali
Aula Piccola
FBK Aula Piccola
Fondazione Bruno Kessler - Polo delle Scienze Umane e sociali
Aula Piccola
The presentation will explore how solitude (self) and community are intimately connected in the practice of tradition and authority in (Theravada) Buddhism. Something of the idea of “solitude,” and its other expressions, may be found in the tradition of Buddhism depending on the historical lenses adopted; indeed, in the Western encounters with it, some have (misguidedly) equated Buddhism with an “otherworldly religion” only concerned with a certain kind of self-practice or “technology of the self” (i.e., solitude, meditation, self-practice, etc.). But Buddhism as a lived tradition over time is sustained in a community of various shared practices of hierarchy, authority, and relationships of power. That idea of tradition shares much in common with other (discursive-embodied) traditions like Christianity and Islam. More importantly, the talk will focus on this idea of tradition remaining essential to thinking about our modern politics and ethics; with reference to a recent mass political protest (Aragalaya) that overthrew the Sri Lankan government in 2022, the presentation will discuss how the modern practice of politics, ethics, and criticism very ironically aspires to the idea of tradition and the practices that organize its temporal stability and durability.
ANANDA ABEYSEKARA | Virginia Tech
Cycle of Seminars: “Solitude and Communion in Religion and Ethics“
Scientific coordination: Massimo Leone, FBK-ISR
The event, organized by FBK’s Center for Religious Studies, will be held in English.
The event will in the FBK Aula Piccola, while seats last, and online.
Registration by June 19, 2026 at 12:00 a.m. is required so as to arrange the connection.
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Image: AdobeStock_518968971
Speakers
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Ananda Abeysekara - Guest SpeakerVirginia TechAnanda Abeysekara is professor at the Department of Religion and Culture of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University - Virginia Tech (USA). His writing is a critical engagement with Buddhist Studies and Religious Studies scholarship and his areas of research interest are Theravada Buddhism, Sri Lanka, South Asia, tradition, political sovereignty, secularism, and colonialism and postcoloniality. He is interested in the question of religion by way of thinking about the “limits” of a tradition against the backdrop of the ensemble of modern social-political life. His focus is on how the secular notions of time—connected with modern ideas of capacity, sensibility, body, etc.—remain inadequate to grasp the temporality and the form of life in a tradition, marked by a tension between moment and destiny (kairos and chronos), between what begins and what passes away, between decisive action and repetition of practice.
Contacts
Organizers
The initiative was also realized thanks to the contribution of "Direzione generale Educazione, ricerca e istituti culturali" of the Ministry of Culture.