Conference on Buddhist Ethics

The USC East Asian Studies Center presents a conference on the application of Buddhist ethics to modern social issues.

The conference host is Rongdao Lai, assistant professor in the School of Religion at USC. Like the first conference, held at Dickinson College in the summer of 2016, the conference organizers envision a small, intimate gathering of scholars who have an interest in the application of Buddhist principles to important social issues. The 2018 conference will consider Buddhist resources for thinking about two or three important topics (yet to be determined). It is hoped that the conference will help to nurture a community to promote the study of Buddhist ethics.

To achieve the goal of a small, intimate gathering, participation in the conference will be by invitation only. The conference organizers will invite an array of scholars who work in the areas to be discussed, attempting to get a mix of different specialties and people who are in different stages of their careers. Each session will begin with a presentation of not more than 30 minutes in which a speaker will summarize the principle resources in Buddhist texts for the area, provide historical context, and raise questions for discussion. The questions will have been circulated to participants in advance of the conference. There will then follow a discussion moderated by one or more of the conference organizers and the speaker.