Stephen Jenkins, "Buddhist Stairways to Heaven" (in-person & online)

This event will be both in-person & online. The "go to online event page" on your Ticket will give you access the Zoom link as well as directions for in-person attendance at Manglam Research Center in Berkeley, CA.

To register for the entire series on "Mind, Death, & Rebirth," please go here.

*If tickets are sold-out, you can choose "Donate (any amount)" in the "Get Ticket" options for in-person or online entry.

A recording of this talk will be shared via email a few days after the event.

Description: The vast majority of lay and monastic Buddhists, including great figures like Buddhaghosa and Xuanzang, did not expect to achieve liberation, but instead aspired to heavenly rebirth. The "dharmalogical heavens" and related beliefs and practices provided precedents and competition for pure lands. Angelic Devatā are the blessed dead who ascend, never to fall, to pure heavens of bliss, radiance, and super-longevity ideal for receiving Dharma. Buddhists pursue heaven through a broad range of practices and as standard outcomes of the jhānas. The academic view that such rebirth is mistaken is an error belied by the host of Buddhist saints considered to abide there and by standard Buddhist teachings. Heavenly rebirth offers a robust soteriology with a proximate goal motivating entire civilizations, rather than just an elite group of ascetics. This aspect of belief and practice , which sustained Buddhism for millennia, is threatened by modernist rejections of karmic rebirth and cosmology.

Stephen Jenkins is Professor Emeritus at CalPoly Humboldt University. He received his doctorate from Harvard. His research primarily focuses on Buddhist concepts of compassion, their philosophical grounding, and their ethical implications. His current research is on the Indian origins of pure land soteriologies and their antecedents in heavenly rebirth. His understanding of Buddhism is informed by teaching abroad in India, Tibet, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Thailand, and Japan. Recent publications include: “Heavenly Rebirth and Buddhist Soteriology,” in The Oxford Handbook of Buddhist Practice, 2022; "Buddhist Challenges to the Contemporary Ethical Discourse of Violence versus Nonviolence," in Buddhist Violence and Religious Authority, 2022; and "Compassion Blesses the Compassionate," in Buddhist Visions of the Good Life for All, 2021.

Host or Publisher Mangalam Research Center