Buddhism expert Luis Gómez to share insights in free lecture

Buddhism scholar Luis Gómez will be the guest speaker as the Florida State University Department of Religion hosts its ninth annual Tessa J. Bartholomeusz Memorial Lecture. Gómez, a research professor at El Colegio de México and formerly the Charles O. Hucker Collegiate Professor of Buddhist Studies at the University of Michigan, will speak on “Distorted Views: Buddhism with a ‘Self’? The Inversion of Traditional Doctrinal Categories in the (Mahāyāna) Mahāparinirvāna Mahā Sūtra.”

The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will take place:

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 3

5:30 P.M.

AUGUSTA CONRADI STUDIO THEATRE, 123 WILLIAMS BUILDING

THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

Gómez describes his upcoming lecture as follows:

In the technical language of Buddhism, a viparyāsa, or in the full canonical phrase a viparyāsa-samjñā, is a misperception, misapprehension or misconception of certain essential attributes of things. It is a distortion such that we imagine those attributes as their exact opposites. Typically it is the misconception of the fleeting as stable and lasting, the impure and imperfect as pure and perfect, the painful as pleasurable, and what is not self as self.

The last of these four is considered, by most accounts, the cornerstone of a Buddhist philosophy of liberation. And the distortion itself (the idea of a self) is the cause of most, if not all, human ills. Yet Buddhists often speak of “our true nature,” a “Buddha nature,” a Dharmakāya, “seeing into one’s true nature,” and even of “a true self.” These expressions admit to many different interpretations. The question is, how shall we understand an interpretation that openly asserts that there is a true self and that to imagine that we have no self is an inverted view?

The history of Buddhism offers more than one example of “re-visions” that assert the opposite of an accepted or canonical view, yet claim to be revealing the true meaning of the accepted view. Not surprisingly, it is possible to assert the opposite of a doctrine grounding this assertion on a particular interpretation of the “true intent” of that same, original doctrine.

In this lecture, I will contextualize one such re-vision — an inversion of an inversion, if you will.