Kammie Takahashi
Education
- Ph.D., University of Virginia
- M.A., University of Virginia
- B.A., Mount Holyoke College
Teaching Interests
My teaching and research together reflect my deep commitment to enhancing our curiosities about one another and to honing sensitive instruments of learning which help to make the once “strange” familiar. Religion studies is a multidisciplinary field, making our approaches both challenging and exciting. Whether it is teaching the discovery of the Tibetan Book of the Dead in my course Death and Desire, deconstructing popular understandings of such terms as ‘yoga’ and ‘buddha’ in Buddhist traditions, or networking across departments in planning a Japanese folk and jazz fusion concert for religions of Japan, I hope to facilitate learning in which once comfortably closed stances regarding ‘us’ and ‘them’ begin to open. Material artifacts can bring cultures into clearer view. I bring scrolls, amulets, spirit tablets, devotional paintings and music into my discussions so students can directly touch the manifestations of the abstract ideas they study. My course on Pilgrimage: Rites of Way has instilled in me the importance of journeying together as well, and I have taken students to see Himalayan art collections, talk with monks in a Tibetan monastery, and even to Japan to give them a sense of what it means to study religion in its fullest possible context.
Research and Scholarship
What happens to religious practices in the transmission process? Our own globalized networks of communication and ideas bring these kinds of questions to the fore of our conversations about religion. My work explores a very important moment in the development of Buddhism, its transfer from India to Tibet in the 8th and 9th centuries. Looking at both Silk Road manuscripts and modern collections of ancient texts, I investigate how linguistic and cultural differences are bridged (or ignored), how social and political climates shape people’s use of religious ritual and what it means for a religious tradition to be understood as ‘foreign’ or ‘native.’ Even the smallest details like scribal copyist error and interlinear notes can tell us a great deal about how teachings were passed. The relationship between two masters of Buddhist tantra, Indian Buddhaguhya and Tibetan Peyang, has been rich ground for these explorations.
Most recently, I have begun to investigate a later form of tantric Buddhism in Japan called Shugendo as it was practiced in rural Tohoku. Integrating Shinto and Buddhist practice and cosmology, Shugendo is another fascinating site of religious transmission across borders.
- Ecology and Religion
- Pilgrimage: Rites of Way
- Religion Studies Internship: Muhlenberg College: SLCE
- Religions of Japan
- Bridge Builders Awards
- Mellon Foundation Grant for course development and site visit to Japan
- Parents' Fund Award
- Center for Ethics Faculty Course Development Grant
Publications
- Like Birds Soaring and Fish Gliding: View and Method in the Mahāyoga Texts of Buddhaguhya. The Journal of the International Association for Buddhist Studies (41) 2018: 235-70..
- A Luminous Transcendence of Views: The Thirty Apophatic Topics in dPal dbyangs's Thugs kyi sgron ma . Revue d'Etudes Tibétaines (42) 2018: 159-177).
- dPal dbyangs. The Treasury of Lives: A Biographical Encyclopedia of Tibet, Inner Asia, and the Himalaya. 2018. Forthcoming
- Contribution, Attribution, and Selective Lineal Amnesia in the Case of Mahāyogin dPal dbyangs in Revue d'Etudes Tibétaines (32) 2015.
- Ritual and Philosophical Speculation in the Rdo rje sems dpa'i zhus lan in Aspects of Esoteric Buddhism at Dunhuang, eds. Matthew T. Kapstein and Sam van Schaik. Leiden: EJ Brill, 2010.
Presentations
- Minding the Mountain and Surveying the Sea: Integrating ecology and Religion Studies in Japan, ASIANetwork Annual Conference, Spring 2018.
- The (Concentric) Magic Circles of Hosoda’s Summer Wars: Religion, media, and play, ASIANetwork Annual Conference, Spring 2017.
- Pronouncing Praxis and Doing Doxography: Exploring the functions of genre in early Tibetan tantra, McMaster University Numata Buddhist Studies Lecture Series, invited lecture, Spring 2017.
- Buddhaguhya’s Greater and Lesser Lam rnam par bkod pa,University of Toronto Buddhist Studies Department, invited workshop, Spring 2017.
- The Many Meanings of Death in Buddhist Traditions Worldwide, Lehigh Valley Hospice, invited lecture, Spring 2017.
- View and Method in the Tantric Texts of Buddhaguhya, Religion Studies Department Colloquium, Spring 2016.
- Birds and Fishes: View and method in the Mahāyoga texts of Buddhaguhya, American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, Fall 2015.
- Tibetan Buddhism in Bhutan and Nepal, University of Pennsylvania, invited lecture, Spring 2015.
- Unobserved, Unobserving: Meditations on nonduality in early Tibetan tantra, ASIANetwork Annual Conference, Spring 2015.
- Body and Spirit in Dzogchen Great Perfection panel organizer, ASIANetwork Annual Conference, Spring 2015.
- Luce Fellowship Mentor Roundtable participant, ASIANetwork Annual Conference, Spring 2015.
- Buddhist Deathways, Lehigh Valley Hospice, invited lecture Fall 2014.,
- Surpassing the Unsurpassed and Delineating the Indivisible: Buddhaguhya’s Heuristic Mārgavyūha, International Association of Tibetan Studies, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, Summer 2013.
- Celebration and Elision: The [missing] life of Peyang, Association of Asian Studies Annual Meeting, San Diego, Spring 2013.
- Knots in the Sky: Boundaries and unboundedness in early Tibetan tantra, Centre College, invited lecture Spring 2012.
- Contribution, Attribution, and Selective Lineal Amnesia, American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, Fall 2011.
Religion Studies
Contact: kammietakahashi@muhlenberg.edu