Circle of Japan

Department of Asian Languages & Cultures Robert Buswell holds the Irving and Jean Stone Endowed Chair in Humanities at UCLA, where he is also Distinguished Professor of Buddhist Studies and founding director of UCLA’s Center for Buddhist Studies and Center for Korean Studies. He is a specialist in the meditative traditions of Buddhism, and especially the Zen tradition. Buswell was ordained as a Buddhist monk in Thailand and lived as a monk in Asia for seven years before returning to academia. He has published extensively on Buddhism, including a recounting of his five years as a Zen monk in Korea in The Zen Monastic Experience. His most recent book, Numinous Awareness is Never Dark, explores the issue of whether enlightenment in Buddhism is a product of a gradual process of meditative development or a sudden burst of insight. (Spoiler alert: it’s both.) Buswell has also served as president of the Association for Asian Studies, the largest such professional organization in the world with over 7,000 members, and the first UCLA faculty member to be elected to that position.