Emory-Tibet Science Initiative: Changes in Monastic Science Learning Motivation and Engagement During a Six-Year Curriculum

Led by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the initiative taken by the Tibetan Buddhist monastic community to connect with western science and scientists presents a unique opportunity to understand the motivations and engagement behaviors that contribute to monastic science learning. In this study, we draw on quantitative data from two distinct surveys that track motivations and engagement behaviors related to science education among monastic students. The first survey was administered at one monastic university in 2018, and the second follow-up survey was completed by students at two monastic universities in 2019. These surveys assessed the reception of science education related to motivations among monastics and their demonstration of engagement-with-science behaviors. We also tested for variation over time by surveying students in all years of the science curriculum. We identified that monastic students are motivated by their perception that studying science has an overall positive effect and benefits their Buddhist studies, rather than negatively affecting their personal or collective Buddhist goals. In accordance with this finding, monastics behave in ways that encourage fellow scholars to engage with science concepts. Survey responses were disaggregated by years of science study and indicated changes in motivation and engagement during the six-year science curriculum. These insights support the relevance of considering motivation and engagement in a novel educational setting and inform ongoing work to expand the inclusiveness of science education. Our findings provide direction for future avenues of enhancing exchange of knowledge and practice between Buddhism and science.

Empowering Skepticism: Neuroethics Engagement with Tibetan Buddhist Monastics

Neuroethics has been incorporated into neuroscience training through the Science for Monks program since 2016. In this article, I describe this in-progress effort and I consider how the program has changed since this first year to develop into a pilot program in community-engaged participatory research with the monastic community. The current goals of the project are to train the monastics in social science research skills as a means of empowering them to harness their deep knowledge of ethics and to bring it to bear on ethical challenges in neuroscience, neurology, and neurotechnology.

Reconstructing the childhood diet of individuals buried with the Pictish monastic community at Portmahomack

This research aims to reconstruct the childhood diets (aged 9–10 years) of the individuals buried during the active years of the Pictish monastic community (hereafter referred to as PMC) from early medieval (7th–11th century) Portmahomack in north-east Scotland, using 13C and 15N isotopes. Dietary reconstructions were achieved by isotope analysis of δ13C and δ15N on the tooth root apex from permanent first molars (M1) of 26 adult male individuals. The results indicate that the indi-viduals in PMC predominantly consumed terrestrial C3 resources during childhood, with a rich terrestrial protein diet and some marine resource consumption. Statistically significant differences were observed between childhood and adulthood diets (the latter derived from previous research), suggesting that when these individuals were children, they consumed more marine protein than in later years as adults. This is true for all individuals, whether or not they spent significant time in Portmahomack during their childhoods. This is the most extensive study of the childhood diet of in-dividuals from the PMC and so makes a significant contribution to augmenting information on diet and lifestyles in Pictish Scotland.

MONASTIC SPIRITUALITY IN THE TEACHING OF SAINT BASIL THE GREAT

The spiritual training of the exceptional beacon of the Cappadocian Fathers, Saint Basil the Great, influenced the subsequent ecclesial life, but especially the monastic one, by the divinely inspired rules, which became essential for all the subsequent monastic settlements, the fruits of the monastic spirituality according to his teaching being substantiated in the principles governing the life of the monastic community by love, obedience, teaching, knowledge, asceticism, without despising the hermitic (skete) life, trying to combine the most useful principles of both of these forms of monastic asceticism.

Vitae et Miracula Sancti Christoduli Patmensis

The Greek dossier on St. Christodoulos, founder of the monastery of Patmos (1088), consists of four texts, three vitae and a narrative of a miracle, all written within roughly two centuries after the saint’s death by brethren of his monastic community. They are not only important for the reconstruction of the course of life of one of the most famous Byzantine saints, but they are also a unique source for the political and social history of Byzantium and the Eastern Mediterranean from the late 11th to the 13th century. Despite their great importance, these texts have remained almost unknown until today because they are contained in a 19th century edition that is hardly accessible any more and was intended exclusively for the monks and visitors of the John Prodromos Monastery. The new critical edition, which is accompanied by a critical and exhaustive apparatus of sources as well as an index of personal names and of all passages of previous authors quoted or referred to in the texts, will be appreciated by historians and literary scholars alike. Historians will now have at their disposal an important source for the history of the Comnenian period and beyond, while scholars interested in Byzantine literature will have the opportunity to examine in depth four important and rather complex documents, which offer three different visions of the phenomenon of sanctity in Byzantium at the eve of the Fourth Crusade. The introduction discusses several literary, historical and text-critical aspects of the dossier. Extensive summaries in English make these texts available to a wider audience for the first time.

О двух ойратских списках «Наказа Манджушри» из коллекции Н. Д. Кичикова (по материалам Кетченеровского краеведческого музея)

Introduction. The written heritage of Kalmyk Buddhist priests, their daily practices, liturgical repertoire still remain a poorly studied page in the history of Buddhism among Mongolic peoples in the 20th century. The survived collections, clusters of religious texts prove instrumental in revealing most interesting aspects of their activities, efforts aimed at preservation of Buddhist teachings, their popularization and dissemination among believers. Goals. The paper examines two Oirat copies of the Precepts of the Omniscient [Manjushri] from N. D. Kichikov’s collection, transliterates and translates the original texts, provides a comparative analysis, and notes differences therein that had resulted from the scribe’s work, thereby introducing the narratives into scientific circulation. Materials. The article describes two Oirat manuscripts bound in the form of a notebook and contained in different bundles/collections of Buddhist religious texts stored at Ketchenery Museum of Local History and Lore. As is known, the collection is largely compiled from texts that belonged to the famous Kalmyk Buddhist monk Namka (N. D. Kichikov). Results. The analysis of the two Oirat texts with identical titles — Precepts of the Omniscient [Manjushri] — shows that their contents coincide generally but both the texts contain fragmented omissions (separate words, one or several sentences) that are present in the other. At the same time, when omitting fragments of the text addressed to the monastic community, the scribe was obviously guided by that those would be superfluous for the laity. Thus, our comparative analysis of the two manuscript copies demonstrates the sometimes dramatic role of the scribe in transmitting Buddhist teachings.

Monastic Musical Fragments from Iceland

Little has survived from medieval liturgical books in the Nordic countries other than fragments. It is often difficult, if not impossible, to state their exact provenance, but the contents sometimes indicate that they once belonged to a monastic institution. The article presents some of these sources, focusing on two fragments with music for the celebration of St Olav from Iceland and Sweden which show how an already established sequence of songs was adapted to fit the liturgical needs of a monastic community. In addition, it briefly presents two other Icelandic sources that follow monastic use and can shed more light on musical traditions in the Icelandic monasteries in the Middle Ages.

The Liturgical Calendar

Chapter 4 broadens its focus on Nechung Monastery’s ritual activities and annual calendar by exploring month-by-month the significant rites the monastic community historically performed every year. The New Year celebrations around the Jokhang Temple, the opera and musical performances at Drepung Monastery, and the Flower Offering Festival at Tsel Gungtang all illustrate the richness of Nechung’s liturgical involvement throughout the year, as well as its ties to other institutions and major Tibetan holidays. Moreover, these ritual practices and ceremonies reveal Nechung’s growing liturgical history, as the monastery accrued various rites from ritual masters, and in response to important events, throughout the centuries.