New Books in Buddhist Studies
by Marshall Poe
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/buddhist-studies
Episodes
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Living Chinese Philosophy: Zoetology As First Philosophy with Roger T. Ames (SUNY Press, 2025)
Contrasts classical Greek ontology ("the science of being in itself") with Confucian "zoetology" ("the art of living"). In Living Chinese Philosophy: Zoetology As First Philosophy (SUNY Press, 2025), Roger T. Ames uses comparative cultural hermeneutics as a method for contrasting classical Greek...
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Echoes of Incense on the Shikoku Pilgrimage with Don Weiss
Amy Chavez talks to Don Weiss, currently mid-way through the Shikoku Pilgrimage — Japan's 1,300 km Buddhist route that has been walked for almost as many years. Pilgrims share their journey with Kobo Daishi, patron saint of the 88-temple circuit and founder of Shingon Buddhism in Japan. Don...
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Jin Y. Park and Sumi Lee eds., "Korean Buddhism: Selected Readings from Primary Texts" (U Hawaii Press, 2026)
Today we're looking at a book that fills a gap that has existed for a long time. Korean Buddhism: Selected Readings from Primary Texts (U Hawaii Press, 2026), edited by Jin Park and Sumi Lee and published this year by the University of Hawai'i Press, is the first comprehensive introduction to…
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Stephen G. Covell, "The Teaching and Teachings of Temple Buddhism in Contemporary Japan" (U Hawaii Press, 2024)
How have Buddhist teachings come to be in modern and contemporary Japan and how are they taught? This pioneering work seeks to answer these questions by highlighting the public teachings of Temple Buddhism institutions, in particular Temple Buddhism kindergartens and Buddhist secondary schools…
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Meditation Sickness and the Dangers of Buddhist Practice with Pierce Salguero
Pierce Salguero joins us to discuss his new co-edited volume, Meditation Sickness: A Sourcebook on the Dangers of Buddhist Practice. While modern mindfulness frames meditation purely as a wellness tool, the Buddhist tradition has long recognized its inherent psychological and physical risks. We...
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Cultivating Consciousness: A Conversation with Ronald E. Purser on Mind Space (2026)
What does it mean to connect with mind and space without the typical baggage of contemporary meditation trends? In this episode of the New Books Network, Matthew Joseph O'Connell sits down with author and practitioner Ronald E. Purser to discuss his timely new book, Mind Space: Discovering...
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Benjamin J. Nourse, "The Power of Publishing in Early Modern Tibetan Buddhism"(Lexington Books, 2025)
The Power of Publishing in Early Modern Tibetan Buddhism (Lexington Books, 2025) is a rich exploration of the history of Tibetan books during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Looking at this ‘golden age’ of book production, Benjamin Nourse focuses on two core topics: What was...
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Bruno Shirley, "Religion, Gender, and Politics in Medieval Sri Lanka: The Reconstruction of Buddhist Kingship, ca. 1070-1215" (ARC Humanities Press, 2026)
Dr. Shirley's monograph, Religion, Gender, and Politics in Medieval Sri Lanka: The Reconstruction of Buddhist Kingship, ca. 1070-1215 (ARC Humanities Press, 2026), is now available open access, thanks to the generous support of the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation. This book offers a radical...
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Jue Liang, "Conceiving the Mother of Tibet: The Early Literary Lives of the Buddhist Saint Yeshe Tsogyel" (Oxford UP, 2026)
Conceiving the Mother of Tibet: The Early Literary Lives of the Buddhist Saint Yeshe Tsogyel (Oxford UP, 2026) is the first comprehensive study dedicated to the literary tradition surrounding Yeshe Tsogyel, revered as the foremost matron saint of Tibetan Buddhism. It traces the emergence and...
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Extraordinary, Mysterious, and Impossible Experiences, with Jeffrey Kriple
Today Pierce Salguero sit down with Prof. Jeff Kripal, noted scholar of religion at Rice University, to talk about extraordinary, mysterious, and “impossible” experiences. This is a conversation I’ve been waiting a few years to have. Together we explore what you can or can’t talk about in the...
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Gautamiputra Kamble, "The Seekers" (Blaft Publication, 2025)
The seekers in these stories travel through worlds both ancient and modern, worlds of symbol and fantastical allegory, on their paths to greater truth. The state of Maharashtra is famous for its ancient Buddhist cave complexes. It's also known as the birthplace of leaders in the struggle against...
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Just Stare at the Damn Wall!
Welcome to the Imperfect Buddha Podcast on the New Books Network. Today, we’re stripping away the incense and serenity to look at the cold, hard wall of practice. We are joined by Mark Shinji Blacknell, author of Just Stare at the Damn Wall!. Mark isn't your typical "mindfulness guru"—he’s been a...
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Kristina Jonutytė, "Between the Buddha and the New Tsar: Urban Religion and Minority Politics at the Asian Borderlands of Russia" (Cornell UP, 2026)
Between the Buddha and the New Tsar: Urban Religion and Minority Politics at the Asian Borderlands of Russia (Cornell UP, 2026) by Dr. Kristina Jonutytė is an ethnography of contemporary urban Buddhism in Buryatia, a republic within the Russian Federation. Kristina Jonutytė shows how—in this...
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Tibetan Medicine for Meditators, with Tawni Tidwell
Today I sit down with Dr. Tawni Tidwell, a biocultural anthropologist and Tibetan medicine doctor at the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Together we discuss how Tibetan medicine approaches the challenges that arise in the course of meditation. Along the way, we…
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Himanshu Prabha Ray ed., "Recentering Southeast Asia: Politics, Religion and Maritime Connections" (Routledge, 2026)
Recentering Southeast Asia: Politics, Religion and Maritime Connections (Routledge, 2026) assesses the impact of European colonization in the late 19th and early 20th century in ‘restructuring’ the shared past of India and Southeast Asia. It provides case studies that transcend colonial…
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Vanessa R. Sasson, "The Gathering: A Story of the First Buddhist Women" (Equinox, 2023)
Vanessa R. Sasson's book The Gathering: A Story of the First Buddhist Women (Equinox, 2023) is a retelling of the story of the first Buddhist women's request for ordination. Inspired by the Therigatha and building on years of research and experience in the field, Sasson follows Vimala, Patachara,...
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Natasha Heller, "Literature for Little Bodhisattvas: Making Buddhist Families in Modern Taiwan" (U Hawai'i Press, 2025)
In Literature for Little Bodhisattvas: Making Buddhist Families in Modern Taiwan (U Hawai'i Press, 2025), Natasha Heller makes two key interventions: first, she argues that picturebooks are a new genre of Buddhist writing, and second, she calls attention to an emergent family Buddhism in Taiwan...
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Sara Ann Swenson, "Near Light We Shine: Buddhist Charity in Urban Vietnam" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Sara Swenson is Assistant Professor of Religion and Affiliated Faculty in Asian Societies, Cultures, and Languages at Dartmouth College. Her areas of expertise include Religions of Southeast Asia, Buddhism in Vietnam, Gender and Sexuality, Affect Theory, and Ethnography. She received her Ph.D. in...
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Mercedes Valmisa, "All Things Act" (Oxford UP, 2025)
All Things Act explores the collective character of action to expand the ways we think about agency. First, it resists viewing agency as a capacity, much less one exclusive to humans. Instead, it defines agency as an umbrella term for the concrete sociomaterial processes that emerge from the...
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Nile Green, "Serendipitous Translations: A Sourcebook on Sri Lanka in the Islamic Indian Ocean" (U Texas Press, 2026)
Sri Lanka has long sat astride the monsoon winds between the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea – a small island at the centre of a very big story. For over a thousand years, Muslim pilgrims, merchants, scholars, and soldiers have passed through “Lanka” or “Sarandib”, leaving traces in Arabic,...
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Thomas J. Mazanec, "Poet-Monks: The Invention of Buddhist Poetry in Late Medieval China" (Cornell UP, 2024)
Poet-Monks focuses on the literary and religious practices of Buddhist poet-monks in Tang-dynasty China to propose an alternative historical arc of medieval Chinese poetry. Combining large-scale quantitative analysis with close readings of important literary texts, Thomas J. Mazanec describes how...
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Shuchen Xiang, "Chinese Cosmopolitanism: The History and Philosophy of an Idea" (Princeton UP, 2023)
A provocative defense of a forgotten Chinese approach to identity and difference. Historically, the Western encounter with difference has been catastrophic: the extermination and displacement of aboriginal populations, the transatlantic slave trade, and colonialism. China, however, took a…
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Megan Bryson and Kevin Buckelew eds., "Buddhist Masculinities" (Columbia UP, 2023)
While early Buddhists hailed their religion's founder for opening a path to enlightenment, they also exalted him as the paragon of masculinity. According to Buddhist scriptures, the Buddha's body boasts thirty-two physical features, including lionlike jaws, thighs like a royal stag, broad...
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Scott A. Mitchell, "The Making of American Buddhism" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Scott A. Mitchell is the Dean of Students and Faculty Affairs and holds the Yoshitaka Tamai Professorial Chair at the Institute of Buddhist Studies in Berkeley. He teaches and writes about Buddhism in the West, Pure Land Buddhism, and Buddhist modernism. As of 2010, there were approximately 3-4...
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Integral Perspectives: From Kashmiri Shaivism to Tibetan Buddhism with Sean K. MacCracken
In this episode, Sean MacCracken reflects on his experience at the American Academy of Religion, noticing a shift toward more participatory, contemplative, and integrative approaches in religious studies. He discusses his course, Kashmiri Shaivism: Supreme Non-Dualism, highlighting how…
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Yasmin Cho, "Politics of Tranquility: The Material and Mundane Lives of Buddhist Nuns in Post-Mao Tibet" (Cornell UP, 2025)
Politics of Tranquility: The Material and Mundane Lives of Buddhist Nuns in Post-Mao Tibet (Cornell University Press, 2025) concerns the Tibetan Buddhist revival in China, illustrating the lives of Tibetan Buddhist nuns and exploring the political effects that arise from their nonpolitical daily...
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Dr. Michael Uebel on Reimaging Equanimity
Michael Uebel is a psychotherapist and researcher currently based in Austin, Texas. He is recognized as a pioneer in applying psychological insights to the historical intersections of social, personal, and imaginative phenomena. He is a Research Affiliate at the University of Texas at Austin and…
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Black Beryl: Self and Nonself, with Nick Canby
Dr Pierce Salguero sits down with Nick Canby, visiting assistant professor at Brown University and a clinical psychologist specializing in meditation and psychedelics. Together, we dive into Nick’s research on the self — what is it and what it’s like to lose it. Along the way, we mention some of...
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Stephen Murphy, "Buddhist Landscapes: Art and Archaeology of the Khorat Plateau, 7th to 11th Centuries (NUS Press, 2024)
This important new work, Buddhist Landscapes: Art and Archaeology of the Khorat Plateau, 7th to 11th Centuries (NUS Press, 2023) by Stephen Murphy, build on extensive fieldwork and archaeological surveys to reveal the Khorat Plateau as having a distinctive Buddhist culture, including new forms of...
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John Kieschnick, "Buddhist Historiography in China" (Columbia UP, 2022)
Since the early days of Buddhism in China, monastics and laity alike have expressed a profound concern with the past. In voluminous historical works, they attempted to determine as precisely as possible the dates of events in the Buddha's life, seeking to iron out discrepancies in varying…
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Nayanjot Lahiri, "Searching for Ashoka: Questing for a Buddhist King from India to Thailand" (SUNY Press, 2023)
Blending travelogue, history, and archaeology, Searching for Ashoka: Questing for a Buddhist King from India to Thailand (SUNY Press, 2023) unravels the various avatars of India's most famous emperor, revealing how he came to be remembered—and forgotten—in distinctive ways at particular points in...
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Luke Gibson, "Reading Sanskrit: A Complete Step-By-Step Introduction with Texts from the Buddhist Tradition" (Columbia UP, 2025)
This textbook offers a fresh approach to learning Sanskrit, the ancient language at the heart of South Asia’s vast religious, philosophical, and literary heritage. Designed for independent learners and classrooms alike, it provides a uniquely in-depth and immersive introduction to the language,...
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Sonia Faleiro, "The Robe and the Sword: How Buddhist Extremism Is Shaping Modern Asia" (Columbia UP, 2025)
When the robe becomes a weapon, who can stop the violence? We think of Buddhism as a faith of peace—rooted in compassion, patience, and nonviolence. But across South and Southeast Asia today, the robe is being turned into a weapon, as radical monks and nationalist movements unleash hatred and…
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Karine Gagné, "Caring for Glaciers: Land, Animals, and Humanity in the Himalayas" (U Washington Press, 2019)
In her new book, Caring for Glaciers: Land, Animals, and Humanity in the Himalayas (University of Washington Press, 2019), Karine Gagné explores how relations of reciprocity between land, humans, animals, and glaciers foster an ethics of care in the Himalayan communities of Ladakh. She explores…
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Anand, "The Notbook of Kabir: Thinner than Water, Fiercer than Fire" (India Viking, 2025)
Kabir is the most alive of all dead poets. He is a fabric without stitches. No centres, no edges. Anand threads his way in. Over the years, as a publisher and editor, Anand immerses himself in the works of Babasaheb Ambedkar and other anticaste thinkers. He gives up his practice of music and...
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Chandra Chiara Ehm, "Queens Without a Kingdom Worth Ruling: Buddhist Nuns and the Process of Change in Tibetan Monastic Communities" (Vajra Books, 2024)
Queens without a Kingdom worth Ruling: Buddhist Nuns and the Process of Change in Tibetan Monastic Communities is a fascinating study of nuns in the Tibetan Buddhist nunnery of Khachoe Ghakyil Ling in Kathmandu. Written by Dr. Chandra Chiara Ehm, who was a member of this monastic community for...
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Kathryn Hurlock, "Holy Places: How Pilgrimage Changed the World" (Profile, 2025)
This year, as they have for millennia, many people around the world will set out on pilgrimages. But these are not only journeys of personal and spiritual devotion - they are also political acts, affirmations of identity and engagements with deep-rooted historical narratives. In Holy Places: How...
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The Perils of Tantra, with Susannah Deane
Today, host Prof. Pierce Salguero sits down with Susannah Deane, a scholar of Tibetan medicine, Buddhism, and psychiatry. Together, we delve into her work on Tibetan concepts of "wind disorders" and Tantric practice gone wrong. Along the way, we talk about losing control of spirits, becoming a...
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Paying Attention with Anya Daly
In this episode Pat speaks with Dr Anya Daly. Dr Anya Daly investigates the intersections of phenomenology with philosophy of mind, the philosophy of perception, the philosophy of psychiatry, embodied and social cognition, enactivism, ethics, aesthetics and Buddhist Philosophy. They discuss...
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Ruth E. Toulson, "Necropolitics of the Ordinary: Death and Grieving in Contemporary Singapore" (U Washington Press, 2024)
Can a state make its people forget the dead? Cemeteries have become sites of acute political contestation in the city-state of Singapore. Confronted with high population density and rapid economic growth, the government has ordered the destruction of all but one burial ground, forcing people to...
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Rima Vesely-Flad, "Black Buddhists and the Black Radical Tradition: The Practice of Stillness in the Movement for Liberation" (NYU Press, 2022)
Finalist, Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion, Constructive-Reflective Studies, given by the American Academy of Religion Explores how Black Buddhist Teachers and Practitioners interpret Western Buddhism in unique spiritual and communal ways In Black Buddhists and the Black Radical...
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Kirin Narayan, "Cave of My Ancestors: Vishwakarma and the Artisans of Ellora" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
On the podcast today I am joined by Kirin Narayan, emerita professor at the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University. Kirin is joining me to talk about her new book, Cave of my Ancestors: Vishwakarma and the Artisans of Ellora published by Chicago University Press in...
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When Meditation Causes Harm, with Willoughby Britton & Jared Lindahl
Today I sit down with Willoughby Britton and Jared Lindahl, the interdisciplinary team from Brown University that is responsible for the “Varieties of Contemplative Experience” study on the challenges and adverse effects of meditation. We talk about the design, findings, and outcomes of the…
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Anne M. Blackburn, "Buddhist-Inflected Sovereignties Across the Indian Ocean: A Pali Arena, 1200-1550" (U Hawaii Press, 2024)
From the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries new kingdoms emerged in Sri Lanka and mainland Southeast Asia. Sovereignty in these new kingdoms was expressed in terms we understand today as coming from ‘Theravada Buddhism’. Crucial to this tradition was the Pali language. Anne Blackburn’s new…
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Magdalena Maria Turek, "Buddhist Hermits in Eastern Tibet: Saint-Making and Ascetic Performance" (Routledge, 2025)
Magdalena Maria Turek is an independent research scholar. She received her PhD from Humboldt University, Germany, and was a Research Fellow with the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Program in Buddhist Studies at the American Council of Learned Societies, USA. Her research examines how...
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Emergent Phenomena with Daniel M. Ingram
Today, host Prof. Pierce Salguero sits down with Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, a retired ER physician, co-founder of the Emergent Phenomena Research Consortium, CEO of Emergence Benefactors, and a noted adept in Buddhist meditation. Together we explore “emergent phenomena,” or the spiritual, mystical,...
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Alexus McLeod, "Myth and Identity in the Martial Arts: Creating the Dragon" (Lexington Books, 2025)
Myth and Identity in the Martial Arts: Creating the Dragon (Lexington Books, 2025) is a study of the role of myth and ideology in the formation of social identity, focusing on a variety of communities of practice involving the martial arts in East Asian and Western history. Alexus McLeod argues...
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Gregory N. Evon, "Salvaging Buddhism to Save Confucianism in Choson Korea (1392-1910)" (Cambria Press, 2023)
Salvaging Buddhism to Save Confucianism in Chosŏn Korea (1392-1910) (Cambria Press, 2023) is a fascinating book that sits at the intersection of Buddhist studies and premodern Korean literary history. Gregory N. Evon’s book unfolds in two parts: the first charts the history of the place…
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Brook Ziporyn, "Experiments in Mystical Atheism: Godless Epiphanies from Daoism to Spinoza and Beyond" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
A new approach to the theism-scientism divide rooted in a deeper form of atheism. Western philosophy is stuck in an irresolvable conflict between two approaches to the spiritual malaise of our times: either we need more God (the “turn to religion”) or less religion (the New Atheism). In…
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Sven Trakulhun, "Confronting Christianity: The Protestant Mission and the Buddhist Reform Movement in Nineteenth-Century Thailand" (U Hawaii Press, 2024)
Siam had been dealing with Christian missionaries for centuries, but from the 1830s a new wave of Protestant missionaries began to work in Siam, just as the European imperial powers were encroaching on Southeast Asia. They brought with them modern science and technology, which was of interest to...
About this show
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field.
Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com
Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/
Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/buddhist-studies
Hosted by
Marshall Poe
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