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PODCAST

The Ho Center for Buddhist Studies at Stanford

The Ho Center for Buddhist Studies at Stanford

The Ho Center for Buddhist Studies at Stanford podcast features faculty, graduate students, visiting speakers, and alumni in conversation with Miles Osgood and Leah Chase on the history, philosophy, and practice of Buddhism. Interviews are intended to be both academic and accessible: topics range from scholarly publications and insights to personal journeys and reflections. Interview videos are posted on YouTube, @thehocenterforbuddhiststudies. For more information about our events, speakers, and

religion & spirituality buddhism

All Episodes

49:55

Sara McClintock: The Two Truths in Action

The Ho Center for Buddhist Studies at Stanford ·

2026/10/01

Sara McClintock talks about “dharmic omniscience” in the arguments of 8th-century Madhyamaka scholars Śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśīla, what happens when Buddhist teachers adapt the “rhetoric of reason” for different audiences, and the varied forms that truth can take: as camouflage, fiction, narrative, and action. Interview by Miles Osgood.

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29:26

Rafal Felbur: The Sūrata-sūtra and Forgotten Mahāyāna...

The Ho Center for Buddhist Studies at Stanford ·

2026/09/01

Rafal Felbur talks about the surviving Chinese and Tibetan versions of the Sūrata-sūtra, their depictions of a charismatic preacher bringing Buddhism to new frontiers, and what forgotten Mahāyāna scriptures like these reveal about the relation between monastics and monarchs. Interview by Miles Osgood. Part 2 of 2.

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43:12

Rafal Felbur: From the Chinese Canon to the Large...

The Ho Center for Buddhist Studies at Stanford ·

2026/08/01

Rafal Felbur talks about Chinese and Tibetan texts that preserve Indic sources lost in Sanskrit, the early Chinese exegetes who imposed a restrictive orthodoxy even while compiling their inclusive Buddhist canon, and the digital tools that can help us triangulate the content of original scriptures from these enduring translations. Interview by Miles Osgood. Part 1 of 2.Part 2 of this interview will be published on September 1.

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47:53

Oriane Lavolé: Revealing Treasures in Tibet

The Ho Center for Buddhist Studies at Stanford ·

2026/07/01

Oriane Lavolé talks about the history of treasure revealers (tertöns) from 11th-century Tibet to contemporary Nepal, how apologists for the treasure tradition (terma) have responded to skeptics who dismiss its material foundations, and what site guides to sacred territories can teach Western Buddhists about the ecological roots of the religion. Interview by Miles Osgood.

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41:05

Travelogue: The City of Ten Thousand Buddhas

The Ho Center for Buddhist Studies at Stanford ·

2026/06/01

At the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in Ukiah, California, we talk to professors, monks, nuns, and laypeople about the acquisition of the historic property and the 600-mile bowing pilgrimage that inaugurated it, the transformative relationship between monasticism and education, and the importance of community as the City continues to evolve and expand.Interview by Leah ChaseThe music in this episode is by Rev. Heng Sure. "Bow Down, Turn Around" and "It's Called the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas,"

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46:13

Christian Luczanits: Mustang Art and the Myth of the...

The Ho Center for Buddhist Studies at Stanford ·

2026/05/01

Christian Luczanits talks about the eccentricities of early Buddhist art in the Mustang region of the Himalayas, the intellectual exchange that ran through the region long before its 15th-century kingdom, and the importance of documenting the manuscripts and sculptures of mountain monasteries in situ. Interview by Miles Osgood.

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48:55

Chiew Hui Ho: The Lives of Sūtras

The Ho Center for Buddhist Studies at Stanford ·

2026/04/01

Chiew Hui Ho talks about parasutraic texts in medieval China that chronicle devotion to specific sūtras, how these histories give us a picture of “Buddhism on the ground” distinct from that of miracle tales, and how scriptures like the Diamond Sūtra and Lotus Sūtra thereby develop lives and biographies of their own. Interview by Miles Osgood.

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35:56

Joshua Capitanio: The Work of the Scholar-Librarian

The Ho Center for Buddhist Studies at Stanford ·

2026/03/01

Joshua Capitanio talks about his graduate work on medieval Chinese Buddho-Daoism, how translation projects and “second book” arguments are valued inside and outside the professoriate, and what it takes to make a career transition to the university library. Interview by Miles Osgood.

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39:20

Book Notes: Meir Shahar, "Kings of Oxen and Horses"

The Ho Center for Buddhist Studies at Stanford ·

2026/02/01

Meir Shahar talks about the cult worship of the “Ox King” and the “Horse King” in China. Working at the intersection of scriptural studies and field research, Shahar connects the two animal gods back to Sākyamuni and Avalokiteśvara through locally transmitted manuscripts and their Indic sources, and he describes the unorthodox Buddhist priests in Guizhou Province who perform rituals for draft animals using these textual manuals.Kings of Oxen and Horses: Draft Animals, Buddhism, and Chinese Rural

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35:46

Book Notes: Adeana McNicholl, "Of Ancestors and Ghosts"

The Ho Center for Buddhist Studies at Stanford ·

2026/01/01

Adeana McNicholl talks about the misunderstood realm of the “pretas,” typically translated as the home of “hungry ghosts” but in fact host to an entire history of the ancestral “departed.” Following Indic "preta" narratives from their Brahmanical ritual origins through the construction of a Buddhist karmic cosmology, McNicholl considers the moral aesthetics of punishments designed to disgust, the gendered appetites of semi-divine seductresses, and the Sanskrit story that puts the whole chronology of

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28:25

Travelogue: Gil Fronsdal and the Insight Meditation...

The Ho Center for Buddhist Studies at Stanford ·

2025/12/01

Gil Fronsdal talks about studying in Buddhist monasteries from Big Sur to Bangkok, founding the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, and creating an integrated Buddhist world culture through the practice of vipassana meditation.Gil Fronsdal is the founding teacher and a co-guiding teacher at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California and the Insight Retreat Center in Santa Cruz, California. He has been teaching since 1990. Gil was ordained as a Soto Zen priest at the San

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42:08

James Gentry: The Bodhisattva’s Body in a Pill

The Ho Center for Buddhist Studies at Stanford ·

2025/11/01

Miles Osgood talks to James Gentry about the thousand-year history of the Tibetan maṇi pill, back to its medieval origins in an age of Mongol invasions and epidemics, through an infusion of psychoactive fungi for experimental meditation in the 13th century, and as a shared token for today’s global Tibetan Buddhist diaspora.James Gentryis Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Stanford. He specializes in Tibetan Buddhism, with particular focus on the literature and history of its Tantric

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51:35

Ralph H. Craig III: Preachers and Teachers, from the...

The Ho Center for Buddhist Studies at Stanford ·

2025/10/01

Miles Osgood talks to Ralph H. Craig III about crafting constructive analogies between Christian and Buddhist liturgies, characterizing the ideal preachers (dharmabhāṇakas) described in Mahāyāna sūtras, and Tina Turner’s contributions to Buddhist pedagogy.Ralph H. Craig III is an interdisciplinary scholar of religion, whose research focuses on South Asian Buddhism and American Buddhism. He received his B.A. in Theological Studies at Loyola Marymount University and his Ph.D. in Religious Studies at

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35:46

Allan Ding: Chan Ritual and the Zhāi Feast

The Ho Center for Buddhist Studies at Stanford ·

2025/09/01

Miles Osgood talks to Allan Ding about why the Chan monk Moheyan lost the 8th-century “Samyé Debate” over the future of Tibetan Buddhism, how medieval Chinese Buddhists shifted from “antiritualism” to accepting the “zhāi” feast, and what forms of religious imagination scholars can adopt from liturgical practices.Yi (Allan) Ding received his bachelor's degree from Fudan University (2008) and his PhDin Religious Studies from Stanford University (2020). As a scholar of Chinese and Tibetan Buddhism, he

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43:24

Marcus Bingenheimer: AI and Total Translation

The Ho Center for Buddhist Studies at Stanford ·

2025/08/01

Miles Osgood talks to Marcus Bingenheimer about why new tools in the Digital Humanities demand new genres of scholarship, what network analysis reveals about the transmission of religious ideas in medieval China, and how AI’s large language models will help arcane texts reach a new global readership.Marcus Bingenheimer is Associate Professor in the Department of Religion atTemple Universityin Philadelphia. He taught Buddhism and Digital Humanities in Taiwan at Dharma Drum (2005 to 2011) and held

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45:28

Julian Butterfield: Joy in the Lotus Sūtra

The Ho Center for Buddhist Studies at Stanford ·

2025/07/01

Miles Osgood talks to Julian Butterfield about the winding path to a dissertation topic, overcoming exegetical resistance to emotional affect in religious literature, and the central role of joyful anumodanā (隨喜 suixi) in the Lotus Sūtra.Julian Butterfield holds a BA in Comparative Literature and Religious Studies (2016) and an MA in Religious Studies (2018), both from the University of Toronto, and a PhD from Stanford University (2025). Generally interested in the dissemination and development of

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50:05

Pia Brancaccio: Cave Monasteries and the Cotton Road...

The Ho Center for Buddhist Studies at Stanford ·

2025/06/01

Miles Osgood talks to Pia Brancaccio about the Buddhist cave monasteries of Western Deccan, the inter-continental exchange of "Maritime Buddhism" along the "Cotton Road," and the competition between Buddhism and Shaivism at the end of the first millennium C.E.

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41:29

Stephen Bokenkamp: Daoism and Buddhism in China

The Ho Center for Buddhist Studies at Stanford ·

2025/05/01

Miles Osgood talks to Professor Stephen Bokenkamp about his fieldwork in China after the Cultural Revolution, how to better understand the original encounter between Daoism and Buddhism in the 2nd to 6th centuries C.E., and what Daoist and Buddhist Studies can learn from one another today.Stephen R. Bokenkamp (Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley, 1986) specializes in the study of medieval Chinese Daoism, with a special emphasis on its literatures and its relations with Buddhism. He is author

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