Takahashi, Kammie

Takahashi, Kammie on the DRL

Authors of English Works • Professors

English Phonetics	Kammie Takahashi

Tibetan calendar dates

Dates of birth

Day
Month
Gender
Element
Animal
Rab Jyung

Dates of passing

Day
Month
Gender
Element
Animal
Rab Jyung

Contact information

Website:	https://www.muhlenberg.edu/facultysearch/facultyresults/ktakahashi/

About

Primary Affiliation (Workplace)

Muhlenberg College

PhD University

University of Virginia

Education

Ph.D., University of Virginia M.A., University of Virginia B.A., Mount Holyoke College

Biographical Information

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. (Source Accessed June 23, 2020)

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.

Links

Wiki Pages

• Takahashi, Kammie on the DRL
• Takahashi, Kammie on the LIB
• Takahashi, Kammie on the BNW

Buddha Nature Project

Person description or short bio

Expand to see this person's philosophical positions on Buddha-nature.

Is Buddha-nature considered definitive or provisional?
Position:
Notes:
All beings have Buddha-nature
Position:
If "Qualified", explain:
Notes:
Which Wheel Turning
Position:
Notes:
Yogācāra vs Madhyamaka
Position:
Notes:
Zhentong vs Rangtong
Position:
Notes:
Promotes how many vehicles?
Position:
Notes:
Analytic vs Meditative Tradition
Position:
Notes:
What is Buddha-nature?
Position:
Notes:
Svātantrika (རང་རྒྱུད་) vs Prāsaṅgika (ཐལ་འགྱུར་པ་)
Position:
Notes:
Causal nature of the vajrapāda
Position:

Full Name

Kammie Morrison Takahashi

This is first one of the inner tantric schools according to the Nyingma tradition. Mahāyoga includes two sub-sections of the tantras which includes eighteen tantras and the sādhanās that includes the eight sādhanā practices. Mahāyoga focuses on the Development Stage and espouses the view of equality and purity in which equality refers to equal nature of phenomena in being empty and purity refers to all appearances being inherently enlightened energies. The Mahāyoga path leads to four stages of vidyadharas.

Refers to something that is taught for a specific reason, rather than because it is entirely true.

Along with Madhyamaka, it was one of the two major philosophical schools of Mahāyāna Buddhism. Founded by Asaṅga and Vasubandhu around the fourth century CE, many of its central tenets have roots in the Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra and the so-called third turning of the dharma wheel (see tridharmacakrapravartana).

Along with Yogācāra, it is one of the two major philosophical schools of Mahāyāna Buddhism. Founded by Nāgārjuna around the second century CE, it is rooted in the Prajñāpāramitā Sūtras, though its initial exposition was presented in Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā.

The state of being devoid of that which is wholly different rather than being void of its own nature. The term is generally used to refer to the ultimate, or buddha-nature, being empty of other phenomena such as adventitious defiling emotions but not empty of its true nature.

The state of being empty of self, which references the lack of inherent existence in relative phenomena.

Tsen Khawoche's "meditative tradition" of exegesis of the Uttaratantra; it is one of two major Tibetan traditions of exegesis, both stemming from students of Sajjana.