Nobuyoshi Yamabe: "Toyok Caves Revisited"

Toyok is the earliest Buddhist cave site in the Turfan area in Central Asia and has noteworthy mural paintings depicting visualizing monks. They give important clues to the practice of meditation/visualization in this area and to the origin of Chinese visualization texts. Recent excavations of this site have brought out significant new findings. Based on these new findings, Prof. Yamabe will reexamine the significance of the Toyok cave monastery.

Bio

Nobuyoshi Yamabe is Professor of Asian Philosophy at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan. Prof. Yamabe is an expert in Indian Buddhism and the development of Buddhist philosophical thought and meditational practices through Central and East Asia. While his primary research interests include Yogācāra and Buddhist meditation texts, Prof. Yamabe’s numerous publications—in English and Japanese—span various aspects of Buddhism, ranging from the analysis of philosophical concepts in Buddhist meditational practice to comparative research on Japanese Buddhist traditions.

Prof. Yamabe’s most recent publications include “A Comparative Study of the Methods of Practice in the Tendai and Zen Traditions in Medieval Japan,” “The Position of Conceptualization in the Context of the Yogācāra Bīja Theory,” “Ālayavijñāna in a Meditative Context,” as well as a chapter in The Oxford Handbook of Meditation (“Concentration and Visualization Techniques in Buddhist Meditation”).

Prof. Yamabe is the Numata Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies at University of California, Berkeley, for the Fall Semester, 2022.