University of Toronto
Amanda Goodman is Assistant Professor of Buddhist Studies in the Department for the Study of Religion and the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Toronto. She specializes in premodern Chinese Buddhist traditions, with a focus on the development of Chinese esoteric Buddhist ritual during the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries. Her first book project, Buddhism at the Margins: Essays on Esoteric Buddhist Ritual at Dunhuang (in preparation) explores the Buddhist training and practice communities documented in tenth-century Chinese and Tibetan ritual manuscripts from Dunhuang.
Research related to commentary
My research seeks to bring questions of commentarial practice, broadly conceived, to bear on the study of premodern Chinese Buddhist traditions and, conversely, to consider the implications of medieval Buddhist commentarial practices for the wider field of commentary studies. Over the course of this five-year SSHRC project, I will be researching and writing more extensively on a set of composite Buddhist manuscripts from Dunhuang and what they reveal about specific textual and visual interpretive strategies during the age of the Buddhist manuscript, including ritual notetaking and ritual diagramming, the use of interlinear glosses, including multilingual glossing practices, together with local translation practices.
Publications related to commentary
Forthcoming Articles:
“Vajragarbha Bodhisattva’s Three-Syllable Contemplation: A Chinese Sādhana Text from Dunhuang”
“A Sino-Tibetan Buddhist Sourcebook: P3861”
“Dating Undated Dunhuang Manuscripts: A Codicological Approach”
“Additional Reading Marks in the Dunhuang Ritual Manuscripts”
Other publications
Buddhism from the Margins: Essays on Esoteric Buddhist Ritual at Dunhuang (in preparation)
The Vajra Peak Scripture: An Annotated Translation and Study of a Chinese Esoteric Buddhist Compendium from Dunhuang (in preparation)
Articles (forthcoming)
“Amoghavajra’s Dunhuang Corpus”
“Rethinking the Chan-Tantra Connection”
“The Five Buddha Crown Consecration in Chinese Buddhist Traditions”