Robert Buswell Jr.

Robert Evans Buswell Jr. (born 1953 ) is an American academic and writer on Korean Buddhism and Chinese Buddhism as well as Korean religions in general. He is a distinguished professor emeritus of Buddhist studies at the University of California, Los Angeles and founding director of the Academy of Buddhist Studies at Dongguk University, Korea's main Buddhist university.

He retired from UCLA in 2022.

Education Buswell began his undergraduate education at the University of California, Santa Barbara and attended between September 1971 and December 1972. His focus was Asian Studies. Buswell then left the United States and became a Buddhist monk in Thailand, then Taiwan, and finally The Republic of Korea where he spent five years at Songgwangsa. This experience was related in his book The Zen Monastic Experience: Buddhist Practice in Contemporary Korea.

He did extensive fieldwork in Buddhist Monasticism between 1972 and 1979 at Wat Bovoranives, Bangkok, Thailand, in 1972 and 1973 on Theravada; at Polam-ji, Landau Island, Hong Kong, in 1973 and 1974 on Ch'an Buddhism; and finally, at Songgwang-sa, Cholla Namdo, Korea, between 1974 and 1979 on Son and Hwaom Buddhism.

He has published fifteen books and roughly forty articles on Korean, Chinese, and Indian traditions of Buddhism and Korean religions.

Buswell and other noted scholars of Buddhism at UCLA, such as William Bodiford and Gregory Schopen, have made it one of the strongest Buddhist studies programs in the world.

Buswell and his wife, Christina Lee Buswell, established the Chinul Endowed Chair in Korean Buddhist Studies, named for Puril Pojo Chinul (1158–1210), the most influential monk in the formation of Korean Seon Buddhism. Through gift commitments totaling US$3.7 million, the endowment will also provide a graduate student fellowship in Buddhist studies.

Honors In 2009, Buswell was awarded the Manhae Grand Prize from the Chogye Order in recognition of his pioneering contributions to Korean Buddhist Studies in the West. He is also a recipient of the Puri Prize for Buddhist Studies in Korea.

Works Books 1983: The Korean Approach to Zen: The Collected Works of Chinul. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. 468 pp. 2013: The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism with Donald S. Lopez Jr. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013. 1304 pp. 2016: Numinous Awareness Is Never Dark: The Korean Buddhist Master Chinul’s Excerpts on Zen Practice. Translated, annotated, and with an introduction by Robert E. Buswell Jr.. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. 352 pp. .

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