01 Meditation Panel Preface.indd - United Nations Day of Vesak 2013

2 nd IABU Conf erence: Introduction Buddhist Philosophy and
Meditation Practice Volumes
Welcome to the 2 nd International Association of Buddhist Universities Academic
Conference on Buddhist Philosophy and Praxis. This conference seems like it has been a long time in
the making, due to the extensive ooding that ravished Thailand, and certainly left Mahachulalongkorn
rajavidyalaya University, our gracious and great host, inundated with almost 2 meters of water.
The university, where the IABU Secretariat is currently headquartered, has overcome this difcult
situation, and we are now ready to hold this conference. The conference was originally scheduled
for 16-18 December 2011, but to make this happen seemed like an impossibility. We are now here
for the rescheduled date: 31 May – 02 June 2012. We have noticed that our 2 nd IABU Conference
coincides with the 9 th United Nations Day of Vesak Celebrations – but our aims are different for this
occasion. It’s quite fascinating that a single university can host two large international conferences at
the same time. We further give our humble respects to the Government of the Kingdom of Thailand
and to the Thai Sangha Supreme Council for enabling this conference to proceed.
When this conference was in its planning stages, we had initial discussions on the main
theme: Buddhist Philosophy – but we did not want papers that just gave idealistic proposals. Instead
we aspired to gain papers that demonstrated philosophy in action, or the conversion of an idea into
an actuality – and thus we wanted to implement or emphasize the aspect of praxis, into the conference.
We had scheduled a practical meditation session, where elected Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana
masters would hold a meditation session along with a question and answer period; but due to
the merging of the two conferences: the 2 nd IABU Conference and the 9 th UNDV Conference – there
was no longer enough allotted time for the meditation sessions, so it was regretfully eliminated.
We hope that the gathering of academics took advantage of this expertise that availed themselves
for this august gathering.
As all the scholars can surmise, there are several formats or applications of Buddhism, some are
living-systems, and some have become either extinct or have merged with existing systems. Buddhist
Philosophy is a vast topic that lls many bookshelves. Most of us have read texts on early-Indian
or Vedic-philosophy and have seen the emergence into what we are discussing: Buddhism – but by
no means are we holding a singular view of a Buddhism. The overwhelming amount of scholars
present here surmise that dependent-origination is probably the supreme-teaching of the Buddha,
or the one doctrine that gathers the most attention. The term: ‘praxis’ has caused some confusion
amongst our scholars. If the term was dened: we could determine that praxis is the application
or process through which the philosophical or doctrinal point becomes actualized or put into place
(practiced) – it’s about the endeavor. We might have taken the term from international-socialistic
literature, which emphasizes that besides just having philosophy – the point of all of us studying
the Buddha’s preserved words is for the sake of improving our world – to eliminate suffering from
the social experience. How have we actually done this?
(7)