Dan Smyer Yü
Dan Smyer Yü is Kuige Professor of Ethnology, School of Ethnology and Sociology and the National Centre for Borderlands Ethnic Studies in Southwest China at Yunnan University. He received his Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of California at Davis in 2006. Prior to his current faculty appointment, he was the Founding Director of the Center for Trans-Himalayan Studies at Yunnan Minzu University, a Senior Researcher/Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, a core member of the Transregional Research Network (CETREN) at University of Göttingen, and a New Millennium Scholar at Minzu University of China, Beijing. He is the author of The Spread of Tibetan Buddhism in China: Charisma, Money, Enlightenment (Routledge 2011) and Mindscaping the Landscape of Tibet: Place, Memorability, Eco-aesthetics (De Gruyter 2015), and the co-editor of Religion and Ecological Sustainability in China (Routledge 2014) and Trans-Himalayan Borderlands: Livelihoods, Territorialities, Modernities (Amsterdam University Press 2017). His research interests are religion and ecology, environmental humanities, trans-Himalayan studies, sacred landscapes, climate change and mass migration, modern Tibetan studies, and comparative studies of Eurasian secularisms. His externally funded projects are "Trans-Himalayan Environmental Humanities" (ICIMOD), "India-China Corridor Project" (the Swedish Research Council), "Cultural and Ecological Diversity of the Trans-Himalayas in the Context of China’s Belt and Road Initiative" (National Social Sciences Foundation of China), and "Sustainable Lives in Scarred Landscapes: Heritage, Environment, and Violence in the China-Myanmar Jade Trade" (The British Academy Sustainable Development Program). (Source Accessed Aug 10, 2020)
Library Items
The Sentient Reflexivity of Buddha Nature
Buddha Nature, or tathagatagarbha in Sanskrit, is a core element of Buddhist philosophical discourse and doctrinal debate. Who or what possesses Buddha Nature, how it manifests itself, and what role it plays in Buddhist soteriology have been sustained questions in actual Buddhist practices and in the works of Buddhologists from ancient times to the present. Based on the author’s textual interpretation, this paper attempts to present a threefold argument: Buddha Nature is not separate from its alleged opposite, sentience; it is not a tangible substance but a state of being whose felt meaning is only metaphorically conveyed; and finally it is a heuristic device or a means of provoking a Buddhist or anyone who takes interest in Buddhism, to visualize the inner complexity of his or her sentient mode of being.
Yü, Dan Smyer. "The Sentient Reflexivity of Buddha Nature: Metaphorizing Tathagatagarbha." The Religious Cultures in the World 6 (2012): 13–22.
Yü, Dan Smyer. "The Sentient Reflexivity of Buddha Nature: Metaphorizing Tathagatagarbha." The Religious Cultures in the World 6 (2012): 13–22.;The Sentient Reflexivity of Buddha Nature;Sentient beings;Defining buddha-nature;The doctrine of buddha-nature in Indian Buddhism;tathāgatagarbha;Dan Smyer Yü; 
Affiliations & relations
- School of Ethnology and SociologyYunnan University Kunming, China · workplace affiliation
