In this interview, Professor Klaus-Dieter Mathes discusses buddha-nature and the key ideas behind it, the controversies it generates, and some of the related Buddhist philosophy in comparative perspective.
- Listen to short clips from the Interview:
- Mathes talks about reification and two approaches in the Karma Kagyu Tradition:
- File:Two Approaches Nagarjuna and Saraha and Skillful Means-Mathes-Interview-2min-25sec.mp3.mp3
- You are opening your eyes:
- File:Mystic-Not-Mystic-Mathes-Interview-33sec.mp3
- Approaches to buddha-nature and emptiness—the debates are alive and well in contemporary Tibetan Buddhist communities.
- File:Question2-Debates-Alive-and-Well-Mathes-Interview-4min-38sec.mp3
Listen to the whole interview:
File:Mathes-Interview-Complete-53min-55sec.mp3
Prof. Dr. Klaus-Dieter Mathes is the Head of the Department of South Asian, Tibetan and Buddhist Studies at the University of Vienna. His current research deals with Tibetan Madhyamaka, Yogācāra and the interpretations of Buddha-nature in the 15th and 16th centuries. Klaus-Dieter Mathes was born in Mannheim (Germany) as the son of the businessman Kurt Mathes and the accountant Christel Mathes, née Gerner. He attended the Volksschule Wendelstein in the 1960s and graduated from the Pirckheimer Gymnasium in Nuremberg in 1977, after which he performed basic military service for one year and then began to study math and physics at the University of Erlangen.
From 1980-1984 he lived in the Himalayas and studied Buddhism, later obtaining a master's degree in Tibetology from the University of Bonn and then a Doctorate from Marburg in 1994 with a study of the Yogācāra text Dharmadharmatāvibhāga (published in 1996 in the series Indica et Tibetica). He served as the director of the Nepal Research Centre and the Nepal-German Manuscript Preservation Project in Kathmandu from 1993 to 2001. He was then a lecturer and visiting professor variously at the University of Hamburg, Vienna, and EPHE, Paris, until his current appointment in March 2010 as full Professor of Tibetology and Buddhist Studies at the University of Vienna.
His publications include A Direct Path to the Buddha Within. Gö Lotsawa's Mahāmudrā Interpretation of the Ratnagotravibhāga (Wisdom, 2008), A Fine Blend of Mahāmudrā and Madhyamaka. Maitrīpa's Collection of Texts on Non-conceptual Realization (Amanasikāra) (Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, 2015). He is also a regular contributor to the Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies. The Other Emptiness: Rethinking the Zhentong Buddhist Discourse in India and Tibet is forthcoming from SUNY Press in 2018.
Recent Writing of Interest from Doctor Mathes:
- 2018:"Liberation through Realizing the Emptiness of Dependent Origination: A Modern Interpretation of the Buddhist “Beyond” in the Light of Quantum Physics." Experiencing the Beyond: Intercultural Approaches. Ed. by Gert Melville and Carlos Ruta (Challenges of Life: Essays on Philosophical and Cultural Anthropology 4). Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter GmbH, 198-211, 2018.
- 2017: "The Eighth Karmapa Mi bskyod rdo rje (1507-1554) on the Relation between Buddha Nature and its Adventitious Stains." Critical Review for Buddhist Studies 22 (2017. 12), 63-104.
- 2017: "Did ‘Gos Lo tsā ba gZhon nu dpal (1392-1481) Espouse a gZhan sTong View?" In: Fifteenth Century Tibet: Cultural Blossoming and Political Unrest. LIRI Seminar Proceedings Series 8. Lumbini 2017, 291-311.
- 2016: "Introduction: The History of the Rang stong/Gzhan stong Distinction from Its Beginning through the Ris-med Movement". Journal of Buddhist Philosophy 2 (2016), 4-8.
- 2016: "Presenting a Controversial Doctrine in a Conciliatory Way: Mkhan chen Gang shar dbang po's (1925-1958/59?) Inclusion of Gzhan Stong ("Emptiness of Ohter") within Prāsaṅgika". Journal of Buddhist Philosophy 2 (2016), 114-131.
