Online: Jeffrey Hopkins Legacy Series

November 17

The Diamond Sutra on Four Delusions Regarding Interdependence
with Daniel Cozort

Slides can be downloaded here

Description of talk: Jeffrey Hopkins is best known for his work on the teaching of emptiness. But as he would point out, emptiness also means fullness; that things do not exist inherently means also that they exist in dependence on other things, which in turn depend on yet other things, until we realize that everything is interdependent.

My talk, instead of dwelling on the negative route to wisdom, that of understanding emptiness, will emphasize the positive route of understanding interdependence, drawing upon discoveries of science that break down our sense of separateness, our belief that humans are superior, that life is more valuable than what is not alive, and that anything has a beginning and end. These are four delusions identified in the Diamond Sutra and briefly addressed by the late Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh. I think of my talk as extending his thinking with the sort of evidence to which modern Westerners might resonate.

Daniel Cozort retired from Dickinson College (Pennsylvania) in 2021 after thirty-six years of college teaching. He offered courses in Buddhism and Hinduism but also at times taught about mind-body medicine, romantic love, methods for the study of religion, religion and human evolution, and British culture and society. He directed study abroad programs in south India and Norwich, England.

His work with Jeffrey Hopkins at the University of Virginia led to three books (Highest Yoga Tantra, Unique Tenets of the Middle Way Consequence School, and Buddhist Philosophy). He was one of the translators of Tsongkhapa’s Great Exposition of the Stages of the Path and participated in the UMA translation project. He published a booklet and produced a film on the Vajrabhairava sand mandala, curated and wrote the catalogue for a tantric art exhibit, and wrote several book chapters on Buddhist ethics.

In 2006 he became editor of the Journal of Buddhist Ethics, which he continued to do until 2019 (he continues as technical editor). In 2018 he edited the Oxford Handbook of Buddhist Ethics. He also founded a Conference on Buddhist Ethics that meets biennially. He was a founder of a Unitarian Universalist congregation and a Buddhist meditation center (led by a Sri Lankan monk). He lives with his wife in Ithaca, New York, giving occasional tours of Namgyal Monastery.