Position:

Member of the Buddhist Studies Unit; Honorary fellow of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies; Part-time lecturer for the Oxford University Department of Continuing Education

Faculty / College Address:

Oriental Institute / Wolfson College

Email:

sarah.shaw@orinst.ox.ac.uk

Research Interests:

• Early Buddhist (Pāli) suttas and Abhidhamma material on meditation
• Early Buddhist narrative: literary features of Jātakas and Dhammapada stories
• Indian and Asian influences on British nineteenth-century writers
• Modern South and Southeast Asian Buddhist ritual, chant and meditation

Current Projects:

• An anthology of early Buddhist meditative texts  (Yale University Press: Sacred Texts Trust)
• Examination of literary features in the Pāli canon
• Jātaka stories concerned with Yasodharā, the Bodhisatta’s wife
• Joint project with Dr Naomi Appleton on translation and critical analysis of the Mahānipāta, the last ten Jātaka stories
• Working on a plan for an online interactive MSt in Buddhist Studies at Oxford University (with OUDCE)

Recent Publications:

Books:

• The Jātakas: Birth Stories of the Bodhisatta, New Delhi: Penguin, paperback/Penguin Global Classic Series (2006)
• Buddhist Meditation: an Anthology of Texts, London: Routledge (2006), hardback, paperback (2008) and e-book (with chapter on Tibet by Georgios Halkias)
• An Introduction to Buddhist Meditation, London and New York: Routledge (2008)
• Linda Covill, Ulrike Roesler and Sarah Shaw eds., Lives Lived, Lives Imagined: Biographies of Awakening,Boston, MA: Wisdom (2010)

Academic Articles:

• (2001) ‘Archaeology and Time Travel: two reanimation stories by Mary Shelley’, C. Finn and M. Henig ed., Outside Archaeology: Material Culture and Poetic Imagination, BAR International Series 999, pp. 67–72.
• (2004) ‘Crossing the Wilderness: how the Buddha narrates his travels in the Jātakas’, OCBS website: http://www.ocbs.org/content/view/46/82/

• (2010) ‘And that was I – how the Buddha himself creates a path between biography and autobiography’, in L. Covill, U. Roesler and S. Shaw (eds) Lives Lived; Lives Imagined: Biographies of Awakening, Boston, MA: Wisdom, pp. 15–41.
• (2010) ‘Yasodharā: the intriguing puzzle of the Buddha’s wife’, paper delivered at the Spalding Conference of Indian Religions, Merton College, Oxford, Spring 2009, to be published in the Spalding Conference Papers series (forthcoming).
• (2010: forthcoming for OCBS website) ‘Crossing to the Farthest Shore: Nautical and Maritime Imagery in Early Buddhist narrative’.
• (2010: for Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies website) ‘Buddhist Meditation: Mysticism’
• (2010 awaiting publication) ‘What is a meditation object? How meditation practices are described, taught and used in early Pāli sources’, for Cultural Histories of Meditation Research Project, organized by Professor Halvor  Eifring, Oslo University, Norway.
• (2010) ‘The self at sea: shipwrecks in early Buddhist narrative’, paper for ‘The Semiotics of Shipwreck: a Symposium on the Representation and Resonance of Maritime Disaster’, an interdisciplinary conference at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich

General Articles:

• (2004) ‘Shaping the future: how does Theravada Buddhism adapt to change?’, Shap Journal (Autumn). See
  www.shapworkingparty.org.uk/journals/articles_0405/Shaw.rtf
• (2004) ‘Smile of Enlightenment’, V & A Journal (Summer).
• (2005) ‘The Jātakas’, The Middle Way (Autumn).
• (2006) ‘Buddhist Meditation Practices in the West’, The Third International Buddhist Conference of the United Nations Day of Vesak, Bangkok: Mahachulalongkornrajavidyalaya University, pp. 137–151. See
  http://www.vesakday.net/vesak49/article/pdf/Meditation_Practice_in_the_ West.pdf
• (2008) ‘The Theravāda Order of Buddhist Nuns in the United Kingdom’, Mahinda Deegalle (ed.), Dharma to the UK: A Centennial Celebration of Buddhist Legacy. London: World Buddhist Foundation, pp. 151–169.
• ‘Perceptions of Buddhist meditation in Britain at the beginning of the twenty-first century’, paper given at the World Buddhist Federation conference in celebration of the Saṅgharājā’s ninety-sixth birthday, Bangkok, October 2009 (to be published in conference volume, 2010).

Further Info:

Joint review editor,  Journal of the United Kingdom Association for Buddhist Studies