Buddhism and Money: A Seminar

Harvard FAS

What’s the cost of being Buddhist? This graduate seminar examines the entanglements of Buddhism, economy, and ethical life, asking how money, gifts, labor, obligation, and value shape Buddhist practice and institutions. Drawing on religious studies, East Asian history, and economic anthropology, the course challenges the common framing of Buddhism as defined primarily by renunciation or anti-materialism. Buddhist institutions have long operated within systems of material and symbolic…