I am talking to Amanda Goodman (University of Toronto), a specialist of medieval Buddhist manuscripts from Dunhuang. We talk about how she started learning Chinese, how she first became acquainted with the study of Central Asia and then, while staying in Taiwan, how she discovered the fascinating world of Buddhism. She talks about some new directions and opportunities in Buddhist studies, the necessity to learn more than one Buddhist language and the importance of not only engaging in a philological reading of texts but also looking at the manuscripts those texts were extracted from. She elaborates on the benefits of the comparative angle, how it is worth to compare manuscripts from Dunhuang with those in Japan and Southwest China, and how to embrace the tension between the regional varieties of Buddhism and global continuities. Finally, she briefly describes her two books which are about to come out, one a translation of a ritual text from Dunhuang and another a study of five different manuscripts. This video was recorded at the Elling Eide Center in Sarasota, FL; we are grateful to the Center for hosting us for a two-day conference.

----Video's Table of Contents----
00:00 Intro
00:00 Academic background
03:30 Dunhuang manuscripts
06:24 Chinese and Tibetan
10:12 Regional traditions of Buddhism
15:10 Advice to students
17:39 Comparative model
20:55 New books