Robert Buswell, Jr.

Robert Evans Buswell Jr. is an American academic, author and scholar of Korean Buddhism and Chinese Buddhism as well as Korean religions in general. He is Professor of Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles and founding director of the Academy of Buddhist Studies (불교 학술원) at Dongguk University, Korea's main Buddhist university.

Buswell began his undergraduate education at the University of California, Santa Barbara and attended between September, 1971 and December, 1972. His focus was Asian Studies. Buswell then left the United States and became a Buddhist monk in Thailand, then Taiwan, and finally The Republic of Korea where he spent five years at Songgwangsa. This experience was related in his book The Zen Monastic Experience: Buddhist Practice in Contemporary Korea.

He did extensive fieldwork in Buddhist Monasticism between 1972 and 1979 at Wat Bovoranives, Bangkok, Thailand, in 1972 and 1973 on Theravada; at Polam-ji, Landau Island, Hong Kong, in 1973 and 1974 on Ch'an Buddhism; and finally, at Songgwang-sa, Cholla Namdo, Korea, between 1974 and 1979 on Son and Hwaom Buddhism. Returning to the United States, he finished his A.B., with Highest Honors at the University of California, Berkeley in June, 1981. He earned an M.A., With Distinction, from U.C. Berkeley in 1983, and his Ph.D. also from U.C. Berkeley in December 1985. His dissertation was entitled:"The Korean Origin of the Vajrasamadhi-Sutra: A Case Study in Determining the Dating, Provenance, and Authorship of a Buddhist Apocryphal Scripture."

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