The Therigatha, composed more than 2,000 years ago, is an anthology of poems in the Pali language by and about the first Buddhist nuns. The poems are unmatched for their quality of personal expression and for the extraordinary insights they offer into the lives of these women. Prof. Charles Hallisey recently published a new translation of the Therigatha, which has been hailed as “the most powerful and readable translation” of this work available in English. BAUS is honored to host Prof. Hallisey for a Sunday afternoon at the Woo Ju Memorial Library, where he will speak about the Therigatha and the remarkable women whose lives and achievements it records.
Professor Charles Hallisey is the Yehan Numata Senior Lecturer on Buddhist Literature at Harvard Divinity School and an authority on Sinhala and Pali literature. His research centers on Theravada Buddhism in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia, Pali language and literature, Buddhist ethics, and literature in Buddhist culture. He is currently working on a book entitled “Flowers on the Tree of Poetry: The Moral Economy of Literature in Buddhist Sri Lanka.”