Robert Buswell

Robert Buswell is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He founded UCLA's Center for Buddhist Studies in 2000 and served as the initial faculty director of the Center for Korean Studies from 1992 to 2001. Prior to his academic career, Buswell spent seven years as a Buddhist monk in Thailand, Hong Kong, and Korea, experiences that informed his seminal work The Zen Monastic Experience: Buddhist Practice in Contemporary Korea (Princeton University Press, 1992).

• Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley (1985)
• Specializes in Korean Son (Zen) tradition and Buddhist studies
• Author/editor of influential works on Buddhist apocrypha, including The Formation of Ch'an Ideology in China and Korea and Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha

Buswell has authored approximately forty articles on Korean, Chinese, and Indian Buddhist traditions. His research focuses on determining the dating, provenance, and authorship of Buddhist scriptures, particularly through his dissertation The Korean Origin of the Vajrasamadhi-Sutra.