Pei-Lin Chiou, MA

Buddhist Studies 

 (+43-1) 51581-6408
pei-lin.chiou@​oeaw.ac.at

CV

Pei-Lin Chiou received her first master’s degree in Religious Studies from National Chengchi University in Taiwan. From 2009 to 2014 she further studied Indology at Heidelberg University in Germany and received her second master’s degree there. Currently she is working on her PhD project under the guidance of Birgit Kellner.

Pei-Lin Chiou’s main research interests are Indian and Tibetan Buddhist philosophies, particularly epistemologies which are related to Buddhist soteriology. She devoted her M.A. thesis submitted to Heidelberg University to Kamalaśīla’s (an eighth-century Buddhist philosopher) Yogācāra-Madhyamaka account of the analytical aspect of Buddhist meditative praxis, that is, the vipaśyanā meditation, found in his Bhāvanākramas. The focus of her PhD project is to investigate further how Kamalaśīla integrates Yogācāra ideas, Madhyamaka theories, and the Buddhist logico-epistemological concept of yogic cognition (yogijñāna) to construct his teaching on the path to the non-conceptual gnosis (nirvikalpajñāna), which has exerted a great influence on Tibetan Buddhism, based on a study of his Avikalpapraveśadhāraṇīṭīkā.

In May 2016 Pei-Lin Chiou started working at the Institute, where she is part of the working group "Buddhist Studies". Chiou is also an editor of the online database "Epistemology and Argumentation in South Asia and Tibet (EAST)". She is currently working within the framework of the FWF-funded project "Rationality, meditation and liberation In Indian Buddhism: Kamalaśīla's scriptural commentaries in context".