Jed Forman
Assistant Professor of Theological Studies Loyola Marymount University
- Los Angeles CA
Media
Biography
Jed received his doctorate in Buddhist Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He conducted research in India from 2018-2020, supported by Fulbright and American Institute of Indian Studies grants. He served as the Shinjo Ito postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Assistant Professor in Buddhist Studies at Simpson College in Indianola, IA. Before entering the academy, he was a professional dancer and computer programmer in LA.
Education
University of California, Santa Barbara
PhD
Religious Studies
2021
University of Barcelona
PhD
Philosophy
2030
In progress
University of California, Santa Barbara
MA
Religious Studies
2018
California State University, Northridge
MS
Kinesiology
2014
Areas of Expertise
Languages
- Tibetan
- Sanskrit
- Prakrit
- Hindi/Urdu
- French
Research Grants
Seeds of Enlightenment
American Council of Learned Societies $10000
2026-06-15
This project focuses on the Geluk Tradition’s unique theory of the Buddha Trait (sangs rgyas kyi rigs), also commonly known as Buddha Nature (de bzhin snying po), which is understudied. Our goals are (1) to provide a comprehensive introduction to Geluk views on this topic and (2) to promote recognition of Tibetan scholarship. To this end, our work focuses on the translation of two texts. The first is A General Introduction to The Buddha by Jetsün Chökyi Gyeltsen (1469–1544), the famed author of the Sera Jey Monastery textbooks. The second is A Festival for Scholars by Lharampa Geshe Lobsang Gyatso (b. 1979), a contemporary luminary. Our study demonstrates how Gelukpas have adapted their explanation within different zeitgeists and for different audiences.
Articles
Forgetting Oneself: Tsongkhapa and Severance
ReligionsJed Forman
2025-08-11
This paper explores philosophical issues of personal identity and its connection to forgetting through the famed Tibetan Buddhist thinker Tsongkhapa (1357–1419). Tsongkhapa, in turn, follows the Middle Way (madhyamaka) tradition of Nāgārjuna (c. 150–250 CE) and Candrakīrti (c. 600–650 CE). Specifically, Tsongkhapa demonstrates that we can make sense of a consistent personal continuity despite the disruptions of forgetting and remembering. In so doing, he nuances the notion of personhood, revealing that it does not exist in the way we think. I rely on a thought experiment derived from the hit TV show Severance to demonstrate the ramifications of his theory. By way of conclusion, I explore how Tsongkhapa’s analysis constitutes a notion of “positive forgetting”.
An Article on Articles: Tibetan Debate and Translation
Revue d'Etudes TibétainesJed Forman
2025-03-01
Collected Topics (Bsdus grwa) has been a foundational genre for Tibetan philosophy since the foundation of Sangpu Neutok (Gsang phu ne’u thog) in 1072 CE, where it was first conceived as a vehicle for the study of authentic cognition (tshad ma), up until the present day. This terse and formulaic genre is something like its own Tibetan dialect, replete with its own technical neologisms and idiosyncrasies. It eventually became the engine of both textual and verbal Tibetan philosophical debate, allowing for a targeted, efficient, and fast-paced dialectic. For anyone interested in Tibetan philosophy, a grasp of Collected Topics is indispensable. However, translation of this genre of texts presents special challenges. Some of these are specific to the genre and how to render its concise formulations into natural English prose. Other challenges arise from broader differences between Tibetan and English, both grammatical and cultural. The present study focuses on one specific part of a much wider set of complexities in translating Collected Topics. Specifically, we concentrate on the English demand for articles in contrast to the absence of articles in Tibetan. We analyze how this linguistic difference presents specific challenges to rendering this genre into an English prose intelligible to an educated readership.
Subtle, hidden, and far-off: The intertextuality of the Yogasūtras
The Journal of Hindu StudiesJed Forman
2023-04-10
Modern scholarship discusses ‘Buddhist influences’ on the Patañjali’s Yogasūtras (YS). Indeed, Patañjali borrowed key Buddhist concepts, particularly from Yogācāra. But this borrowing does not evince that the YS is just ‘crypto-Buddhism’. In fact, during the first millennium CE, the YS was equally influential on Buddhist thinkers. I make this argument by focusing on YS 3.25, which discusses the yogic ability to see subtle (sūkṣma), hidden (vyavahita), and far-off (viprakṛṣṭa) objects. Tracing textual occurrences of these three words, I use this stable mimetic trope to demonstrate the influence of YS on Buddhist, Nyāya, and Vaiśeṣika writings. This influence is all the more interesting given that Buddhists explicitly disagree with many of the theoretical suppositions latent in YS 3.25. I demonstrate that despite this theoretical disagreement, Buddhists make ample use of YS 3.25. This paper thus complicates any clear direction of influence between Buddhist and Hindu traditions, and further questions the cogency of strict delineations between different philosophical schools. I also offer the method used in this paper as a novel approach to textual exegesis. By focusing on stable textual memes and tracing their occurrences across sources, we gain a powerful method to more deeply plumb India's rich intertextual intellectual history.
Polemical Paths: Tsongkhapa and Taktsang on Yogic Perception
The Journal of ReligionJed Forman
2023-02-22
Tibetan Buddhist polemics are often perceived as a type of hairsplitting or logic chopping, where defeating one’s opponent is more highly prized than arriving at truth. This assumes that Tibetan polemicists are obsessed with inconsequential minutiae and invested in nitpicking, trite attempts at self-aggrandizement. This article seeks to undermine the notion of Tibetan polemics as mere quibbling, arguing that what appears to be competitive carping in fact involves high stakes. Each Tibetan Buddhist philosophical system is constituted by tightly imbricated tenets, which not only are deeply interconnected with each other but individually comprise a microcosm of that system’s broader philosophical view. Inconsistencies between two systems’ seemingly subsidiary tenets thus demarcate proxy battles indicating larger conflicts over each system’s total cogency. To explore this point, I investigate one “polemic” initiated by Taktsang Lotsāwa (1405–77) against the Gelug school concerning yogic perception and where it occurs along the adherent’s spiritual progression. Although this point seems trivial at first blush, a deeper analysis reveals that it is central to Taktsang’s entire philosophy. Taktsang is invoking a wider philosophical framework in which reality transcends appearances. Impermanence entails appearances, and so cannot be an object of yogic perception, which necessarily perceives reality. Tsongkhapa, on the other hand, argues that reality remains accessible to appearances, and so yogic perception can realize impermanence. In this small debate, much larger stakes become clear—the very connection between appearances and reality, a cornerstone issue of both ontology and epistemology.
Believing is seeing: A Buddhist theory of creditions
Frontiers in PsychologyJed Forman
2022-08-02
The creditions model is incredibly powerful at explaining both how beliefs are formed and how they influence our perceptions. The model contains several cognitive loops, where beliefs not only influence conscious interpretations of perceptions downstream but are active in the subconscious construction of perceptions out of sensory information upstream. This paper shows how this model is mirrored in the epistemology of two central Buddhist figures, Dignāga (480–540 CE) and Dharmakı̄rti (c. 550–650 CE). In addition to showing these parallels, the paper also demonstrates that by drawing on Dignāga and Dharmakı̄rti's theory, we can extend the explanatory power of the creditions model. Namely, while creditions explain how beliefs influence both the conscious interpretation and subconscious construction of sensory information, Dignāga and Dharmakı̄rti suggest beliefs can even be generative of sensory-like information. I recruit ancient Buddhist texts in conjunction with contemporary cognitive science scholarship to offer a hypothesis for the cognitive mechanisms responsible for this.
Seeing Afar: Yogic Perception, Extramission, and Intellectual History
Journal of Cognitive HistoriographyJed Forman
2022-12-24
“Piercing gazes” or “penetrative stares” are common idioms in English. Yet, on reflection, these phrases oddly suggest an extramissive, projective connotation of vision, countering our learned understanding that sight passively receives light. Nevertheless, these projective connotations are highly intuitive. Exploring Indian debates on yogic perception through a cognitive science lens, this paper argues that extramissive theories of sight constitute our most basic intuitive understanding of vision. Yogis are said to have extra powerful extramissive visual rays that allow them not only to apprehend distant objects but penetrate spiritual truths. Buddhists, by contrast, reject that the senses are extramissive. Still, they retain extramissive connotations when they explain yogic perception as a type of mental—rather than sensorial—feat. The explicit Buddhist rejection of extramission alongside their implicit retention of extramissive metaphors corroborates the thesis that extramission was highly intuitive within an ancient Indic milieu. Indeed, it likely constitutes a pan-human intuition.
Double hiddenness: Governmentality and subjectivization in Gelug Buddhism
Critical Research on ReligionJed Forman
2021-01-12
Tibetan Buddhism, the Gelug school specifically, promotes a deep skepticism about the ability to know others’ minds. Its scripture is rife with cautionary tales allegorizing and extolling this skepticism in adherents, while claiming a buddha, by contrast, has eradicated this skepticism with their omniscience. I describe a buddha’s purported privileged epistemic access to others’ minds as “double-hiddenness.” On this skepticism, not just what a buddha knows, but if they know it is hidden, making their authority irreputable. I use critical theory to investigate the ramifications of this double hiddenness, demonstrating that the resultant subjectivization brought about by this extreme skepticism—although the product of power—is not merely a type of subjugation, as suggested by Foucault, but also constitutes a robust agency.
Defiant Worship: Religious Liberty Talk and Rights in COVID-19 Pandemic Times
The Journal of Church and StateKathleen M Moore and Jed Forman
2022-03-31
This article draws on interactive social media content collected from Facebook and Twitter during the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic in order to examine responses to the public health measures that restricted indoor forms of religious assembly. Restrictions on indoor religious gatherings were challenged in courts and their constitutionality was addressed by the Supreme Court over the summer of 2020. This historic period, with lockdowns, testing, contact tracing, and vaccines—not to mention its prohibition on public gatherings—provides a unique opportunity to assess religious liberty claims during a nationwide public health emergency.
