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ACCOUNT ON THE SECOND CONFERENCE ON MONGOLIAN BUDDHISM The conference Mongolian Buddhism in Practice took place on 24—25 April 2017 at Edtvés Lorand University, Budapest, Hungary. The Department of Mongolian and Inner Asian Studies, the Research Centre for Mongolian Studies, the Budapest Centre of Buddhist Studies as well as the Institute of Ethnology, Research Centre for the Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and the Embassy of Mongolia in Hungary co-operated in the organization of this special forum. An exhibition of photographs taken by the Hungarian researchers of Mongolian Buddhism accompanied the conference. The conference aimed to gather international scholars and monks to discuss different aspects of Mongolian Buddhism and to reveal its distinctiveness. In accordance with the speakers’ own specific research interests, presentations covered various aspects of Mongolian Buddhist culture and practices including history, art, philosophy, textology, monastic life and disciple, Cho practice, Tsam ritual dance, Owoo veneration and other rites on prosperity, death and rebirth, and also revealed the specialties of certain Mongolian Buddhist practices in China and Russia, and their relations with Tibetan Buddhism. 85 speakers of 14 countries presented their research results including scholars, Buddhist monks, and PhD students coming from Australia, Austria, China, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Japan, Mongolia, Poland, Russia, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America. The conference started with Mongolian music and Buddhist chanting, followed by the speeches of Imre Hamar, vice-dean of Eötvös Loránd University and director of the Institute of East Asian Studies, Birtalan Agnes, the head of the Department of Mongolian and Inner Asian Studies and the Research Centre for Mongolian Studies, G. Chuluunbaatar, vice-president of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences, S. Tömör-Ochir, vice-president of the International Association for Mongol Studies, former President of the Mongolian Parliament. The greeting words of the Most Ven. D. Choidsamts, the head abbot of Gangdantegchenlin Monastery, Centre of Mongolian Buddhists was reviewed and Méngkebatu Ccorji, the sixth incarnation of the Mergen Gegeen Monastery, Inner Mongolia, China held the keynote presentation of the plenary session. His excellence Ds. Batbayar, the Ambassador of Mongolia welcomed the participants, too. The two-day conference had twenty panels with interesting papers covering various themes. The Embassy of Mongolia gave a reception in the evening of the first day. The distinctiveness of the forum was the large number of participants: almost 13
