Aaron P. Proffitt

Professor Aaron Proffitt is an Associate Professor of Japanese Studies in the East Asian Studies Department at the University at Albany-SUNY. He teaches courses on East Asian religions, Buddhism, the academic study of religion. His research focuses on 12th-13th century Japanese Buddhism in the broader context of East Asian and Mahayana theories of ritual speech (mantra, spells, etc.), the afterlife, and debates about the relationship between Buddhist practice and the attainment of enlightenment. His book, Esoteric Pure Land Buddhism, was published through the Pure Land Buddhist Studies Series of the University of Hawaii Press in 2023. This work examines Esoteric Pure Land Buddhist thought and practice in China and Japan through the lens of the life and work of Koyasan scholar-monk Dōhan (1179-1252), and contains the first fully annotated English language translation of all three fascicles of the Himitsu nenbutsu shō, "Compendium on the Secret Nenbutsu."