Scholarship
premodern textual studies | great perfection buddhism | digital humanities | artificial intelligence
Elaine Lai (PhD, Stanford University, 2024) is a scholar of Buddhist tantra and the Great Perfection tradition who has taught at Stanford as a Lecturer. Her first book recovers the previously untranslated Tantra of the Sun of the Blazing Luminous Matrix, the first foundational Heart Essence scripture to feature a feminine Buddha narrator, Samantabhadrī, and shows how premodern Buddhist communities understood time, authority, and gender. Her second project brings Buddhist philosophy into dialogue with debates on the ethics of artificial intelligence. To carry this work beyond the academy, she builds digital and creative projects, from an intertextual heatmap to a virtual reality experience.
Inscribing a Tantra: Time and the Making of Great Perfection Buddhism in Tibet
monograph in progress, Oxford University Press, Religion in Translation Series
Beyond Dialogue: New Paradigms in Interfaith Discourse
edited with Daniel Ross Goodman & Anthony A. Lee · SUNY Press, 2026
Stanford University
PhD, Religious Studies · 2024
Dissertation: “Heart Essence Literature through Time: A Close Study of the Secret Tantra of the Sun: Blazing Luminous Matrix of Samantabhadrī.” Available via Stanford Libraries.
The University of Hong Kong
MA, Buddhist Studies · 2017
With distinction. Tung Lin Kok Yuen Scholarship.
Wesleyan University
BA, Film Studies and French Studies · 2008
With honors. Member of Pi Delta Phi, the National French Honor Society.
“Diversity is Not Enough: Gender, Institutional Power, and Buddhist Adaptations of Artificial Intelligence” — Handbook of Women and Buddhism, Bloomsbury (forthcoming)
“Misreading Buddhism: Virtual Orientalism in Asian American Film” — Journal of Asian American Studies (under review)
“Film” — The Oxford Handbook on Buddhist Literature, Oxford UP (forthcoming)
“Tracing Textual Reception: An Intertextual Heatmap” — Proceedings of the 7th International Seminar of Young Tibetologists, Oxford (forthcoming)
“Western Category of Religion” — The Oxford Handbook of Asian American Religions, Oxford UP (under review)
“Beyond Religion Icons: Engaged Buddhism as Engaged Community” — Beyond Dialogue: New Paradigms in Interfaith Discourse, SUNY Press (2026)
“What Hope? Staying with the Trouble of America’s Racial Karma” — Pacific World Journal, Series 4, Vol. 6 (2025): 177–214
“An Uncommon Narrative Opening: Five Perfections in Tantra of the Sun” — Pacific World Journal, Series 4, Vol. 4 (2023): 61–109
“Introduction to a Special Section on Performing Time in Buddhist Literature” — Pacific World Journal, Series 4, Vol. 4 (2023): 1–4
“It is becoming easier to create AI avatars of the deceased — here is why Buddhism would caution against it” — The Conversation, July 2025
“Will the Next Dalai Lama Be a Machine?” — Religion News Service, June 2025
“AI Ethics and the Humanities: A Perspective from Buddhist Studies” — keynote, The Digital Orientalist, 2025
“An Intertextual Heatmap: Tantra of the Sun’s Reception in 14th Century Tibet” — The Digital Orientalist, November 2024
“Recent Publications in the Field: Beyond Dialogue: New Paradigms in Interfaith Discourse” — AAR, Interreligious/Interfaith Studies Unit, Nov. 2026
“Buddhism and Film” — Buddhist Literature as Literature, South Asian Studies Council, Yale University, Oct. 2026
“Beyond Uncertainty: Religion, Education and the Search for Meaning in Turbulent Times” — Stanford University Office for Religion and Spiritual Life, May 2026
“Rethinking AI Narratives Through Buddhism” — American Academy of Religion, Nov. 2025
“We Can and Must do Better: Challenging the Orientalist Gaze in Buddhist Inspired Film” — APARRI Conference, June 2025
“AI Ethics and the Humanities” (keynote) — Digital Orientalist Virtual Conference, May 2025
“Playing with Time: Great Perfection History in Virtual Reality” — ITCH: Immersive Technologies and Cultural Heritage, USC, Sept. 2024
“Tantra of the Sun Through Time: An Intertextual Heatmap” — 7th International Seminar of Young Tibetologists, Oxford, Sept. 2024
“Buddhist Literature as Queer Time” — American Comparative Literature Association, March 2024
“Confronting and Healing America’s Racialized Karma” — AAR, Collective Karma Unit, Nov. 2023
“Straying into samsaric time according to Heart Essence Literature” — AAR, Buddhism Unit, Nov. 2022
An Intertextual Heatmap
An interactive tool tracing the citational history of the Tantra of the Sun through 14th-century Tibet. heatmap.elainejlai.com
Great Perfection in Virtual Reality
Three lineage transmissions of Great Perfection history, rendered as an immersive experience. Web version in development.
courses taught at stanford
Being Human in an AI World · Utopia, Dystopia and Technology in Science Fiction · Citizenship in the 21st Century · Why College? · Queering Buddhism: Gender, Sexuality, and Liberatory Praxis
guest lectures
Buddhism and Literature · Theories of Religion · Philosophy of Religion · Religion Around the Globe · Trauma, Healing, and Empowerment in Asian America · Meeting the Moment: Inner Resources for Hard Times