Timothy Knepper – Page 27 – The Comparison Project

2013-08-19

09/09-13/2013: Sacred Earth and Healing Arts of Tibet: A Visit from the Gaden Shartse Tibetan Buddhist Monks

The Buddhist Monks from Gaden Shartse Monastery will offer lectures, teachings and cultural performances from September 9-13.

Visitors may also view the ongoing construction of the sand mandala in the Cowles Library Reading Room between 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday.

Monday, September 9, 9:00 a.m., Collier Heritage Room, Cowles Library

Sand Mandala Opening ceremony

View a time lapse video of the mandala process from beginning to end:

Monday, September 9, 7:00 p.m., Collier Heritage Room, Cowles Library

Lecture: Path of the Bodhisattva

Listen to audio of the lecture:

Tuesday, September 10, 7:00 p.m., Sheslow Auditorium

An Evening of Sacred Music and Dance

View a video of the performance:

Wednesday,September 11, 7:00 p.m., Cowles Library Reading Room

Lecture: World Peace and the Unity of all Religions

Listen to audio of the lecture:

Thursday, September 12, 7:00 p.m., Cowles Library Reading Room

Buddhist Community Dialogue with representatives from the Tibetan monks, Des Moines Zen Center, Wat Lao Buddhavas of Des Moines and Tu Vein Hong Duc.

Listen to audio of the Dialogue:

Friday, September 13, 7:00 p.m., Cowles Library Reading Room

Sand Mandala Closing ceremony

View video of the Closing ceremony:

For information on the Gaden Shartse monks, visit www.gadenshartseculturalfoundation.org

Parking Information:

Parking for visitors to the Mandala building is located in the visitor pay parking lot at 28th/University or street parking in the surrounding neighborhoods.

For the performance in Sheslow on Tuesday evening, parking is closest in Lot #1 (Fine Arts Lot), which becomes a visitor lot after 4:30 p.m. This lot could also be used for parking for the other events.

Campus Parking Map

2013-04-22

05/07/2013: Religious Responses to Suffering: A Comparative Discussion

Tuesday, May 7, 7:00 p.m., Olin 101

The Comparison Project 2012-2013 explored a range of religious explanations of and responses to suffering through a variety of public programing—everything from lectures on the Holocaust and the Lakota Ghost Dance, to community and Drake inter-faith dialogues, to creative non-fiction readings by Above + Beyond Cancer trekkers. Our culminating event invites three philosophers of religion, of varying methodological commitments and religious expertises, to reflect on these responses to suffering, drawing tentative comparative, explanatory, and evaluative conclusions about them.

Bradley Herling is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Marymount Manhattan College. He is the author of The German Gita: Hermeneutics and Discipline in the German Reception of Indian Thought, 1778-1831 (Routledge, 2006) and co-editor of Deliver Us From Evil (Continuum, 2009), an interdisciplinary collection of essays that examines the problem of evil and unwarranted suffering. Prof. Herling is currently working on a second edition of his textbook, A Beginner’s Guide to the Study of Religion, which will be published by Bloomsbury in 2014.

Read Bradley Herling’s Lecture

Jin Y. Park is Associate Professor of philosophy and religion at American University. Park is the author and editor of several books including Buddhism and Postmodernity: Zen, Huayan, and the Possibility of Buddhist Postmodern Ethics.

Read Jin Park’s Lecture

John J. Thatamanil is Associate Professor of Theology and World Religions at Union Theological Seminary. He is the author of The Immanent Divine: God, Creation and the Human Predicament (Fortress Press) and is currently working on a book, The Promise of Religious Diversity: Constructive Theology After Religion, that explores the meaning of the category “religion” for interreligious dialogue.

Listen to audio of the dialogue:

2013-04-05

04/17/2013: Buddhism and the Ethics of Memory

kopfpromopic Wednesday, April 17 7:00 p.m., Olin 101

Gereon Kopf received his Ph.D. from Temple University and is currently professor of Asian and comparative religion at Luther College. As a research fellow of the Japan Foundation and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, he conducted research in 1993 and 1994 at Obirin University in Machida, Japan, and at the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture in Nagoya, Japan, from 2002 to 2004. In the academic year of 2008-2009, he taught at the Centre of Buddhist Studies at the University of Hong Kong. He is the author of Beyond Personal Identity (2001), co-editor of Merleau-Ponty and Buddhism (2009), and editor of the Journal of Buddhist Philosophy.

The act of remembering is central to a variety of Buddhist responses to suffering, offering a foundation for responses to historical tragedies and political evil by drawing upon the relationship between the Buddhist principles of suffering, memory, and compassion. Taking various perspectives to the Nanjing massacre as its case study, Dr. Kopf’s lecture will identify and analyze four ways in which individuals and nations commemorate significant events, proposing an ethics of expression that examines the ideological, religious and moral dimensions of various remembrance practices. Ultimately it seeks to provide a theory that reveals the connections between ideological commitments, religious ritual, and moral agenda, reminding us that our self-understanding is inextricably tied to our values and
vice versa.

PowerPoint of Kopf’s lecture

Transcript of Kopf’s presentation

Listen to Kopf’s lecture:

2013-03-11

04/04/2013: Innovative Jewish Responses to Holocaust

Thursday, April 4 at 7:00 p.m., Olin 101

8 September 2011, CAHS Fellows stand for their informal portraits — Photo courtesy of the USHMM

Steven T. Katz is Director of the Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies and Chair in Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Boston University. He has also taught at Dartmouth College, Cornell University, and at numerous other universities both in the US and abroad. In addition, Dr. Katz is presently the Chair of the Holocaust Commission of the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture and the Academic Advisor to the Academic Working Group of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.

Dr. Katz has published over 100 articles in scholarly journals in the fields of Judaica, Holocaust studies, philosophy of religion, and comparative mysticism, and has lectured all over the world. In 1999 he was awarded the University of Tübingen’s Lucas Prize for Holocaust studies. And his most recent book, Wrestling with God: Jewish Theological Responses During and After the Holocaust, was selected as the runner-up for the 2007 National Jewish Book Award. He is currently the editor of the journal, Modern Judaism.

Dr. Katz’s lecture will review and critique the main Jewish theological responses to the Holocaust and the “problem of evil.” It will include six responses that are, essentially, based on the adaptation and recycling of biblical explanations as to why the righteous suffer. After this opening analysis, he will turn to the five or six responses that present a novel “modern” accounting. This second group will include the views of Richard Rubenstein, Emil Fackenheim, Eliezer Berkovitz, Ignaz Maybaum, Emanuel Levinas, and Elie Wiesel.

Listen to Katz’s lecture:

Here is the section of Dr. Katz’s “Wrestling with God” upon which his lecture drew

2013-02-18

03/07/2013: Above + Beyond Cancer’s Journey to the High Himalaya: Creative Nonfiction Narratives of Recovery, Discovery, and Advocacy

Thursday, March 7 7:30 p.m. in the Cowles Library Reading Room for a creative nonfiction reading by Ruth Bachman and Andy Fleming, two member of Above + Beyond Cancer’s recent journey to the High Himalaya.

Writers will read from the creative nonfiction narratives inspired by their recent trek through the High Himalaya with Above + Beyond Cancer. These narratives are part of an ongoing Drake and Above + Beyond Cancer Community Writing Project.

This event is free and open to the public.

For more information, please contact Yasmina Madden at yasmina.madden@drake.edu

Listen to audio from the presentation: