2013-2015 Religion Beyond Words – Page 4

2014-02-18

03/05/2014: Achieving Eternal Peace through Non-dualistic View – Buddhist Concepts and Meditation Practices

Lecture and discussion with the eighth Arjia Rinpoche, Lobsang Tubten Jigme Gyatso

Wednesday, March 5, 7:00 p.m. Cowles Library Reading Room

Arjia Rinpoche is one of the most prominent Tibetan lamas in the world. At the age of two, he was recognized by the 10th Panchen Lama as the reincarnation of Lama Tsong Khapa’s father and the abbot of Kumbum Monastery.

In political movements, Arjia Rinpoche had to work in a forced Labor Camp for 16 years. In 1979 he was reinstated as Abbot of Kumbum and advanced in the governmental hierarchy. In 1998, right before he was about to become leader of the Chinese National Buddhist Association, he chose to exile overseas.

Finally Rinpoche settled in Mill Valley, California where he established the Tibetan Center for Compassion and Wisdom. In 2005, he was appointed by His Holiness the Dalai Lama as Director of the Tibetan Mongolian Buddhist Cultural Center in Bloomington, Indiana. Both centers are dedicated to the preservation of Buddhist teachings and Tibetan art and culture. In 2010, he published his memoir Surviving the Dragon.

Arjia Rinpoche has been actively engaged in charity works. Presently, he is constructing the Cancer Care Treatment Center for Mongolian children.

This event is sponsored by:

ISU Dizang-Qi Buddhism Club
DMACC
Drake University, The Comparison Project

Contact: Jie Shao 812-327-5297 • billshao80@gmail.com

Listen to audio of Rinpoche’s talk:

Powerpoint of Rinpoche’s talk

2014-02-18

03/06/2014: “Names Are The Guest Of Reality”: Apophasis, Mysticism, and Soteriology in Daoist Perspective

Lecture by Louis Komjathy, Assistant Professor of Chinese Religions and Comparative Religious Studies, University of San Diego

Thursday, March 6, 7:30 p.m., Cowles Library Reading Room

How does one speak the unspeakable, say the unsayable, name the unnameable? How does one subvert the human tendency to become mired in intellectual constructs, philosophical rumination, and psychological confusion, especially with respect to matters of ultimate concern? This talk examines Daoist uses of “apophatic discourse” and “grammars of ineffability,” or the way in which (apparent) negation is central to Daoist approaches. In addition to providing a foundational introduction to Daoism in general and the Zhuangzi (Book of Master Zhuang) in particular, Komjathy will explore Daoist meditation and mystical experience, with attentiveness to representative modes of expression and description. In the process, he suggests that one must understand Daoist contemplative practice and mystical experience as the root of “Daoist philosophy.” Daoist apophatic discourse presupposes a contemplative and mystical perspective on being and sacrality. It is a praxis-based and experiential perspective. Daoist views of language in turn reveal alternative uses of linguistic expression, beyond mere communication and description. We may begin to imagine “soteriological linguistics.”

Louis Komjathy (Ph.D., Religious Studies; Boston University) is Assistant Professor of Chinese Religions and Comparative Religious Studies at the University of San Diego. A leading scholar of Daoism (Taoism), his particular interests include contemplative practice and mystical experience. He is also founding Co-chair (2004-2010) of the Daoist Studies Group of the American Academy of Religion, founding Co-chair (2010-present) of the Contemplative Studies Group of the American Academy of Religion, and manager of the Contemplative Studies website. He has published widely on Daoist religious practice, including the recent The Way of Complete Perfection (State University of New York Press, 2013) and The Daoist Tradition: An Introduction (Bloomsbury Academic, 2013). Beyond his academic work, he is a member of the advisory board for Monastic Interreligious Dialogue and founding Co-director of the Daoist Foundation, a non-profit religious and educational organization dedicated to fostering authentic Daoist study and practice.

Listen to audio of Komjathy’s talk:

Or view his presentation:

2014-01-27

02/13/2014: After Silence, That Which Comes Nearest

Jonathan Bellman,
Professor of Music History & Literature, University of Northern Colorado

Response by Eric Saylor,
Associate Professor of Music History & Musicology, Drake University

Thursday, February 13 at 7:00 p.m.

St. Catherine of Siena Catholic Student Center, 1150 28th Street

Poets and philosophers have long agreed about music’s ability to express the inexpressible. The kinds of music to which they imputed this elevated capability, though, varied widely. By the mid-nineteenth century, the expressive vocabulary of western music was highly developed and well understood; today, though, its subtleties are largely forgotten. As a result, what to us might seem like an evocation of the Infinite might in its own time have been an expression of something far more explicit or even everyday in nature. Thus, musical expressions of the ineffable and thoroughgoingly effable are far closer than we might suspect. Much of music’s ability to reach beyond verbal language, then, is granted by and relies upon the expectations of the listener, rather than being inherent in the music itself.

Jonathan D. Bellman is a Professor of Music History and Literature and Head of Academic Studies in Music at the University of Northern Colorado. He earned piano performance degrees from the University of California, Santa Barbara and the University of Illinois, and a Doctor of Musical Arts in Piano Performance Practices at Stanford University in 1990. His most recent book, Chopin’s Polish Ballade: Op. 38 as Narrative of National Martyrdom, was published by Oxford University Press in 2010. His articles have appeared in journals including The Journal of Musicological Research, Musical Quarterly, Nineteenth-Century Music, Early Music, Historical Performance, and The Journal of Musicology. His research interests include musical style in general, musical exoticism, the music and performance practices of Frédéric Chopin, and the concert music of George Gershwin.

Listen to audio of the lecture:

Download a PDF of Bellman’s talk

Prof. Saylor’s response (PDF)

2013-10-28

12/05/2013: How To Speak About An Unspeakable God: The Christian Mysticism of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite

Timothy Knepper, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Drake University

NEW DATE/LOCATION: Thursday, December 5, 7:00 p.m. in Sussman Theater (Olmsted Center)

How does one say what can’t be said? How does one speak about an unspeakable God? This “problem” is central to the influential writings of the anonymous sixth-century Christian mystic known to us as Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. While Dionysius’s Trinitarian God remains the cause of all, it is at the same time beyond all words, names, and assertions. And although Dionysius sometimes simply asserts this apparently paradoxical claim, he more frequently performs it through a series of grammar-violating linguistic techniques. Prof. Knepper’s lecture will begin by examining this discourse of ineffability in the Dionysian corpus; it will then put it into comparative conversation with the other discourses of ineffability that The Comparison Project has examined this semester.

Timothy Knepper is an associate professor of philosophy at Drake University, where he chairs the Department of Philosophy and Religion and directs The Comparison Project. He teaches and publishes in the philosophy of religion, comparative religion, late ancient Neoplatonism, and mystical discourse. He is the author of books on the future of the philosophy of religion (The Ends of Philosophy of Religion, Palgrave, 2013) and Dionysius the Areopagite (Negating Negation, Wipf & Stock, 2014). And he is currently working on edited collections on “Philosophy of Religion for Religious Studies” and “Discourses of Ineffability in Comparative Perspective.”

Watch Prof. Knepper’s talk below:

2013-10-04

10/24/2103: Paying Attention: The Fine Art and Neuroscience of Visual Awareness

Barbara Stafford, Distinguished University Visiting Professor, Georgia Institute of Technology School of Architecture

Response by Lenore Metrick-Chen, Associate Professor of Art History, Drake University

Thursday, October 24, 7:00 p.m. in Cowles Library Reading Room

Barbara Stafford’s research strives to find precise ways of bringing neurobiology, cognitive science, and the new philosophy of mind together with cultural phenomena without falling into reductivism on either side. In this lecture, she will tackle a comparatively understudied and relatively under-researched area in the contemporary neurosciences—an area where the imaging side of the humanities has much to contribute—the importance of selective attention. What are the inducements for attending carefully to the subtleties of the world?

Barbara Maria Stafford is an independent writer, curator and speaker. Her work has consistently explored the intersections between the visual arts and the physical and biological sciences from the early modern to the contemporary era. Her current research charts the revolutionary ways the neurosciences are changing our views of the human and animal sensorium, shaping our fundamental assumptions about perception, sensation, emotion, mental imagery, and subjectivity. Her most recent book is The Field Guide to a New Metafield: Bridging the Humanities-Neurosciences Divide [2011].

Listen to audio of the lecture:

Download the Stafford Lecture PowerPoint